By Vince A Onken
If it's true that some of us take the road less traveled to get where we're going, then first time feature film director Vadim Perelman would surely be the poster boy for uncharted pathways.
Born in the Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union, Vadim grew up in a small one room apartment with ten other family members and although he had never seen a movie, by the time he was four he was already reading the classics.
"I'd lay there in a little corner on my cot reading books," says Vadim. "It was warm, and wonderful. You really don't know any different."
Life was tough and not getting any easier for the impoverished family but as far as Vadim knew he was happy, at least up until a devastating two year period when his father was killed in an auto accident, followed by the passing of all four grandparents. Those tragic events turned the youngster's world upside down, and before he knew it he was standing at the first of many forks in the road. "My mother and I left to go to Israel. But midway to Israel, she decided she didn't want me to go into the army, and we ended up moving to Italy."
With very little money and speaking only Russian, the two moved into a barrio-type neighborhood near Rome, and not long afterward Vadim was supporting both of them by doing odd jobs and hustling tourists.
"I would go into Rome every day barely knowing a word of Italian, and I would literally live in the streets. Sometimes I'd end up sleeping on park benches or at train stations. It was such a great adventure."
Half way across the world his aunt lived in Canada and because her husband was out of work they invited Vadim's mother and him to come to Edmonton. They could live in their basement and help out with expenses. So they went.
"It was just this total hardship," remembers Vadim. "Two families crammed into a small space. I delivered newspapers in freezing weather, and my mother got a job as a sales clerk in a clothing store."
His mother was trying her best to start a new life for them, and eventually she met a man and remarried. Unfortunately Vadim and his new stepfather didn't get along.
"Here was this feral street child," says Vadim, "who didn't need a daddy, even though he wanted one badly. But I wasn't good for him, and he wasn't good for me. So it created a lot of tension, a lot of conflict."
And when that tension got to a point where the two could no longer coexist, the sixteen year old packed his bags.
"After four years of hand to mouth crazy living in Edmonton, I dropped out of high school and moved. Later I ended up going to night school. But the thing to know is that I always read books. It didn't matter where I was, or how I was, books were my escape from everything. "
Vadim picked up English quickly, and it was at night school while viewing a documentary that the film bug first bit him. "In the film," says Vadim, "Norman Jewison (Director/Producer, Moonstruck, Other People's Money) is in his trailer tearing out his hair while rewriting scenes, and I thought, you know what? This is what I want to do!"
Excited at the possibility, the young man went to Toronto and after a year and a half of film school opened a small production company where he shot and edited music videos. During that time he met a musician, an American woman, and in 1990 the two decided to move to Los Angeles to try and further their careers.
In LA Vadim got a job editing videos. Later he worked on commercials and before long became somewhat well known as a commercial director. Then one day on a location shoot the voracious reader purchased a book while waiting at an airport. The novel was titled "House of Sand and Fog" and Vadim, attracted to its universal themes, grabbed the nearest phone hoping to acquire the rights.
The bestseller, written by Andre Dubus III, had been sought after by over a hundred film production companies, all of which Dubus had turned down because of their takes on the story. It seemed many wanted to turn the drama into a thriller, and others were just not interested in remaining true to the story, that is, until Vadim called to check out the book's availability.
"When Vadim called," says Dubus, "I really felt that he understood the deeper resonance of the story. I mean, in some ways he understood it better than I did. He actually said things about the book that I said, well, that's a good point. You're right about that." The writer smiles, "Who knew?"
Now, following the film's completion, Vadim Perelman and DreamWorks SKG brings you House of Sand and Fog starring Academy Award® winners Sir Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind).
"Vadim is very different from other first-time directors," says Kingsley, "because he's born of a huge wealth of experience, of journeying, of suffering, of dreams being squashed and thrown away. One wonders if you would go into battle with this man by your side. And the answer is, absolutely."
"Vadim has quite a dramatic background himself," says Connelly. "Things that he's told me I wouldn't want to repeat, yet he was quite confident and comfortable on the set. He really handled himself well. He had good ideas, and I think he did a really good job directing it."
"It's a universal theme," says Vadim. "It's the themes in that book and ultimately in the film that are so primal and so universal. They are about loneliness. They are about being cast out. They are about being an outsider."
And if there's anyone who knows what it's like to be an outsider it is Vadim Perelman, whose unlikely course led him across the globe to a spot not on the outside, but on the inside of a place where dreams come true.
It should be noted that the facts, theories and opinions expressed in my book "Zen and the Art of Creating a Career in Film" were discovered through my own personal experiences, and over the years came to light while working on countless productions. At times some of the materials presented may feel somewhat dated, but film is history and everyone's career is a history of the time they spend there. Yet what remains current is; these are ways to get into the movies. This is how it has always been and unless something miraculous happens this is how it will always be.
Also, at this point I think it's important to say that I'm nobody in particular, but if I was anyone? I'd be you. Because if you want to explore the possibility of working in the motion picture industry, in any professional capacity, my main objective is to let you in on the secrets I wish I knew when I started out in the business three decades ago.
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