E-Mail This Article to a Friend The great race (continued)
	Related stories Game on: Boston filmmaker John MacNeil scores with a heartwarming baseball documentary. By Tamara Wieder.

Q: Have the women seen the film yet?

A: None of the women have seen the film in its totality.

Q: What reaction do you hope they have? In an ideal world, would you sit down to watch it with them?

A: I have been thinking about this question. We’re just doing some technical tweaks and some last-minute changes, so I haven’t wanted them to see it in anything other than its really final form. I guess in an ideal way, I would see it with them, with an audience. Some of them, one of them in particular, is very self-critical. These are human beings, so they’re not perfect any more than the rest of us. I think if they saw how an audience appreciated them, it would be easier for them. And I think they’d feel appreciated.

Q: You spent 20 years in the high-tech field. How’d you end up becoming a filmmaker?

A: I started in business, and there were some things that I really loved about business. And I started when I was young, I started when I was in college, so I didn’t have children, I didn’t have a wife, and I was delighted to be on a plane four days a week; it just meant I could explore four different places. As I got older, I have now three little children, and I didn’t want to be away from them — but I still wanted the pleasure of bringing ideas to life, and ideally in a way that would be fun for me and for the people who saw the ideas taking sprout. So filmmaking came a little bit out of ... I like the idea of creative collaboration, I want to make something that people enjoy, and I want to do it on a project basis. I’ve always loved stories, so I thought I’d take a crack at it.

It’s going okay. I’ve got a partner in Los Angeles who’s been wonderful to work with. I’ve just finished filming the first fiction film I wrote, in Europe this summer, and I really had fun doing that. I have a guy who was nominated for an Oscar, best director, who’s directing another feature film I wrote, and I just spent this last week with him. I’m getting to work with really wonderful people.

Q: How easy or difficult is it to get films made in Boston?

A: It depends a little bit on what kind of film. There’s a big difference between documentaries and features. Boston is as good a place to make documentary films as there is in the world. WGBH is really the heart and soul of the documentary-film world in America, and one of the two centers in the world. They get great, generous, talented people. So for documentary films, fantastic. For feature films, there’s a talented crew community, a really great base of storytellers, and very small connection to the industry. So for little films, it’s a good place. For, like the film that I’m going to start shooting in the fall, which is a $15 million film, it’s not a great place to base your operation. It might be a great place to come and film.

Q: Does working with something like a $15 million budget feel extravagant?

A: No. I mean, the work environment’s different, and you expect and experience different things. To make the movie we did this summer, which is called Tempesta, you have 150 people working, building a five-square-block set of Venice. You expect that to cost more than one person with a digi-beta camera following a woman in a nursing home. You always feel, at least I’ve always felt, that I barely had enough time, I barely had enough money, and I barely had enough energy.

Q: No matter how big the budget.

A: Exactly!

Q: What’s the last movie you saw?

A: I saw Calendar Girls. I loved it. It was great fun. I saw it, interestingly, because I have a producing partner in Europe, and he was thinking of our five women. It was a lighthearted, sweet movie based on a real story. I enjoyed that. My favorite documentary, I love the movie Spellbound. Nonfiction filmmaking, if it really captures the characters, it’s pretty hard in fiction to create a character that interesting.

Filmmaking, one of the things that’s cool and also difficult, and I haven’t learned really how to do it, I’m just sort of struggling forward, is that when it’s really well done, it integrates sound and music and visuals and narrative in a way that it just has more emotional power than a lot of things can have.

Racing Against the Clock premieres as part of the Boston Film Festival at Loews Boston Common on September 16, at 8:30 p.m. Bill Haney participates in a Q&A session following the screening. Call (617) 423-5081, or visit www.bostonfilmfestival.org. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com