CHANDLER LEVACK + CJ TUDOR + BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE

CHANDLER LEVACK + CJ TUDOR + BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE

On this edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet director Chandler Levack, whose debut feature film, “I Like Movies,” will be in theatres on March 10. The film festival hit is based on her experiences working at a Blockbuster Video in Burlington, Ontario in the early 2000s. It’s the story of how movie obsessive Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) allows his love of film, dream of attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and anxiety, alienate the most important people in his life. Part work-place comedy—think “High Fidelity” only set in a video store—part character study, “I Like Movies” is sweet-natured, funny film that digs deep to make us feel empathy for Lawrence, a socially awkward character who hides his real feelings behind a facade of bluster and pretension. Strong performances and a genuinely heartfelt script make this take on adolescent angst a winning debut for Levack.

Then, C. J. Tudor, bestselling author of “The Burning Girls,” “The Other People,” “The Hiding Place” and “The Chalk Man,” which won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, stops by. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, who asked Tim Robbins an embarrassing questions, a voice-over artist, and dog walker. Today we’ll talk about some of those jobs and her new novel, “The Drift,” a heart-pounding new novel about three ordinary people who risk everything for a chance at redemption.

And finally, we spend time with “In the Key of Dale” author Benjamin Lefebvre. He is a writer based in Kitchener, Ont. His edited books include the anthology “The L.M. Montgomery Reader,” which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers, and an edition of L.M. Montgomery's rediscovered final book, “The Blythes Are Quoted.”