There’s a reason that filmmakers keep sending their characters on road trips: it makes for mighty gripping cinema.
Take a group of people who hate each other, and yank them out of their comfort zones and into a cramped car careening down a bumpy road to a hazy, high-stakes destination.
Sooner or later (usually after a string of disasters), long-standing tensions boil to the surface and the characters find something they could have only found on the road: peace, reconciliation, closure, mad love, or some combination thereof. Cue acoustic ballad; roll credits.
If it sounds like a formula, that’s because it is – but it’s the kind of formula that can be used a million times and take audiences on a million different journeys, many of them satisfying and revelatory.
When the Ocean Met the Sky is one such satisfying and revelatory road trip movie. The locally made feature stars Aren Buchholz (When Calls the Heart), Phillip Thomas, and Spencer Foley as three estranged brothers who reluctantly convene after the tragic deaths of their parents.
A lawyer quickly informs the brothers that a substantial inheritance awaits each one of them – so long as they embark on a difficult journey into the British Columbia wilderness to a mysterious destination of their mom and dad’s choosing.
And they have to take this trip together (accompanied by a stoner guide, played by Terry Field), or no one gets a dime.
When the Ocean Met the Sky – which was directed by Lukas Huffman and filmed in Squamish, Ucluelet, Tofino, and Vancouver – has done exceptionally well on the film festival circuit. To date, it’s garnered 12 audience awards at 18 international fests, as well as a nomination for Best Canadian Film on the Toronto International Film Festival’s Film Circuit.
On July 12, the bro-drama will join the ranks of iTunes and VOD.
When the Ocean Met the Sky was co-written by two of the three on-screen brothers, Foley and Thomas.
The Vancouver duo were inspired by Jay and Mark Duplass’ 2005 indie hit The Puffy Chair, in which the main character drives across America to deliver a vintage recliner to his father and finds hilarity and personal truths along the way.
The Duplass Brothers made The Puffy Chair for $15,000, and went on to screen at Sundance and South by Southwest. This ilk of DIY filmmaking was highly attractive to Foley and Thomas.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘well, we have me and you, we both act, we both write,’” says Foley. “So we thought, ‘why don’t we write a movie about brothers?’”
Foley and Thomas aren’t brothers in real-life, but they are best friends, and so focusing on brotherhood wasn’t a stretch. “Everyone can relate to family,” says Foley. “Everyone has brothers or sisters or parents, and everyone has different dynamics within that.”
They wrangled their other best friend, Buchholz, to fill the role of the youngest brother.
Filming a road trip movie can be challenging, and a little method. You’ve got to go on an actual road trip in order to film your fictional one.
While When the Ocean Met the Sky’s off-camera road trip wasn’t as fraught as the scripted one, it did begin rather dramatically. On the first morning of shooting, their primary production vehicle died on the ramp to the ferry.
“I was in the car behind them and I said, ‘You have got to be kidding me. Is this a sign from somewhere that we shouldn’t be doing this movie?’” Foley chuckles at the memory.
There were a couple more vehicle breakdowns, and other standard road trip drama. The rain was relentless; cast and crew were soaked to the bone every day, and “every day, every emotion under the sun was felt by all of us,” says Foley.
Even the actors had to pitch in to get shit done.
“We had such a small crew of 12, and everyone was doing everything,” says Foley. “I was carrying generators up the hills and we were all carrying lights. It was a team effort in every way. When we started filming, the sweat that you saw on-screen was our real sweat.”
But every bead of sweat was worth it, because Foley and co. got to play out their story in picture-perfect locales.
“BC is the most beautiful place on Earth,” he says. “We’re spoiled. We see the beauty every day, but when [non-residents] see it on-screen, they’re really wowed by the backdrop.”
For Foley, the most meaningful moment of the filmmaking journey occurred after a When the Ocean Met the Sky screening in Montreal, when “a French-Canadian man stood up and started crying, and in broken English he said that he hadn’t spoken to his brother in 10 years, and he was about to go call him after our movie.”
Later, outside the theatre, Foley spotted the man engaged in an emotional conversation on his phone.
“It was powerful,” says Foley. “That’s why we make movies: moments like that.”
• When the Ocean Met the Sky will be available on iTunes beginning July 12.
