Small wonder Stephen Rea looks haggard. The Irish actor spent the previous night jammed through the windshield of a car. Later, Mena Suvari smacked him good on the head with a hammer. It's been a rough night.
With the success of V for Vendetta recently behind him, Rea is in the grimy New Brunswick port city of Saint John, filming Stuck. The film is based on the true story of a woman in Texas who committed a hit-and-run after loading up on ecstasy at a night club.
The pedestrian she hit ended up lodged in her car's windshield and rather than driving to a hospital, the woman went home, parked the car and left the poor man to die. She's now serving a 50-year jail term.
Dressed in black and hunched over in his chair in the Hilton in Saint John, Rea is the first to admit that it's difficult to emote when shoved through the front end of a vehicle. "The challenge is really holding together a pitch of emotional involvement in such an extreme situation, because you're living on the edge of death," he says.
"It took a day in his life and it's taking several weeks in mine."
In fact, Rea and Suvari ( American Beauty, American Pie) are spending five weeks in Saint John, a city the Dublin-resident actor declares an affinity for, not the least because of its questionable weather. "We've had a couple of days of that endlessly grey sky and soft rain. I think when all those thousands of Irish refugees came here from the famine, they must have felt at home."
Saint John reminds Rea of a younger version of his hometown.
Like Dublin 40 or 50 years ago, Saint John is quiet and everything closes early. And while many Saint Johners have stopped him to tell Rea they're from Ireland, an equal number of teenagers have approached him to say how much they enjoyed V for Vendetta.
"They don't even know what The Crying Game is, but they know what V for Vendetta is. Actually, I've achieved some element of cool with my son's friends, because they think it's a great film."
It's a sign of Rea's longevity in an often fickle business that he's now able to span generations. An earlier one remembers him for his Oscar-nominated role as an IRA agent in the 1992 film The Crying Game and associates him with films such as Mike Leigh's Life is Sweet and Robert Altman's Ready to Wear. A newer generation may be more familiar with Rea for roles in horror and science-fiction films such as Fear Dot Com and Control.
For his part, Rea, 60, points out he may be the only actor of his generation to have been directed on stage by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. "Writing always attracts me," the dour-faced actor says, adding that Stuck grabbed him for the same reason. "You can smell good writing."
Along with Rea and Suvari, an unlikely crew of Hollywood types has traipsed through Saint John in recent weeks. Director Stuart Gordon is best known for horror films based on the cult fiction works of pulp author H.P. Lovecraft, while Canadian Jay Firestone is a producer whose television series credits include F/X, Relic Hunter and Nikita.
That all these individuals have all ended up in Saint John is the work of Sam Grana, a one-time film commissioner for the province of New Brunswick and now head of Moncton-based Grana Productions.
Grana left Montreal to come to New Brunswick in 1998 in order to become the province's first film commissioner. Two years into his job, a switch from Liberal to Conservative government led Grana to resign after he realized his five-year plan and budget wasn't likely to see the light of day.
Rather than head back to Quebec, Grana decided to stick it out in Moncton, a firm believer in his vision of a New Brunswick film industry: "I didn't just want to quit, pack up and leave. I wanted to put my money where my mouth was."
In the intervening years, that's precisely what Grana has done, shooting four movies from his provincial home base last year and bending anyone's ear on the value of the film industry. Most recently, he has approached new Liberal Premier Shawn Graham with his pitch.
"I urge them to stop looking at film as a cultural thing, as a handout," Grana says. "The film and television industry is a business. Sam Grana is a business person. I'm not a cultural freak looking for a grant from the government. You give me a dollar and I will bring you back four. And this, you buy hospital beds with, if that's what you want to do as a government."
With a budget of slightly under $5-million, Stuck will contribute $2-million in "hard cash" to the Saint John economy, according to Grana. The executive producer says he wants to see New Brunswick stories and faces on the big screen, but when Stuck comes out, Saint John will be identified as Providence, R.I. No matter. Grana hopes the film will attract more business to the centre he calls, "bar none, the most cinematographic city in New Brunswick and I would dare say, in Atlantic Canada."
For his part, Rea has managed to walk some of the city's hilly streets and eat some lobster, but for the most part he has spent his nights with his torso stuck through a car's windshield -- not the most conducive position for rubber-necking. It takes 2½ hours each night to apply Rea's makeup, mostly gore and cuts. Says Grana: "As he struggles to get out of that mess in the garage, his leg is broken severely and bleeding. You can actually see the bone.
"I saw the rushes of the scene and they're just gorgeous."