I want to talk about the location because it’s incredible.
Ant Timpson: Yeah, its Tofino, which is a Northwest part of Vancouver Island.
Stephen McHattie: It’s the surf capital of Canada.
Ant Timpson: In winter, it’s rugged and crazy and wild, and it’s cold all year round.
Elijah Wood: It’s so beautiful.
Ant Timpson: It’s so gorgeous, and it felt like the end of the world in the winter, and we thought it was going to be a winter shoot. Just going on the during an overcast day with the sea rolling in, it was like, “Holy s**t, this is amazing, we’ve got to find a place around here.” Like find a house that suits it and the locations guy was showing me photos, and I just saw this UFO style house, and I said “where the hell is this thing?” and he goes “it’s just down here,” and we just bailed down and looked at it.
I walked in and said, “This is it, I don’t care…we have to get this. I’m not looking at this, we’ve got to lock it down,” which the producers love to hear things like that (laughs), but it just felt like it had done about ninety percent of what I need to do, you know? It gave me so much to work with.
“This is it, I don’t care…we have to get this. I’m not looking at this, we’ve got to lock it down…”
Elijah Wood: It’s a character in the film, the house. Yeah, we really lucked out because like he said, we were supposed to shoot in January and, you know, as things happen with independent films, things got pushed, and we could’ve lost that location, and they were incredible in holding onto it for us and accommodating a time shift.
Ant Timpson: Yeah, it was a family-owned bachelor. There was a hotel that owned it, and a father and son had built that cool house, and no one used it. It had never been used in any shoot.
Okay, two more questions: I love Martin Donovan, can y’all just talk about how it was to work with him?
Ant Timpson: It was great, he was funny, he hit the ground running.
Stephen McHattie: I had a terrible time with him (this is hilarious once you see the movie).
Ant Timpson: He hit the ground running literally. I met him in full make-up like one second before a scene.
Elijah Wood: He came by set once very briefly while we were shooting.
Ant Timpson: I remember that, but he didn’t recognize who I was because I broke my ankle. I was like in a wheelchair with a megaphone.
Stephen McHattie: Oh yeah!
Elijah Wood: Week one!
Ant Timpson: So we didn’t really connect the dots there, so when we did end up meeting, it was right at this crazy emotional scene, and he was like…he told me later it was like rock and roll for him. He hadn’t done that sort of indie, just get thrown in there, and just wing it..he felt adrenalized by the whole experience.
Elijah Wood: You can tell it felt good for him. Let’s not forget Hal Hartley and his work in independent cinema. I mean holy s**t, right? Cmon!
Ant Timpson: He’s got some real nice subtle comic timing. He said some really funny stuff, and it really came to life in the end. We were like “Oh my God,” and he’d done it so that it was his decision because he knew it was gonna pay off.
