Starbuck
Short description
David Wozniak, 42, drives deliveries for his family's butcher shop, is short on money and short on maturity, and his girlfriend Valérie is pregnant and unsure he can be a dependable father. Then a lawyer arrives with news: years earlier David donated sperm anonymously under the name Starbuck, and a clinic error made him the biological father of 533 children. A number of them are pressing a legal case to learn his identity. Faced with these files, David has to decide what to do about the children he never knew he had.
The film is a Canadian comedy directed by Ken Scott, his first feature as director, written with Martin Petit. Patrick Huard leads the cast as David, with Julie Le Breton as Valérie and Antoine Bertrand as the lawyer. Ken Scott went on to direct Delivery Man, Unfinished Business, The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir and Once Upon My Mother.
Released in 2011, Starbuck runs 103 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from around 17,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.9 from roughly 500 votes, indicating a solid audience response across both. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 69 reviews places it somewhat below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- For most of the young actors who played David Wozniak's children, these roles were their film debut.
- Initially, Ken Scott and Martin Petit wrote a screenplay about a man who fathered 150 children. They considered it unlikely in practice but thought it could be exaggerated for comedic effect. After a few days of work, a story appeared in the press about a man who fathered two hundred children. Shortly after, rumors circulated in the press about a father of five hundred children. Ultimately, the screenwriters decided it was possible to increase the number of the main character's children to 533.
- Director Ken Scott was deeply impressed by a song performed by one of the young actors during auditions. As a result, he not only gave him a role but also included the very same song in the film, where it appears several times.
- The film grossed over 3 million dollars in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec, becoming the highest-grossing local release there in 2011.
- The film’s original title comes from the name of the famous Canadian Holstein bull Starbuck, who, in the 80s and 90s, became the father of more than two hundred thousand elite calves through artificial insemination.
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