In July, 1995, I left my 1 ½ year old son.  I had no choice.  His mother and I simply couldn’t live together and I thought it would be in my child’s best interest if his mom and I lived apart.

 

Shortly after leaving, I met a young woman from Saskatchewan, Canada in a downtown Manhattan bar.  We had a nice chat that night and exchanged info.  She returned to the tundra the next day but took advantage of my info to keep in touch.

 

She brought up the idea of coming to visit me during the upcoming holiday break.  I was initially averse but, after thinking about it for some time, it occurred to me that I had just started making films and it might be interesting to shoot our 12 day date. Fancying herself an actress, the woman jumped at the idea.

 

“Men are From Manhattan…Women are From Saskatchewan” (MMWS)

(click to see trailer) was simply intended to chronicle what happened when a man and a woman who did not know each other well found themselves spending 12 days together in a cramped NYC apartment.  If this was all it was, though, it would have sucked.  What made it interesting was that, during the course of this date from hell, the aforementioned mother of my [then] young son stalked us from NYC to the Poconos to Washington, D.C.

 

I cut the film into a 2 hour rough cut and sent it to HBO.  As I made the film for fun, and never expected anything to come of it, I’m sure you can relate to my shock when HBO called to say they wanted to buy it. After putting a couple hundred grand into post production, HBO premiered the film on Valentine’s Day, 1998.  Shortly thereafter, overseas rights were awarded to Tapestry International, who oversaw its TV sales around the globe.

 

Video rights to MMWS were never sold and, after all these years, it is being offered for sale to the public for the first time.