Don McKellar's Childstar is the kind of satirical movie so many Canadians love to love: one that unabashedly revels in its Canadian-ness while taking a few shots at our neighbours to the south.

Childstar, which had its world premiere at last September's Toronto International Film Festival, is McKellar's second film as a director after 1998's Last Night and once again puts him in the starring role.

It's the story of a brash young American TV star with one of those triple-barreled names who comes to Canada to film a generic, Hollywood action-adventure.

"He's making a film called The First Son about the president of the United States being kidnapped by terrorists," McKellar explained to Canada AM. "The first son has to take over and run the country and the world presumably."

McKellar's character, Rick Schiller, is a former cinema studies professor and aspiring avant-garde filmmaker who takes a job as a chauffeur for the young star who's on a mission to grow up as fast as possible.

While primarily a sad look at the toll that fame takes on child stars, it's also a satire that contains plenty of wry moments that poke fun at the love-hate relationship so many Canadian filmmakers have with the behemoth Hollywood.

"It shows the way it works," McKellar says. "They come in like an occupying army and -- God bless them -- they hire all our Canadian crews. Well, let's hope they still do.

"But it is sort of an amazing phenomenon and very hierarchical. The Canadians are treated as Canadians, it's quite interesting. It's not just in Canada; it's everywhere in the world. And that was sort of one of my central metaphors about America and its foreign policy and the way it's run."

The writer-director came up with the concept years ago while he was in Hollywood for the Oscar party for The Red Violin (which he co wrote). He ended up at a studio bash, where he met a well-known child actor and was taken aback by how unnaturally adult the actor seemed.

Deciding that the boy was the perfect representation of Hollywood and how its culture unapologetically exploits its young, McKellar began conceiving the film.

McKellar assumed he's need a bratty American actor to play a bratty American actor. But in the end he went with Mark Rendall, a polite and mature Canadian.

"I auditioned all over and ended up with Mark. He was one of the first guys I ever auditioned right here at home, and he's amazingly good," McKellar says. 

"I was worried about that. A lot of people said 'You're working with a child, you have to give them extra time, and it's going to be difficult for them to memorize their lines.' But from the first day, it was clear my child star was the most professional guy on the crew, the most professional cast member. He was the last person we had to wait for."

The director's initial plan was to cast Americans as Americans. In the end, Canadian comedians Dave Foley and Alan Thicke took on some of the American roles – which is fine since many assume the TV actors are American anyway.

Canadian Gil Bellows, who starred in TV's Ally McBeal and has played in plenty of American productions, including Shawshank Redemption, even offered McKellar a bit of advice to make his character, an American agency exec, even more authentic.

"He said, 'They have to be drinking Diet Coke. They have to drink Diet Coke.' So he's always got a can of Diet Coke in the movie -- which isn't product placement by the way."