UPDATE: The scene shifts to Newfoundland
HALIFAX -- Just a few blocks away from the mansions of this city's sedate south end, Hollywood is working its strange magic.Winter and the huge cushion of snow that has smothered the Nova Scotia capital for seemingly endless months have been vanquished -- or, at least, are being vanquished anew each time a new storm system moves in. On a small patch of Atlantic Street, and in front of one nondescript green shingled house in particular, the snow is scraped away in preparation for what most consider the most prestigious movie shoot ever to hit Nova Scotia.
With the port's grain elevators towering in the background, this part of Halifax is standing in for Mockingburg, N.Y., one of what E. Annie Proulx calls "a shuffle of dreary upstate towns" in her novel The Shipping News. This is where her stumbling, "hive-spangled," third-rate journalist protagonist Quoyle begins the journey that carries him to Killick-Claw, Nfld., and his redemption in love and life.
Shooting is either happening or about to happen in several spots around Halifax -- on Atlantic Street, at a sound stage in Dartmouth, in the offices of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and at Cleveland Beach on the province's South Shore. Exteriors have also been shot on Cape Breton Island.
This is not the first major Hollywood production to land in Nova Scotia since the province's film industry began to take off about seven years ago. Parts of Titanic were shot here, and so was The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore and Dolores Claiborne with Kathy Baker. More recently, Sarah Polley and Sean Penn were around to film The Weight of Water. Right now, in Halifax harbour, on an aging Russian sub, work is under way on K-19: The Widowmaker, with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
But The Shipping News has undeniable clout and star power. "We've seen a lot of celebrities come through Halifax lately," says Marilyn Smulders, entertainment editor of the Halifax Daily News. "But this whole project has a lot of class."
It's a project that, as is often the case with novel-based works, has taken its time getting off the ground. John Travolta and Billy Bob Thornton had reportedly been interested in it, and on one occasion there were rumours that Maine would be standing in for Newfoundland. This incarnation is being directed by Lasse Hallstrom, whose pictures The Cider House Rules and Chocolat have been nominated for Academy Awards in the past two years. Budgeted at $70-million, it's starring Kevin Spacey and Judi Dench, both Oscar winners, along with Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett, both of whom have been nominated previously. Also on board is Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent.
The raw material is pretty good, too. Proulx's novel, after all, was both a critical and popular success, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and topping most of the bestseller lists in North America that year and the year before.Ann MacKenzie, chief executive officer of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corp., can't hide her glee about what the movie means to the province's $99-million film and television industry.
"It means a lot of money spent in the province. It means a lot of people working in the industry," she says. "And it's pretty exciting to have someone like Judi Dench and Kevin Spacey in town."
For now, Miramax, the production company, is clamping down on any publicity.
"Has this call been cleared with the publicist?" asks Jay Mason, site foreman for the company that brought spring to Atlantic Street. "Sorry about that," he apologizes, as he refuses to talk.
But while movie crews and big stars may be able to get lost in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, it's a lot harder to hide Oscar's favourites in Halifax, because, with a metropolitan population of about 350,000, it's essentially a big small town.
Dench and Spacey have been here for several days, while Moore and Blanchett are expected to arrive any day now. Despite the publicity ban, reporters for both of the city's two newspapers were able to get a word with the two major stars at a crew and cast party earlier in the month. Dench told a reporter she loved the works by folk artist Maud Lewis at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Spacey, on the other hand, was thinking ahead to when shooting moves to Newfoundland in June -- second-unit crews will start filming exteriors there in early April -- and expressed concerns about "this drink called Screech and something about kissing a cod."
Smulders says her paper's readers are very interested in the movie. "Everyone is going out to the [Economy] Shoe Shop to see some celebrities," she says, referring to a popular watering hole.
Victor Syperek, who owns the Shoe Shop, part of a funky complex of bars, restaurants and clubs, hosted the pre-shoot party and loves the extra business The Shipping News attracts. "It definitely impacts on us," he says. "There's a lot of star-gazing, and the people who work on the film come in." His bars and restaurants are good places to see celebrities, he says. Sean Penn, Jeff Bridges and Joseph Fiennes have dropped by while in town and, just last week, Dench had dinner at one of his restaurants.
"I think what people like about Halifax is that they can walk around unhounded," says Syperek. "When Sean Penn was in town, he told me that as he got used to it he realized that beyond the odd autograph, no one bothered him."
CORRECTION: The budget for The Shipping News,a film being shot in Atlantic Canada, is $30-million (U.S.). Two of its stars, Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore, are expected on the set later in the spring. Shooting of exteriors in Newfoundland has begun but no plans exist to film on Cape Breton. Incorrect information was published March 20.Thanks to Penny Gray for sending me this article which appeared in the Globe and Mail on March 21, 2001 and to Jan M for sending the picture.