Content area
Full Text
When writer-director Ken Scott and his writing partner Martin Petit began working on the script for "Starbuck," a 2011 hit in Canada that opens in the U.S. on Friday, they were worried no one would buy the premise of a habitual sperm donor who discovers years later he is the father of 150 children.
"Each day we would come in to write thinking it is too much," said Scott, 42, who was a member of a comedy sketch troupe before turning to screenwriting (2003's "Seducing Dr. Lewis") and directing (2009's "Sticky Fingers"). "People will not believe it."
Then six weeks in, a story broke in the news that a Montreal man had learned he had fathered 250 kids via sperm donations.
"We were blown away," said the French-Canadian Scott. "We thought we were inventing this from scratch. We were worried that 150 was too much. Then we started to look around and we realized there are many situations out there. There are many cases of sperm donors with hundreds of kids. There is a case in the U.K. of a man who had 500."
Now they were faced with a new dilemma -- 150 children was suddenly too tame. So they upped the comedic ante. The donor, known...