Starbuck

Starbuck (2011)

David Wozniak is a perpetual adolescent who discovers that, as a sperm donor, he has fathered 533 children. He is advised that more than 100 of his offspring are trying to force the fertility clinic to reveal the true identity of "Starbuck," the pseudonym he used when donating his sperm. To make matters worse, his girlfriend Valérie is pregnant with his child, but doesn't feel that he is mature enough to be a father.

Date of release
2011-07-27
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (495)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Ken Scott

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Montreal

Starbuck is a 2011 French-Canadian comedy film directed by Ken Scott and co-written by Scott and Martin Petit. It was produced by André Rouleau for Caramel Film and was shot in Montreal. It stars Patrick Huard, Antoine Bertrand and Julie Le Breton. The story follows an irresponsible middle-aged man who unexpectedly faces fatherhood on two fronts: his girlfriend is pregnant, and dozens of adult children born as a result of his youthful sperm donations have filed a lawsuit to have his identity revealed.

Development and production

The film was co-written by Ken Scott and Martin Petit, former members of comedy troupe Les Bizarroïdes. It was their first collaboration in a decade when they began writing the film in 2009. Petit had the initial idea to tell the story of an irresponsible middle-aged man who had made numerous sperm donations for money and was the donor father to hundreds of grown children.

Fathers of young children, Scott and Petit saw the absurd premise as a way to explore issues of modern fatherhood and "to look at every possible aspect of paternity." In particular, they wanted to look at delayed fatherhood and how father roles had changed in the previous fifteen years. Making David a guardian angel to the donor children allowed them to show the character acting as a father in different situations before becoming a father.

The donor children were initially written as stereotypes – the handicapped, the actor, the drug user – and were not fleshed out with names and details until later in the process. These descriptive terms are retained in the film's credits for many of these roles, along with David's brothers and lawyer. Most of the young actors cast for the donor children were relative unknowns, making their first feature film performances.

The title comes from the Canadian Holstein bull Hanoverhill Starbuck, which was prized by the Artificial Insemination Centre of Quebec (Centre d'Insémination artificielle du Québec, CIAQ) for its genetics. It sired more than 200,000 cows through artificial insemination during its 19-year life.

Starbuck was produced by André Rouleau of Montreal-based Caramel Films on a budget of $6 million. It received funding from Telefilm Canada's Canadian Feature Film Fund and from the Quebecor fund. From financing to the completion of production took two years.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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