20 years after he got his first job at a movie theatre, Thyrone Tommy is making a splash at TIFF

Cutaways is a personal essay series by Canadian filmmakers, asking them to tell the story of how their film was made. This TIFF edition by Thyrone Tommy focuses on his film Learn To Swim, which follows the stormy romance of two jazz musicians.

Five years ago, I decided to make a short film based on my experience as a navigation cadet called Mariner. This film did well — played at a large number of festivals, won a few awards, and ultimately led to my acceptance into the Canadian Film Centre's Directing program (CFC). People found the short story intriguing enough that they wanted to expand on the idea, and for a long time Mariner was to be my first foray into feature filmmaking. However, time has an odd way of revealing things to ourselves.

The anxieties and pressures I felt in my cadet experience that led to the film's conception had already been created and explored to their full extent. That summer, during a stroll through the gardens of the CFC, my soon-to-be co-writer Marni Van Dyk read to me a poem by Stevie Smith entitled "Not Waving but Drowning." Between those 12 lines of prose, there rose a new experience I had not yet uncovered through film: pain, grief, and guilt. The exploration of those concepts ultimately led to the manifestation of a new film altogether: Learn To Swim, the story of a rocky romance between two musicians.

Centred around the use of music, specifically with jazz as a backbone, and coupled with my own experience of guilt and loss over partners who had passed, Marni and I spent the next two years drafting the structure and foundation of Learn To Swim. It was an intimate and often arduous battle of fictionalizing, turning what often felt more like journal entries than lines into scenes of our script. During this process, not many doors opened for our small micro-budget film — but a few championed us through, and helped us to cast what would become an incredible den of talented performers. Our lead actor Thomas Antony Olajide led the charge, rehearsing and embodying the spirit of the main character Dezi at each interval.

Only 10 days before the first day of principal photography was scheduled to begin in March 2020, we decided to shut down production in face of the growing threat that was "the virus." We had just finished our first table read of the film. The cast/band had never met, and they were stiff. Our older neighbour character "Sal" hadn't yet been cast. And the incredible soundtrack that the film now houses was a playlist of songs to which we could not afford the rights. A few weeks later came the untimely passing of the film's loudest champion and music producer David Hayman. We were lost and heartbroken. Time seemed to be completely not on our side.

Throughout the quarantine that followed, we all kept in touch. Our long conversations, and the pining for the film that could have been, kept our spirits up when easily they could have sunk. There was no good time to restart the process — but the urge and necessity to tell the story was too compelling to abandon the film.

My cinematographer Nick Haight and I had shot our previous films in a widescreen format. It only made sense that we would embark on the same methods for our first long form project. But as we sat through the quiet of the summer, the square-shaped photographs and records we were trapped with became our deepest inspiration. The ghost of their frames became our visual language — something fear would have prevented us from attempting prior to our forced confinement.

Sometime in the fall of 2020, I reached out to Chester Hansen and Leland Whitty. Their band had originally been unavailable to produce music for the film during our original pre-COVID schedule due to a large touring commitment which, like many projects, had vanished into the lost year. With David acting as our foundational and spiritual connector, we boldly created the soundtrack for a film to which not a single visual had been shot. It was a nerve-wracking call to score a film — not to mention a low-budget first-time feature — before shooting said film, but I knew that once the actors were able to absorb the music into their bones, the rhythm and notes of the script would come more organically. The very first time the cast all occupied a room on set was to perform one of those tracks, and damn they proved my hypothesis right.

When I reflect on what Learn To Swim has become from the time we embarked on its creation, the word that plays over in my mind is serendipitous. With each derailment the film encountered, time seemingly found a way to reward our patience and dedication to the story. When Emma Ferreira (who plays Selma) sent her audition tape forward, she decided to sing "Paloma Negra" by Chavela Vargas, a song that had sat in my playlist since the film's inception. When we exchanged playlists during quarantine, it included songs by local artist Meagan De Lima. During my sessions with Chester and Leland, Meagan turned out to be a mutual friend, and she subsequently became one of our songwriters as well as one of the film's characters, Nia. "Paloma Negra" never made the final cut, but the voice of Chavela Vargas did — a musical full-circle moment.

I remember when I was 13 and got my first job at the Scotiabank Theatre (then known as The Paramount) in an attempt to earn enough money for wrestling tickets. I cleaned up popcorn, cut innumerable amounts of potatoes for the fryers, and watched as many films as I could from the dusty confines of the projection booths. I knew of no one, or no way, to ever help take the stories I had in my mind and pass them through the luminous glow of those theatre projectors — but nearly 20 years to the day, I will have that opportunity. The deeply intimate experiences that led to the idea, and carried me through the creation of Learn To Swim, will be lit across the screen. It's something my teenage self would be in awe of, and I hope it ultimately captures the healing that only time can bring.

Learn To Swim plays at the Toronto International Film Festival to September 18.