Ryan Mah is a Vancouver-based documentarian. He is the cofounder of Black Rhino Creative, a film production company, alongside his business partner, Danny Berish. Their latest film is Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines, which examines the personal life and career of one of Canada’s greatest architects.
The documentary premiered last weekend at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) in Toronto and will be shown next at ADFF’s Vancouver and Los Angeles events.
The Architect’s Newspaper (AN): How did you first become interested in the story of Arthur Erickson?
Ryan Mah: At our company, Black Rhino, we love to tell real stories, and especially first person narratives. Our primary interest for this recent film wasn’t exactly architecture, it was really Erickson’s story.
My uncle had a really good relationship with the Erickson family. He’d done some work for them and he said to us, “no one’s made a really personal movie about Arthur, and the family has this really amazing archive. Come check it out.”
The family’s archives are in this little apartment building in Vancouver. I was blown away because there is so much material. They had everything from Erickson’s family albums, passport photos, his driver’s license, to 16 millimeter films that no one’s ever seen before. My partner, Danny Berish, and I had a chance to sit down with the family, and we recorded a little demo of their testimony. We heard a story about Erickson that I think very few people had ever heard before.
There are a lot of movies about Erickson’s buildings. But very few films, if any, have mentioned the fact that he was gay and had two partners that both heavily influenced his work. When most filmmakers went to the Erickson archives, they would only ask for nice glossy shots of the buildings.
AN: In addition to his family members, many of Erickson’s colleagues, clients, and friends appear in the film (James Cheng, Nick Milkovich, Phyllis Lambert, Douglas Coupland, etc). How did you assemble all of these voices for the documentary?
It was kind of overwhelming because Erickson had three offices—Vancouver, Toronto, and Los Angeles—comprising hundreds of people. He had such an impact on so many people that it was hard to find the right people to tell the story.
So yes, we interviewed his colleagues. That was the easy part. So we interviewed Nick and James, but at the same time we wanted to interview others in the office who weren’t architects. So, who were the office managers? In Toronto it was Keith Loffler, who passed away 30 days after we shot his interview, which is tragic.
The hardest part was that Erickson kept his business life very separate from his personal life. Trying to find people to talk about Arthur’s personal life was very difficult. We found some, and the family played a big part in telling that story. As far as I know, they have never been interviewed about Arthur.
We found another guy named Hugh Brewster. His interview opens the movie. We chose him because of the hundreds of obituaries written about Erickson, his was the only one that mentioned that Erickson was a gay man and that he had a partner, Francisco.
AN: The documentary deals with Erickson’s triumphs, as well as some of the failures and the tragedies that defined his life. Not only his sexuality, but also the loss of his partners to AIDS, the controversy with the Canadian embassy, and his eventual bankruptcy. Can you speak to the importance of telling this side of the story?
The story just wrote itself.
I would say six out of every 10 people in Vancouver know who Erickson is. You go to Toronto and that number shrinks to two in 10. Maybe one in 10 people know the story that we’re telling. People had literally no idea he was gay.
It’s funny, we were just at the screening in Toronto and you could hear people kind of gasp, like, oh my god, he was bankrupt and $10.5 million dollars in debt. This was common knowledge at the time, but a lot of that has been forgotten. It’s really interesting to bring that back up and see a lot of new people learning about his story.
AN: With a famous architect—or anyone in the public spotlight—their reputation can be a sensitive subject. Was there ever any resistance from family members or colleagues regarding the documentary?
I think a lot of people felt a little apprehensive about the film. Here are these two random guys—myself and Danny—that are going to make this movie. Is it going to be salacious?
I think we really tried to find a medium ground. Yes, he spent tons of money, but you have to spend money to win work and woo clients. Yes, he worked for Saddam Hussein. But you know what, he needed that money because he had built this huge engine and had to keep it running.
And then there is the whole Canadian embassy scandal. That’s one revealing thing in the movie that no one’s ever seen before. Keith Loffler was in the room and told Erickson that he didn’t get the project, and Erickson just like muscled his way in.
No one’s ever heard that story, especially from first-hand account. We included it because it shows his desperation.
Some people want to remember Erickson for his beautiful buildings, which have stood the test of time. And they are indeed beautiful. But this man was also able to go between these lines of chaos and bankruptcy and madness and still make these buildings? It’s quite the feat.
AN: As you’ve already mentioned, Erickson has all of these important projects in Vancouver. As a Vancouverite, do you have any final notes on his legacy in the city?
I think that a lot of people in Vancouver take for granted how many buildings he designed in the city. He was an amazing public space architect and really developed Vancouver. What architect today would have three city blocks in a metropolitan city to do whatever they want? Erickson shaped Vancouver at a really crucial, important time, while it was still developing.
I live here and I definitely look at it with new appreciation.
