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Stars and sibling rivalry

SISTERS&BROTHERS written and directed by Carl Bessai, with Cory Monteith, Dustin Milligan, Gabrielle Miller, Benjamin Ratner and Gabrielle Rose. A Pacific Northwest/Raven West release. 90 minutes. Opens Friday (March 23). For venues and times, see Movie Listings.


In Sisters&Brothers, Cory Monteith plays a hot young Hollywood star who’s surrounded by groupies, drugs and other temptations. Although the actor’s achieved overnight fame with a certain pop culture phenomenon called Glee, he’s not much like the movie’s character.

“But I see a lot of that in Hollywood,” he said last fall during TIFF, sitting in a Hazelton Hotel restaurant and looking as boy-next-door wholesome as Glee’s Finn. “It’s something I hope I never turn into. I hope I never get that far away from what matters.”

Working with Vancouver director Carl Bessai’s technique of improvisation, Monteith helped develop the character with friend Dustin Milligan, who plays his brother Rory, a has-been actor who’s recently devoted his life to charity work in Africa. In real life, the two have known each other for years. As struggling actors, they roomed together in Vancouver and waitered in the same restaurant while trying to secure auditions.

Monteith, who’d never improvised before, said the two actors worked out the basic dynamics of the sibling relationship beforehand.

“What was really freeing was the amount of input we had on the storyline,” he says. “It felt like Dustin and I really shaped where we were going to go, and what milestones we’d hit in that brother relationship.”

Bessai dealt with strained family dynamics in two other films, 2008’s Mothers&Daughters and 2010’s Father&Sons. The idea behind the new film occurred to him when he was in an airport studying two people sitting on a bench engaged in a conversation he couldn’t hear.

“I thought about a scenario where brother one was extremely famous and brother two wasn’t,” says the director. “What would that be like?

“I come from a family of boys and have a brother who’s an architect. Whenever we see each other, we talk about what we’re doing, and there’s a little bit of rivalry there.”

Bessai has nothing but praise for his young stars.

“They were so open about their experiences of being young men coming to Hollywood, trying to get work, obviously succeeding in different ways. What of their own personal experience could they bring to the narrative? Most actors don’t want to open that part of themselves up.”

Still, Bessai is savvy enough to know that having a name star like Monteith in his film can get it attention, especially at a festival with hundreds of other movies.

“Let’s be honest – the strength of the movie is the ensemble,” says Bessai. “When you come to TIFF with a movie like this without Cory, people aren’t really as interested. That annoys me about the industry, but you have to accept it. People are excited about celebrity.”

Interview Clips

Monteith on how he stays grounded in Hollywood:

Download associated audio clip.

On his life has changed post-Glee:

Download associated audio clip.

Bessai on why he makes movies:

Download associated audio clip.

glenns@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/nowfilm

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