| |
|
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 |
| Hughless and Fighting the Elements |
 
Hi Everybody, Penny McDonald here, I used to be Paul’s assistant and now work for Whizbang Films.. Sorry you haven’t heard from us in a while. …Hugh is M.I.A. We lost him somewhere in the trenches and think the other side might have him. I parachuted into Calgary yesterday from my warm, dry office in Toronto. I was immediately taken on a tour of the battlefield, which defies description, but I’ll try.... There is a forest of thousands of burned out trees, trenches, guns and duckboards as far as the eye can see, and gear…lots of gear…and everything is covered in mud, thanks to a huge crane over the battlefield dangling a one hundred and twenty foot truss which pours rain down when the cameras roll. Yesterday the winds were so strong it was like a hurricane. Today nature gave us a little blizzard but the biggest problem has been the relentless sunshine. There was no sunshine at Passchendaele.
When I saw all of the soldiers marching back from lunch I got goosebumps.. They were drenched in mud from head to toe. Paul races around the slippery set, keeping the mood up, spinning his arms backwards. He claims it keeps his from falling face down in the mud and calls it the “Windmill Walk”. He looks like Charlie Chaplin on acid to me. Many of the soldiers are background performers, which means they don’t have any lines and some of them might not even make it on-screen. Today we have one hundred and ten of these good souls out with us. They are required to fight in waist-deep mud with (scary) bayonets when the cameras are rolling. Between scenes they sit in groups around the trench holes, weary and cold but laughing, trading stories and cigarettes and once again it is 1917. Everybody has a story to tell, a familial connection to the First World War, and this is why they are sucking it up, the background performers, the cast and the entire crew, they are giving it their all, knowing their ancestors didn’t have portable toilets nearby, or hot meals, or a heated car to take them away from all of this once the sun sets. The real soldiers were far from the creature comforts of home and too many were never to return.
|
|
|
|
|
| About the Blogger |
|
The motion picture Passchendaele, an epic set amidst the horror of war, was shot in Alberta from August 20th to October 23rd 2007, directed and written by Paul Gross. The film is now in post production and will premiere in Theatres fall 2008, thus culminating a lifelong dream of Paul's, who learned of this extraordinary period in Canadian history from his Grandfather, Michael Joseph Dunne. The Battle of Passchendaele represents a story of determination, commitment and triumph, and this defining chapter in the forging of a nation shall never be forgotten. |
|
