Perfect Sisters Marks Till’s First Feature
The true tale of Brampton sisters who murdered their mother may have been a bit too much for television, but that only served to garner Adam Till his first feature film screenwriting credit.
Till, the program chair of Writing for Film and Television at Toronto Film School, recently saw his first feature film, Perfect Sisters, released this month in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.
Till and his writing partner Fabrizio Filippo penned the screenplay based on the 2008 book The Class Project: How to Kill a Mother, written by Bob Mitchell who covered the court case in Brampton for the Toronto Star newspaper.
“The director Stan Brooks, who also co produced the project, was fascinated by the story and he optioned the book,” Till explained. “We had written for him before and he wanted us to write the screenplay, so he brought it to us and we went from there.”
Till, who was born in Montreal and grew up in Toronto, is a lawyer turned successful screenwriter for television and made-for-television movies.
Till and Filippo have worked together on a number of projects including the Canadian comedy series Billable Hours, which won the Gemini Award for Best Writing in a Comedy Series (2009) and a number of Lifetime Movies.
Perfect Sisters is based on the true story of teenage sisters who killed their mother by drowning her in the bathtub in 2003. The girls were convicted in 2005.
Longtime television producer Stan Brooks made his directorial debut on the movie, while Abigail Breslin, from Little Miss Sunshine, and Georgie Henley, from The Chronicles of Narnia, play the sisters.
“This was actually supposed to be a Lifetime Movie, we were writing it for Stan for Lifetime,” Till said, adding that for various reasons Brooks decided to pull it from Lifetime and make it as a feature film.
“There is some edgier content and some things that were done and said that might not fit in with the Lifetime audience,” Till said. “And Stan didn’t want to soften it too much, he wanted to keep it pretty true to what we think the true story is.”
The Toronto premiere of Perfect Sisters was on April 11 at the Magic Lantern Theatres Carlton Cinema at Yonge and Carlton streets. Following the Toronto premiere Till participated in a question and answer session with the audience. He said most people were interested in discussing the truth behind the story.
“There were a lot of questions about how we got the information, there seems to be interest in how close we were to the true story,” Till said, adding that there are a lot of opposing opinions on the girls.
Till explained the “based on a true story” credit is a legal credit, which means lawyers pored over the script, looked at all the data referenced and decided it was near enough to the story to receive the credit.
“If you are not close enough you can get (a credit of) inspired by a true story, inspired by a true event, inspired by true characters,” Till explained. “But ‘based on a true story’ is a tough credit to get.”
It also premiered in New York and Los Angeles and screened for about a week in each city, Till said.
Now, Till is in phase two of development of a new comedy about doctors called G.P.s on Showcase.
“It is promising,” Till said.
