June 14 marks 100 years since the birth of Vancouver’s most celebrated and accomplished architect, Arthur Erickson. Using film clips and slides, guest curator Trevor Boddy (FRAIC) gets our centennial Erickson on Film series underway with a talk on Erickson’s education, WWII experience and early houses, including the Gordon and Marion Smith House II, Graham and Dyde houses, and how these prefigure the “flying beams” of the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. MOA also evokes abstractions of Northwest Coast Indigenous house forms.
Prior to the screening of Intersection there will be an on-stage dialogue with Christine Haebler, a location scout on the Mark Rydell film and now is a prominent Vancouver producer in her own right, and Nick Milkovich, Erickson’s associate on the original MOA design (currently responsible for its complete re-building, opening June 13) and the builder of the Erickson scale house and museum models used in the film.
The screening of the 1993 Mark Rydell feature film Intersection follows, based on the 1970 French feature Les choses de la vie, directed by Claude Sautet. The production team and lead star Richard Gere toured Erickson’s work thoroughly, with the Gere character “designing” on screen by working on scale models of Erickson’s actual houses, plus a museum identical to MOA, the magnificent locale of a meltdown between him and architect-partner and wife Sharon Stone. Clothes are by Giorgio Armani, of course, Vilmos Szigmond’s photography is superlative, and James Newton Howard’s soundtrack (with Toots Thielemans on harmonica) and other production values are superior for a Hollywood melodrama of the era. Following their wrap, Richard Gere even commissioned a house design from Erickson, though it was never built.
Talk: 7:00 pm
Film Discussion: 7:20 pm
Intersection screening: 7:45 pm (98 mins)
Presented with
Mark Rydell
Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovitch, Martin Landau
USA
1994
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Guests
Trevor Boddy
Trevor Boddy FRAIC is an architectural critic and historian who started a dialogue with Arthur Erickson when he moved from Alberta to Vancouver to teach at UBC in 1983. Boddy’s writings on cities and buildings have been awarded the “Alberta Book of the Year” prize, the Western Magazine Award for arts writing, and the CICA/UIA prize for best architectural criticism worldwide. His most recent book is “CITY-BUILDER: The Architecture of James K.M. Cheng” (an Erickson alumnus), and he is executive producer of “The Dyde House and Garden” by Sticks and Stones Productions, about a long-forgotten Erickson house west of Edmonton, winner of AMPIA’s 2023 “Best Documentary Prize.” Boddy did some film studies as an undergraduate, working in an editing studio and co-winning an AMPIA award for work on an industrial film.
Nick Milkovich
Nick Milkovich FRAIC was Arthur Erickson’s architecture student at UBC starting in 1962, then spent many decades as a core member of his design team, especially for custom house commissions. He founded Milkovich Architects in 1992, collaborating occasionally with Erickson until his 2009 death. In 2020 Milkovich received the Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s lifetime achievement award. Milkovich has led the $ 40 million complete re-building of MOA’s Great Hall, which will re-open to the public on June 13, 2024.
Christine Haebler
Christine Haebler is a West Vancouver film producer, whose projects include Monkey Man, Bones of Crows, French Exit, Indian Horse, Hector and the Search For Happiness. She was raised in a prominent Vancouver construction contractor family who built Erickson’s Point Grey Townhomes, Evergreen Building, Waterfall Building and others. Haebler was the key location manager for director Mark Rydell on Intersection, setting up tours for the production team and actors with Erickson of his houses and the UBC Museum of Anthropology. These were particularly useful for star Richard Gere, providing a character study, as well as first-hand learning about what goes into practising architecture, and subsequently the two became friends.
Credits
Screenwriter
David Rayfiel, Marshall Brickman
Cinematography
Vilmos Zsigmond
Editor
Mark Warner
Original Music
James Newton Howard
Production Design
Harold Michelson
Art Director
Yvonne Hurst