Donald Everett "Don" Shebib (born 27 January 1938) is a Canadian film director. Shebib is a central figure in the development of English Canadian cinema who made several short documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Television in the 1960s before turning to feature films, beginning with the influential Goin' Down the Road (1970) and what many call his masterpiece, Between Friends (1973). He soon became frustrated by the bureaucratic process of film funding in Canada and chronic problems with distribution as well as a string of box office disappointments. After Heartaches (1981), he made fewer films for theatrical release and worked more in television.
Shebib is Noah "40" Shebib's father.
Early life
Shebib was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Mary Alice Long, a Newfoundlander of Irish descent, and Moses "Morris" Shebib, born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1910, himself the son of Lebanese immigrants.
Shebib grew up in an economically precarious household, and in a neighbourhood where he felt he was an outsider, "growing up with a name like Shebib, very working class, being raised a Catholic in Orange Ontario", conceding he "probably took it more sensitively" than he had to, adding that he was always shy in high school: "I didn't know where I fit in. I grew up feeling pretty inferior." In a 2011 interview with Andrea Nemetz in the Halifax Chronicle Herald, Shebib said: "I was aware of migratory experiences – like the Okies in California in the dust bowl. I had a cousin who came to stay with us in Toronto in the late 1950s and he tried to make a go of it and couldn't and went back to the Maritimes."
The young Shebib grew up loving sports, comic books, and Hollywood "chestnuts" or vintage films, the family acquiring their first television set in 1952; for a certain time, Shebib refused to watch any film made after 1940.
Education
Shebib played semi-pro football as a young man, and studied sociology and history at the University of Toronto. While very interested in sociological patterns from history, he did not enjoy reading enough to pursue this interest further academically, but was still looking for something to do that would appeal to his "jock and artist impulses".
In 1961, Shebib enrolled in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, where he gained early experience working on Roger Corman productions, notably as a cinematographer and assistant editor on Dementia 13 (1962), his classmate Francis Ford Coppola's first film, and The Terror (1963). He also made his earliest short films. In 1965, he graduated with a Master of Arts, but decided to return home rather than pursue a career in Hollywood.
Career
Over the next five years, Shebib found his way into the Canadian film industry and quickly established himself, reflecting on his decision to return in 1970:There's more of a chance here... and it's much easier to get started. There isn't really all that much filmmaking to be done in the States. Educational TV has opened up some opportunities for the documentary, but other than that there is nothing at all. Period. Flat. Nothing exists. Nothing at all.
Short documentaries
Shebib directed, shot, and edited several award-winning, "lucid" documentaries for the National Film Board of Canada, CTV Television Network, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the 1960s, notably his thesis film, The Duel (1962), Surfin (1964), Satan's Choice (1965), an inside view of the motorcycle club, and Good Times, Bad Times (1969), before turning to feature filmmaking.
Feature films
Debut
Shebib gained prominence and critical acclaim in Canadian cinema for his seminal 1970 feature Goin' Down the Road, which combined narrative storytelling with Canadian documentary tradition influenced by the British. The low-budget film crew travelled around Toronto in a station wagon, supported by funding from the newly formed Canadian Film Development Corporation. The movie was screened in New York and hailed by Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert. Kael wrote that the movie showed up the ostensibly forced sincerity and perceived honesty of the films of John Cassavetes. It has consistently remained near the top of the list of top 10 films made in Canada in three separate surveys of academics, critics, and film programmers, and was designated a "masterwork" by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada. In 1998, a DVD copy was struck from the master negative by the Toronto International Film Festival in conjunction with Telefilm Canada. The film was digitally remastered as one of the key films in the Canadian film canon and was honoured with a screening at the Art Gallery of Ontario.