Dean Bajramovic

Dean Bajramovic's story is not unlike any other young boy's from the 80s - he's been obsessed with film ever since he saw that quintessential moment at the drive-in when Luke Skywalker nuked the Death Star.

The difference with Bajramovic is he decided to follow that passion and has since gotten into the tumultuous, yet rewarding, world of filmmaking.

His latest feature film, Gangster Exchange, is an action-comedy about a couple of gangsters, one Japanese one American-Bosnian, who team up in New York City and steal a toilet made of heroin from their respective gangs. However, at the heart of it Bajramovic says the story is about manhood and growing up. Produced under his production company Gothic Raygun Pictures, Gangster Exchange has won five Best Film awards across festivals across North America and has landed a theatrical release in the US.

I sat down with Dean to learn more about his influences, his thoughts on Toronto's filmmaking scene, and what we can expect to see from him next.

How did you end up getting into the industry of filmmaking?

I had a day job in an office for far too many years. I made great money but it was boring as hell and I wasn't happy so one day I decided to quit that and make movies. I was spending most of my spare time reading about film, talking about it, watching it. I figured that if that was what made me happiest then I should be doing that all day instead of spending the rest of my life in a cubicle.

I enrolled in London Film School in the UK. When I lived in London I worked on everything I could from movies, ads, videos, in any position possible from director to boom swinger to the guy that gets the coffee. The last short film I wrote and directed was Guns to Gogo which won two awards at festivals. That film was like a 20-minute prototype of Gangster Exchange. The investors we approached for Gangster Exchange weren't standard film people, so it was very useful to have a model to show them what the final film would look like.

Bosnian gangsters, Yakuza thugs and toilets made out of heroin. These are just a small handful of the scandalously colourful elements we find in your feature film Gangster Exchange. Tell me a bit about how the concept for the movie was developed.

Guns, thugs and toilets made of drugs. Basically, you write what you know. I used to smuggle heroin for the Yakuza when I was a child. Ok, that's not entirely true but I lived in Japan for two years and my family is Bosnian. So I took what I knew from those experiences. Regarding the toilet made of heroin, I read an article about cocaine smuggling from Columbia. The cartels were using some chemists who would encase the drugs into ceramics. There were photos of a whole warehouse full of bathtubs and sinks all made from cocaine.

I liked the idea of a toilet instead because it just seemed hilarious to me to have these two thugs wandering around New York City covered in blood dragging a toilet with them. I wanted to use heroin because it was dirtier, more sinister. I wanted these guys to be darker characters.

Watching the film, it's very quick cut, action packed, dialogue-heavy and has a palatable Guy Ritchie-esque flair to it. What other filmmakers do you draw some of your inspiration from?

I love Asian gangster films, especially Yakuza movies from the 1970s. The Yakuza Papers series is a big influence. I think there is some spectacular films there, not just from Japan and Hong Kong but now Korea, Vietnam, Thailand have started to make some really interesting product in the last few years.

One of my big writing heroes is Shane Black. He did a lot of buddy action comedy pics in the 1980s and 1990s. His dialogue is basically the way that most of my friends commentate with each other: through sarcastic insults. I have followed David Cronenberg's films since I was a kid. He's a true Canadian superstar. His early horror work is phenomenal but his later work is great also. I love the way he shoots violence now. It comes out of nowhere and is over the top and brutal. It feels so real.

There are quite a few locations you jump between in your movie. Does Toronto make any cameos in there?

We shot the film in Toronto for 20 days. Toronto is great for doubling other cities and I love the filmmaking community here. Then one of the producers and I went to NYC for a weekend and shot some establishing shots. We were there for Halloween, which was a great time. NYC is the best city in the world for Halloween. Toronto doubles for NYC very well but it's just never going to be able to look like Tokyo. So for the Japan footage, I had a very talented Japanese filmmaker and friend of mine, Katsura Murata, shoot some Tokyo establishers for me. I made her a very rough shot list, covered her costs and she sent me the footage. She got some really great stuff.

I know Gangster Exchange has been seeing quite a bit of success on the film festival circuit. Can you elaborate a bit on that?

We won five best film awards at festivals in Canada and the USA, and were nominated for five other awards, so we had a great festival year in 2009. We got very lucky and got in to some great festivals. Our world premiere was at the Beverly Hills Film festival, and we won the audience choice for Best Feature there. We were in Beverly Hills, at Hollywood's doorstep it felt like. They had the awards ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Pacino and James Caan just happened to be in the hotel that night, having a drink together in one of the hotel bars. The next day we took the Warner Brothers tour and I got to see Dirty Harry's suit and see the sound stage where they shot Casablanca. My inner film geek just had a nerd-gazm.

Another great festival experience was at the Mississauga Film Festival. It was the first time we got to show the film locally, since almost all the cast and crew live in Toronto. We had a great turn out and the after party with all the people we'd shot the movie with was great. Mississauga Film Fest also did something I wish more festivals did, which was to show the film in HD, directly off the computer. So we were able to run the film right from the original file, without any compression or change in the colouring. That's the best the film has ever looked - at the Mississauga Film Festival.

What's next for you? What projects do you currently have in development?

I've been pretty busy lately. I shot a music video a few weeks ago for Toronto House/Electro DJ's Whitney Baker and Dan Elliot. I am editing that now. I'm in pre-production to direct a couple of features and it looks like at least one of them will be shot in 2010. One is a musical, the other is a hitman movie. I'm also writing another feature.