June 1990: Montreal filmmaker David Wellington is strolling down St. Catherines Street after midnight when suddenly, passing a parked police squad car, he sees a uniformed officer and a prostitute in a seemingly compromising position.

Wellington has told this story to so many journalists that, today, he is uncertain whether it happened at all. But the filmmaker had been looking to make a feature about authority and, at the time, a policeman seemed a useful vehicle. So he included the nocturnal liaison as a scene in his black comedic parable I Love A Man In Uniform, completed from story inception to screening in less than three years.

August 1990: Wellington approaches Paul Brown with the idea for I Love a Man in Uniform. He met Brown when both were resident students at the Canadian Film Centre a year earlier. Wellington recalls they made a "bad" short together, but got along, liked the same movies and remained friends after graduation.

December 1990: Wellington and Brown submit a treatment to the machinery at Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation. The immediate response is favorable: both organizations provide just under $15,000 in seed money to write an outline and first draft. Handy pocket money also comes from the Canadian Film Centre.

January-April 1991: The two hire story editor Walter Donohue, who had been at the Canadian Film Centre and worked earlier with Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway. Although working for book publisher Faber and Faber in Britain, Donohue looks over Wellington's shoulder as he begins writing the film's outline, scene by scene and without dialogue. Wellington is now commuting between home in Montreal and Brown's sofa in Toronto. His computer eventually prints out a 60-page outline.

Brown also sends the film's outline to Alexandra Raffe (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing), who is sought as executive producer.

June 1991: Wellington describes writing the initial outline as a "drudge". But it helps when he writes the first draft - "a real pleasure" - in one month. It tells the story of a lonely bank clerk overtaken by the part of a self-righteous cop he plays in a tv series. Soon he wears his police uniform in everyday life, and cannot tell his two identities apart.

By now Wellington has moved to Toronto.

July 1991: The first draft is sent to five trusted people who formerly worked at Telefilm and the ofdc. Wellington and Brown are generally encouraged by their feedback.

September 1991: Wellington and Brown give Telefilm, the ofdc and others the film's first draft; feedback is again promising. Raffe agrees to come on board as executive producer. The trio then approach distributors, but eventually set their sights on wooing Alliance Releasing and Alliance International to distribute the film in Canada and worldwide.

Alliance is interested and agrees to come on board with a distribution guarantee.

Momentum is building. Donohue steps in to refine the script. Raffe recalls that Wellington and Brown knew how to present themselves to possible backers as auteur-driven filmmakers who could still make their work commercially-accessible.