Whole New Thing explores young boy's crush on gay male teacher

There's been much talk in recent months about the success of Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica - films that focus on gay or transsexual characters. In the midst of that dialogue comes Whole New Thing, a new Canadian movie about a 13-year-old boy who develops a passionate crush on his homosexual teacher. During last September's Toronto International Film Festival, director Amnon Buchbinder said the film - shot under wintry conditions in Nova Scotia - came about during a discussion with Daniel MacIvor, with whom he co-wrote the screenplay. "The idea to tell the story started with something Daniel had told me about an experience from his own life about having a crush on a male teacher when he was in Grade 5," said Buchbinder. "He wasn't suggesting that as a film story, it was just in another context, but I thought that would be an interesting story for a film." The subject matter is certain to make some moviegoers squeamish, yet that was exactly what drew Buchbinder to the project. [...]

"It was really important to me that the character of Don was not at all interested sexually in this boy. There was no struggle, there was no conflict in any way for him," said MacIvor in a telephone interview following the festival. "That was incredibly important. As a gay man, I said I didn't want to do anything that was in any way going to implicate anybody. ... There is a certain group of people in society who have ideas that are wrong about this whole idea of pedophilia and how it's connected to homosexuality. I didn't want to be in any way contributing to that misinformation."

source: Article 'Whole New Thing explores young boy's crush on gay male teacher' by Andrea Baillie (Canadian Press); www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=97ba98a2-4b35-4b2e-8ac0-d5e7591a2f92&k=39739; 22 March 2006