Available here:
http://www.thewhalemovie.com/purchaseDVD.php
Well, as they say, it’s been a loooooong ride. Here we are, eight years later, finally releasing the DVD and Blu-ray of SAVING LUNA and The Whale. It feels like the last piece of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle – a puzzle filled with every kind of scenery imaginable.
My folks began the Luna journey in the spring of 2004 in Gold River, BC. After years of traveling the world on assignment, they finally found a project that would keep them close to home. Ha. Little did they realize that they’d eventually shlep their stuff and their lives to Gold River for the better part of two years.
I was living in New York when they first began the story for Smithsonian, and I became accustomed to the occasional Luna update. The chats were brief at first, but when DFO decided to try to capture and move Luna closer to his family, the calls became more frequent and spirited. From my minuscule New York apartment I remember listening to my Dad describe how, on one day, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans left the harbour early, found Luna, and began leading him toward the capture pen only to have the local First Nation band unexpectedly paddle out in their traditional canoes and sing to Luna until he came and played with them – keeping the pen empty. Then in later conversations, there was talk of aquariums and road blocks, and boats zipping around, canoes almost capsizing, and lots and lots of singing. Whoa. It’s a story I’ll never forget, and it solidified Luna’s presence in our lives.
After I wrapped up grad school, I immigrated to Canada and joined my folks in what became the project of a lifetime. Over the next two years of frantic learning and sleeplessness, we watched our little 42-minute CBC film turn into a theatrical feature-length documentary, SAVING LUNA. We put everything we had into this film, then put some more. At times the rewards were hard to see as our expectations were so great. But they were there. All over the place. When we sat down in the packed Vancouver International Film Festival theatre and watched for the first time how our little film brought out laughter and tears and more laughter, and more tears, I was speechless. I still have a little piece of paper from that night with just the words “remember this” written on it.
Over the course of SAVING LUNA’s time on the film festival circuit, Suzanne (the producer, and my stepmom) traveled around the world with the film, as it won award after award (25 total), and more importantly, brought Luna’s story to fresh eyes and ears. It amazes me to this day how audiences around the world welcomed Luna and his story into their lives. This was the true reward.
The years that have passed since then have been quite the roller coaster, filled with mega-stress buildups and deadlines. We managed to release SAVING LUNA in Canadian theatres in 2009, which involved mixing the sound in a big theatre, converting the video to film, and marketing up a storm – all firsts for us. The release went well, with comments and letters rolling in from across the country.
Then, while we were working out our U.S. distribution, we managed to get a DVD screener to actor Ryan Reynolds, and he watched it. A short time later we got a message from him, saying he’d love to help in any way he could! Crazy. We spent the next two years working and reworking the film, then reworking it again, this time with Ryan as the narrator. All the while we were unable to release the SAVING LUNA DVD as we knew we’d have no shot at U.S. theatrical distribution if we did. That was agonizing as we received emails regularly from people asking for the DVD.
Finally, we finished the film, retitled it The Whale, and released it theatrically in the U.S. and Canada last year. It didn’t end up blowing up box office records, but I think it touched quite a few people. And we were thrilled to get Critic’s Pick reviews in the New York Times and The Washington Post. Very cool.
And now, finally, the DVD and Blu-ray of The Whale and SAVING LUNA are available. It’s hard to not be a little sad that the end of this project is now here. Though with the addition of a couple of new lives in the family, and big things on the horizon, I have a lot to look forward to.
It’s hard to quantify exactly what Luna brought us. I’ve certainly garnered a more detailed and raw sense of the awareness that the animals around us experience. And just knowing Luna was an opportunity of a lifetime. But, all those years with my folks, hashing and rehashing sequences, tweaking short musical passages, high-fiving, and hanging on the words of every reviewer, have taken my relationship with them to a new level. And I’ve made a few lifelong friends along the way. I feel lucky.