CULTIVATING CREATIVITY: The many lifetimes of Victor Cooper
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Peter Paylor
Quinte Arts Council
I’m having a chat with filmmaker Victor Cooper about the process of writing: “I always ask myself, ‘What is the goal of each scene?’” he says. “It might be the opening scene… the goal may just be to say, ‘Get ready to not be ready.’”
I first heard about Cooper from a friend who knew him as an actor in musical theatre. I first met him as a singer, songwriter and musician, then later as a commercial filmmaker, and later still as half of the creative force behind the short “psychological slasher” film Mercy. His wife Jodi is the other half. Together they are currently in the development stage for their third film in the horror genre; this time a full-length feature called The Lamplighter.
After catching the stage bug at high school in Madoc – he credits teachers Kim Dafoe and Billy Piton for getting him excited about musical theatre – Cooper went on to appear in productions in Belleville, Stirling, and the County. In the years after high school, he went to work as a landscaper and general labourer, an experience he remains grateful for. When Jodi decided to enter the Television Production program at Loyalist College, Cooper decided to follow.
“We competed like crazy,” he says.
Three years later they both finished the program – Jodi a few percentage points ahead – and Cooper went straight into… demolition work. But within a few months, he found a job with a production company in the County and he has been involved in television and film production ever since, much of that time with Belleville’s Vantage Point Media House. Last June, Cooper decided to strike out with his new business partner Kelly McKinney and form Eighty Twenty Studio, based in the new Quinte Innovation Centre on Sidney Street in Belleville.
While Cooper believes “story is king,” he says his primary goal in writing horror is to change the way someone looks at something.
“How it changes for them is almost irrelevant,” he says. “If I wanted you to look at it a certain way, I’d have failed.”
To that end, Mercy turned out “just the way we hoped…just about everyone had a different take on the ending.”
The couple’s second venture into the horror genre was The Woodsmen, a Bigfoot film Victor describes as “a campy ’80s style creature feature.”
“It was especially cool,” he says, “because it was very community-based.”
Shot locally with local talent and largely local funding through Kickstarter, the film has had considerable success on the festival circuit and the internet.
As Cooper and Jodi put the finishing touches on the script for The Lamplighter, Victor acknowledges not every couple could make such a partnership work.
“It’s really cool having a partner who’s into this sort of thing,” he says. “Jodi is in 100 per cent. She’s just as twisted as I am.”
It also helps, he explains, the two have different writing styles.
“My strength is writing dialogue,” he says. “Her strength is tying the story together. But we both have big ideas. We just really enjoy coming up with these characters and these places together.”
“It’s a funny life,” he says. “You get to battle Bigfoot, but when someone yells ‘Wrap,’ everyone’s still alive and you get to go on to your next project.”
Audiences at this year’s Belleville Downtown DocFest had a chance to catch Cooper’s work as director of the documentary short film The Loft on St. Paul’s, which follows local realtor Tim McKinney’s transformation of the old church on St. Paul Street in Belleville’s Foster Ward into a performance and Airbnb space now known as “The Loft.” It’s a feel good story that’s about as far from a horror film as you can possibly get. Somewhere in our chat, Cooper reminds me of a quote from filmmaker Robert Altman that resonates: “Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”
This article originally appeared in our Spring 2020 issue of Umbrella.
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