Behind the film: Man In Motion: The Rick Hansen Story
Ahead of its November screenings at theatres across Canada, a Vancouver Q&A offered a personal account of the making of ‘Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story’.
For years, Amanda Hansen kept the cassette tapes in a box in a closet. She had recorded them while travelling around the world with Rick Hansen, first as his physiotherapist and, as the journey unfolded, as the woman he would marry. She had never listened to them.
From 1985 to 1987, Rick wheeled more than 40,000 kilometres through 34 countries on the Man In Motion World Tour. He set out to challenge perceptions of people with disabilities, bringing awareness of their potential, and raise funds to remove barriers. For the people travelling with him, those 26 months also meant exhaustion and the daily pressures of keeping the Tour going. Amanda turned to a tape recorder to talk privately about what she was experiencing, including her developing relationship with Rick.
“When I used my tape recorder, it was my therapist,” she said. “It was my safe place to express what I was feeling without thinking anyone would listen.”
Then a pair of filmmakers asked for them.
At a Q&A following a Vancouver screening, Amanda and Rick joined director Adrian Buitenhuis and producer Derik Murray to discuss ‘Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story’. Produced by Vancouver’s Network Entertainment in association with Maximum Effort, with Ryan Reynolds also serving as a producer, the film draws on archival footage and personal audio diaries. It received an honourable mention for Best Canadian Feature Film at its Toronto International Film Festival world premiere in September.
Its account of the Tour draws on archival footage and personal audio diaries.
Before handing over her tapes, Amanda spent weeks listening to every single one. She withheld a few small sections. With considerable faith, she gave them to the filmmakers.
For Rick, the recordings produced an unexpected encounter with his younger self. Wheeling down the hall at home, he heard Amanda’s voice coming from another room. She was listening to herself, decades younger, describing a painful moment involving something he had said.
Rick opened the door and immediately apologized: “Oh, I’m so sorry. I did not anticipate that you would interpret it that way.”
Forty years later, there were still things to understand about those 26 months.
Their three daughters had discoveries of their own. They joked about seeing their parents younger than they are themselves, and about how ‘Canadian’ their father sounded. Their youngest daughter told Amanda she would need a day or two to process it all.
Before agreeing to participate, Amanda had told Adrian and Derik that she needed the film to be something her children and grandchildren could watch. Having that account for future generations, she said, was “the greatest gift of all.”
Returning to the Archive
For director Adrian Buitenhuis, the interviews helped him make sense of the enormous archive. He and his colleague spent hours reviewing tapes, returning to material as the story developed.
“You get to a certain point with the film and with the process, and it’ll come back to you and speak to you again in a different way,” Adrian said.
The challenge was deciding what belonged in a film that would eventually run 96 minutes, down from an earlier 110-minute cut. One sequence came together just days before Rick’s interview. The filmmakers projected the sequence onto the camera lens so Rick could watch it while they recorded his response.
For someone whose attention during the Tour had been on continuing, one stroke at a time, watching that footage offered an unfamiliar perspective.
“Looking and seeing that film, boy, did I ever see perspective,” Rick said. “It was pretty emotional, pretty overwhelming.”
Dave Doroghy, who hosted the evening’s Q&A, also has history with the Tour. Dave came on later as the sponsorship coordinator, coming on for the last leg of the Tour across Canada. Dave, who worked at McDonald’s Restaurants at the time, helped turn corporate commitments into local events, working with McDonald’s franchise owners, municipalities, and community groups.
Rick recalled marvelling at the enormous sign greeting the Tour team at McDonald’s stops. How much, he asked Dave, was all this advertising costing?
“There’s only one sign, Rick.” Dave had been racing ahead to put it up before the team arrived, then taking it down, and transporting it to the next stop.
The Tour Took a Team
Other preparations were just as painstaking. Rick recalled two team members driving the Tour camper ahead to survey the route with an altimeter, an odometer, an incline meter and a recording device. Their findings went back to the office to be transcribed, then were shipped forward so the travelling team could adjust its schedule.
“It’s so easy to say it’s about Rick,” he said, “but it’s about the we.”
Rick also remembered his reaction when he saw the yellow homecoming banner with ‘Welcome Home Rick in large red letters beneath the smaller declaration, ‘The End is Just the Beginning.’
After 26 months of wheeling, he had finally arrived, only to be told there was more to do. He was aghast. At that moment, finishing had been quite enough.
In the years that followed, the banner’s message became clearer.
The work continued through the Rick Hansen Foundation: improving accessibility, advancing spinal cord injury and neurotrauma research and helping young people understand their part in creating an inclusive country. That work also calls for innovation and leadership, encouraging people in business, government and communities to take action toward removing barriers to participation.
At the screening, Rick described social change as an ultramarathon that would take generations.
When Adrian and Derik approached him about the film, he said he had asked them to honour that unfinished work. “It’s about the beginning, not the end,” Rick said, echoing the banner. “Because there’s so much more that has to be done.”
‘Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story’ screens at select theatres across Canada on Sunday, November 1, and Tuesday, November 3. Find a screening and purchase tickets.
