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 Michael Therriault plays Tommy Douglas and Kristin Booth as his wife, Irma. |
He had arguably the greatest sense of humour in Canadian political history -- case in point, his famous "Mouseland" speech, which we've reprinted here.
So the late, great Tommy Douglas probably wouldn't have minded being compared to Frodo Baggins.
So compare away, Michael Therriault.
The former co-star of The Producers -- who plays the father of universal healthcare and founder of the NDP in the CBC miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story -- is busy playing Gollum these days in previews of the mega-musical The Lord Of The Rings. And he clearly has Mordor on his mind.
"Tommy Douglas fills that mythological storyline of the little guy who goes on a personal adventure he doesn't foresee and steps beyond his personal boundaries," Therriault says.
"He didn't want to be a politician. He wanted to be a minister or a teacher. And life, through necessity, set him on a path that eventually changed the country. We have a real-life mythology in this country, with battles still to be fought."
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Pretty impassioned stuff for a young actor who admits he'd never heard of Douglas before auditioning for director John N. Smith and his son, writer Bruce Smith. (This was before the CBC series in which voters chose Douglas as the Greatest Canadian).
"And I'm shocked that I didn't know," Therriault says. "It's funny because most people my age (32), and even a lot of my family, when I said I was doing the Tommy Douglas story, thought I was doing the Tommy Hunter story," he says, referring to the Canadian country legend.
But director Smith and writer Smith report that Therriault soon became obsessed with the Baptist minister-turned-prairie-politician, collecting his sayings and speeches and poring over old footage. He even trained at the Cabbagetown Boxing Club because an early version of the script had Douglas in the ring. "By the time we filmed, I think he knew more about Tommy Douglas than anybody else on Earth," the senior Smith says. "He'd done a staggering amount of research."
Which is ironic, since the role of Douglas originally belonged to someone whose research was a matter of genetics and family history -- Tommy's grandson Kiefer Sutherland.
In fact, The Tommy Douglas Story started out as a family affair of another sort, with Kiefer in the lead and his mother Shirley Douglas riding herd as a vociferous creative consultant. But the Fox series 24 ultimately kept Sutherland away, and Douglas clashed with the Smiths over the script and eventually washed her hands of the project.
"Shirley was deeply involved early on, and then from the first draft of the script didn't like what was going on," Bruce says.
"She was the inspiration for the project," John adds. "She was the one who originally asked me to take on Tommy Douglas. But you always have to make choices, you can't tell the whole story. And the thing here is that Tommy was not a Marxist. Tommy came from a religious background, a social activism of the Baptist church out west, and reacted to the events of the Depression from that background. Shirley wasn't interested in the religious side of it, and wished we spent more time in the NDP period.
"I personally hope as time goes by, she'll be able to see her trust in me was well served."
Calls to Shirley Douglas for comment were not returned.
As for Kiefer, he says, "It was in a way a blessing in disguise. I'm sure a lot more people would tune into Kiefer's movie. But it would have always been Kiefer Sutherland playing a role. And instead we ended up with a guy who is Tommy Douglas."
Prairie Giant does indeed devote itself almost entirely to Douglas' political career in Saskatchewan, first as an MP for the fledgling Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and then as a virtual premier-for-life in Saskatchewan, where he humbled political foes, brought in public auto insurance, balanced the books of the poorest province in Canada and battled angry doctors to bring in the first socialized medicine program in Canada (a ball that was picked up federally by another Saskatchewanite, John Diefenbaker).
Part 1 tonight centres on this sometime boxer's beginnings as an activist cleric in Weyburn, Sask. There, with the aid of his long-suffering wife Irma (Kristin Booth), he ministers to his disenfranchised flock of farmers, and exhorts striking miners to carry on -- only to see them gunned down by RCMP in an infamous massacre in Estevan, Sask.
And in Part 2, it compellingly recreates his battle to bring health care for all to Saskatchewan, with the doctors strike, protests, death threats and "commie" slurs.
A self-described "political junkie," Bruce Smith signed on for a project that would take up three years of his life.
"Very early in the research I realized this is something that doesn't fit the current political mode," he said. "It's a Christian politician, and since it's set in the '30s, '40s and '50s, it's a story of the Christian left."
John, who left Canada for L.A. after the success of The Boys Of St. Vincent, directed the Michelle Pfeiffer box office hit Dangerous Minds and Vince Vaughn in the flop A Cold, Dry Place. But he returned "because in Hollywood it's always about making American cultural product. And for me it became clear, I wanted to make Canadian stories, and I didn't like the American studio system."
With him came his wife, Oscar-winning director Cynthia Scott. Add in Bruce's actor brother Scott, and the Smiths are a family business indeed.
"The difference between Tommy Douglas and Pat Robertson says it all to me," says John, "what it once meant to be a Christian politician, particularly in this country. I think on that score Tommy had a much easier job it than Pat Robertson, frankly. He was able to quote the Bible more freely to promote social justice than Robertson can having Christ call for tax cuts."
And if Douglas' descendants were ambivalent to the project, elite Canadian actors seemingly crawled over each other to get roles -- including Nicholas Campbell as blustering Red baiter Edward Young, Brent Carver as a disapproving Baptist church official, Don McKellar as Douglas' treasury wizard Clarence Fines, Andy Jones (Random Crossing) as Mackenzie King and -- most oddly -- Paul Gross as Diefenbaker.
We suggest to the Smiths that the handsomest man in Canadian showbiz should have, at the very least, had to endure a heavy session with an ugly stick to play jowly Dief the Chief.
John laughs and says, "I told Paul, 'No, we're not going to make you into John Diefenbaker. We'll make your hair whiter.' But y'know, I think he did a great job. It's a very strong scene, and for those people expecting to see their image of John Diefenbaker, sorry, that's not going to happen.
"It was amazing, all the top people who wanted in. It's a Canadian miniseries, so we didn't have a lot of money. We paid scale, which is not what the Nick Campbells and Paul Grosses are used to."
Adds Bruce, "Every 10 or 15 minutes of screen time, there's a nice cameo. Which meant I did a lot of rewrites."
But it was the non-stars who "made" the experience for Therriault during his three months of filming in Saskatchewan. "I met a lot of people ... some of them famous like Ray Romanow. But a lot of background people would come up and have their own story about Tommy Douglas. In Saskatchewan almost everybody has a Tommy Douglas story. And they're extremely supportive. I was quite nervous portraying the hero of these people. They were pounding the tables and yelling at these great speeches, shouting, 'Way to go, Tommy!'
"There's no way to experience that and not feel like a million bucks."
TOMMY DOUGLAS' MOUSELAND SPEECH
This is the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.
They even had a parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards, too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.
Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government of cats, look at the history of Canada for the last 90 years and maybe you'll see they weren't any stupider then us.
Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws -- that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouse holes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only run at certain speeds -- so a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.
All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided that something had to be done. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in white cats.
Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said, "All Mouseland needs is more vision." They said, "The trouble with Mouseland is the round mouse holes. If you put us in we'll make square mouse holes." And they did. And the square mouse holes were twice as big as the round ones, and now a cat could get both paws in. And life was tougher then ever.
And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and black ones in again. Then they went back to white cats. Then to black cats. They even tried half black and half white cats. And they called that a coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: They were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.
You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.
Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!" So they put him in jail.
But I want to remind you: That you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.
-- Tommy Douglas, 1944