|
RISING
CANADIAN STAR NOT AFRAID TO DIVE INTO RISKY ROLES
ADDED: 06.12.02. SOURCE: VANCOUVER
SUN, 06.12.02
"If
you don't have the option to totally suck at the part, then
it's not a role worth taking," Brendan Fehr says.
You
could call him cocky, but that would be ignoring his ability
to show weakness. You could call him politely coy, but that
would be ignoring the fact that his boots are comfortably -
unapologetically - lodged on top of the swanky hotel desk.
Best
to say that Brendan Fehr is the kind of fella who loves to push
the envelope, whether it's as young actor cutting a swath through
Hollywood - or just sitting down for a chat about his latest
movie.
In
this case, Fehr, the former hometown boy who split his time
between Mission and Winnipeg, is talking about Edge of Madness,
which arrives in theatres today. It's the latest movie from
local director Anne Wheeler, and it's based on Alice Munro's
short story, A Wilderness Station.
Fehr
plays Simon, an abusive backwoods man who takes an orphan wife
to help him homstead in the Red River Valley during the mid-19th
century.
There
isn't much to like about Simon. Not only does he sexually abuse
his wife Annie (played by Caroline Dhavernas), but he humiliates
his little brother as often as possible.
For
Fehr, the role brought a specific set of challenges, but nothing
he wasn't willing to roll up his sleeves - or pull down his
trousers - to accomplish.
Wheeler
called Fehr one of the most brave and intuitive actors she's
ever worked with, but Fehr says he's still learning.
"[I]
think I'm just starting to feel brave as an actor. At first
you don't feel brave at all because you don't have the chance
to be brave: No one trusts you. I've learned that if you don't
really go for it, people will notice. They'll see you're playing
it safe," he says.
"Look,
it's like if you don't have the option to totally suck at the
part, then it's not a role worth taking. The best roles have
risks ... and those are the parts I'm interested in."
Discovered
five years ago while walking the streets of Vancouver, Fehr
was sceptical that a complete stranger would ask - out of the
blue - if he wanted to do television. A short time later, he
landed a role on the TV series Roswell and moved to Los
Angeles.
"I
was cut out for [acting] I suppose. I'm smart. Well, smart in
the sense that I know how far to go and how far not to go. I
understand character on the page. I think I know what will make
it work. I just get it, I guess. I got it from the very beginning.
Part of it is not overanalysing. If you overanalyse, you become
robotic."
In
other words, the 25-year-old Fehr is not the kind of actor who
agonises over things like motivation and elocution in terms
of character. He just does it, which makes him something of
a refreshing change from the average drama school technician
who may labour over every nuance.
Fehr
just jumps right in - ditching his inhibitions like so much
clothing at a nudie camp.
"I
remember at one point, we had this scene where I was mad at
[Annie] because she was flirting with my brother, so I lean
over the table and essentially rape her - well, I told Caroline
that I was really going to go for it - not rape her, but really
be rough. I said, 'I'm going to bang the shit out of you...'"
he says.
"The
next day, she pulled down the waistline of her pants and showed
me these huge bruises that I'd given her on her hips. I know
it sounds terrible, but I think it works best on camera when
you're not really acting, but just doing. I don't like to pretend.
If I'm supposed to be drinking a cup of hot coffee, I want a
cup of hot coffee ... I don't want to mime it because it looks
stupid."
To
Fehr, it's all just a great big game.
He
says he likes to play it for two reasons: "One: I think
I'm good at it. Two: I like looking at the final product."
And
what about the fame part of the game?
Well,
on that score, Fehr says it's all part of the job. Besides,
he's not harassed on the streets of Los Angeles just yet. And
when he gets a nice glance at home, he says he's usually flattered
because at least they're watching his work.
"L.A.
is much different ... It's a very superficial place. People
are always checking out who's walking in the door. You can be
at a party, and the whole room will change when someone walks
in - they may not want to have the whole room change when they
walk in. But that's what happens to some people, it's beyond
their control ... and I don't want it to happen to me."
For
the moment, Fehr is happy to make a living doing what he loves
to do. And if they big wave of fame picks him up for the ride,
he's ready for it.
"I'm
just going to continue doing what I'm doing. Besides, no one
ever becomes a superstar overnight. It's years of hard work
that all come together when someone actually notices what you're
doing."
For
the most part, Fehr says he just wants to remain a normal guy
- the guy who used to dream of being a math teacher, not an
actor.
"Yep.
I wanted to be a math teacher. I was really good at math, but
not any more. I've just become stupider and stupider. Well,
I've become smarter at some aspects, and less intelligent at
others. I know for sure that my vocabulary has suffered."
Then
again, that just could be the parts he's been playing. From
the illiterate Simon in Edge of Madness, to a recent
role as a stuntman in the new movie Biker Boyz starring
Laurence Fishburne and Larenz Tate, and the Canadian project
from Jesse Warn, Paper, Scissors, Stone, Fehr hasn't
been able to indulge his intellect through his work.
"There
are other things in the works," he says. "Real challenges
... but that's all I can say for now."
Somehow,
you get the feeling it won't be long before Fehr can says a
whole lot more - in bigger, polysyllabic words - in the years,
if not months, to come. BACK
TO THE TOP
BIKER
BOYZ
ADDED: 16.07.02. SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD
REPORTER
Idle Biker Boyz revving back up at DreamWorks
After
Fox 2000 put it in turnaround, the urban motorcycle project
Biker Boyz has driven off to DreamWorks Pictures, where
it has been given a green light with a fully loaded cast headed
by Laurence Fishburne, Derek Luke, Orlando Jones, Brendan Fehr
and Meagan Good.
Shooting
is set to start July 31 with filmmaker Reggie Rock Bythewood
(Dancing in September) at the helm. Biker Boyz
is based on an article of the same name penned by Michael Gougis
and published in Aprill 2000 in the alternative newsweekly New
Times Los Angeles. Shortly after the article was published,
producer Stephanie Allain set the project up at Fox 2000, where
it was developed for two years and finally put in turnaround
last month.
Billed
as a contemporary Western on motorcycles, Biker Boyz
is set in the rarely seen world of black motorcycle clubs and
follows the real-life exploits of Manuel Galloway (Fishburne),
a California motorcycle club president and quarter-mile racer
also known as the King of Cali. He's surrounded by lawyers and
city workers by day who drop their "normal" lives
to don leather gear and bet on their bikes.
Bythewood
penned the screenplay from an original draft by Craig Fernandez.
Allain and Gina Prince Bythewood are producing along with 3
Arts Entertainment's Erwin Stoff and executive producer Don
Kurt. At DreamWorks, the project is being overseen by production
executive Leah Keith. BACK
TO THE TOP
ROSWELL'S
FEHR SWEARS OFF TV ACTING
24.11.01
- Note: contains a few general spoilers for season three.
While
the fate of most TV shows has been decided for the rest of the
season, whether or not Roswell will live to see it through
May is still up in the air. If the teen sci-fi series
isn't renewed, it will likely be the end of actor Brendan Fehr's
TV career, the actor tells Zap2it.com.
"I'd
never do TV again," Fehr says. "I'd do guest-stars;
I'd do recurring - there or four or maybe six episode
arc deal. I would never say 'never' actually, but no,
this would be my last stint in TV and after this I would either
do movies or go poor."
It
isn't that Fehr doesn't enjoy being on Roswell, it's
just that he got into acting because he likes playing different
characters and working with a lot of different people, he says.
And the sci-fi drama, which moved to UPN this year after The
WB cancelled the series, is "a little too steady."
"In
terms of the character and the people you work with, even though
they're all really great, I kind of want something more nomadic
- which would be movies. After this show ends and three
years of unemployment, I might be thinking differently."
"As
of right now, because everything's just fine and dandy and I've
got a steady paycheck and a steady gig ... you always want something
else. The grass is always greener."
The
series, which was picked up for 13 episodes on UPN, has yet
to hear if it will be picked up for an additional season on
the network, or for that matter, for the remainder of the current
one. Following the fellow former-WB series Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, the show has averaged a 1.4 rating/3 share
among adults 18-49 and 3.2 total viewers, compared to Buffy's
2.7/7 and 5.6 million viewers for the same amount of weeks.
Currently
shooting Roswell's third season, Fehr says he still enjoys
the work, even if he does wish for more variety.
"You
get a little of an episodic burn, you know," he says.
"You kind of wish to do something different and play a
different character and stuff like that, but it's like getting
up and going to school - you never want to, you don't like doing
the work but you always end up having fun."
"We
have great times in between takes," he adds. "Everyone's
got a great sense of humour, you know, most of us. Pretty
much all of us, we've passed that phase of getting on each other's
nerves really and having big trouble. We pretty much all
get along, everyone's cool."
As
for his character, Fehr says Michael has some big changes ahead.
"He's
becoming a little more mature, trying to find his place in the
world, settle down, get a job, become average, every-day Joe.
Which he kind of does and then around the middle of the
season a big thing happens, which kind of changes his world,"
Fehr says, referring to the upcoming break-up of Michael and
Maria (Majandra Delfino).
Fehr,
who dated Delfino in real-life, recognises that fans are attached
to the relationship between the two on the show. However,
he says, just because they're breaking up doesn't mean that
the relationship will be less interesting.
"We'll
always have our relationship on the show, whether we're together
or not - which is what I think the fans really like. Obviously,
they want us together but it's intriguing if you do it right
when you have a couple that's not together, like a Mulder and
Scully."
Delfino
recently stated in the press that Michael was not a good boyfriend.
Fehr agrees, at least in part.
"He's
got a good heart, but he's not a good boyfriend for Maria.
He'd be a good boyfriend for someone I'm sure. Some independent,
feminist chick. No, not a feminist, because he's such
a chauvinist. He's not a great boyfriend, but he's not
a bad one either - he's a good-hearted kid on the overall,"
he says.
As
for whether he thinks Roswell will remain on the air
much longer, Fehr sounds uncertain.
"It
has the potential to, [but] whether or not we reach that is
a different question," he says.
If
the show does come to an end, whenever that may be, Fehr says
there is one thing he'd like to have happen to his character.
"I'd
like him to die. Because if the show's going to end, I
think it'd be a good way to go, to die."
"I
want a character that somebody loves to die," Fehr explains.
"I want his demise, I don't want ending without him dying."
Roswell
airs Tuesdays at 9pm on UPN.
Source:
Zap2it.com.
BACK TO THE TOP
BRENDAN
NOT IN PET SEMETARY 3
20.09.01
- Crashdown, citing
Brendan's manager, says that Brendan isn't in consideration
for the lead in Pet Semetary 3, nor would he accept it
if offered. In fact, no one from the production has contacted
any of Brendan's representatives. BACK
TO THE TOP
BRENDAN
FOR PET SEMETARY 3?
17.09.01
- According to Dark Horizons (citing Teen 17),
Brendan is the top candidate for the lead in Pet Semetary
3. BACK
TO THE TOP
VIRGINITY
NO HINDRANCE TO PLAYING RAPIST
13.09.01
- Brendan Fehr has had his first flook at the forthcoming A
Wilderness Station and told the Los Angeles Daily News
that he's pleased with the feature, which marks a massive departure
for him.
Fehr,
an avowed virgin who believes sex should wait until marriage,
doesn't see a dichotomy between his views and his portrayal
of a frontiersman who is seen committing rape four times.
"Obviously,
there's a lot of stuff in movies that you wouldn't want to do
in real life," he points out. "You have to decide
why something is being done, what kind of message is coming
across from it. My character is by no means glorified...It's
necessary to show evil in the story in order to show the good
that comes out of it later."
One
might think that playing a rapist would be especially intimidating
for someone without sexual experience, but Fehr laughs off that
notion. "Oh, you just watch a lot of porn.
No, seriously, you know where everything goes and how it looks.
You've been exposed to it over and over again in the media.
And, after all, with sex scenes in movies, every move is planned
and staged. Just like fight scenes aren't real fights;
everything's choreographed."
Fehr
picked A Wilderness Station out of several movie offers
he had on the table - including a big-budget studio picture.
"It's an interesting role and good, character-driven story
with a murder mystery twist," he notes.
As
for his public stand regarding sex, he says with a sigh, "It's
not a public stand. It's a personal stand, which I stated
in public, because I didn't think it was particularly a big
deal. When someone asked, I answered. But now, if
someone were to ask me, I'd probably say, 'Next question.'
People tend to jump on it whether they agree or disagree with
it, and it has no connection to anything in my career."
BACK
TO THE TOP
BRENDAN
AND MAJANDRA
 03.08.01
- Continuing their bid to become Hollywood's worst dressed couple,
here's Brendan and Majandra, as spotted by E! Online's
Out and About section.
In
addition to this, the couple have just wrapped a series of public
service announcements for the Ontario government. Shot
in Toronto, the PSAs focus on sexual abuse prevention and the
health care system. They each did one spot and also one
together. Shot in a very X Files manner, this marks
the first time that the couple have appeared together on television
as Brendan and Majandra. BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
FORSAKEN'S
GAY SUBTEXT
09.05.01
- Though he's straight off-screen, there's no denying that playing
gay has made Kerr Smith's acting career thus far. He recently
made headlines with yet another same-sex kiss on Dawson's
Creek, and even flirted with Superman Dean Cain in last
year's gay indie hit, The Broken Hearts Club. Even
so, Smith denies there's any same-gender lovin' in his current
vampire flick, The Forsaken.
Some
sharp-eyed (and perhaps wishfully thinking) viewers can't help
but notice a bit of homoerotic subtext in the fangfest, which
features Smith and Roswell's Brendan Fehr as very close
buddies on the road trip from hell. In fact, so cozy and
concerned for one another's welfare are they that the duo tend
to ignore Smith's supposed love interest, Izabella Miko - who
barely has an dialogue in the film.
Actually,
women contribute mainly to the body count in Forsaken,
which focuses more on hotties like Johnathon Schaech and Simon
Rex raising hell, while Smith and Fehr exchange winsome glances
and lines like, "I heard a noise and I was worried about
you."
"Oh,
that was for comedy," Smith scoffs to TV Guide Online.
"We just ad-libbed that line; it wasn't even in the script."
Laughing nervously, he adds, "C'mon, give me a break!
There's no gay twist in the movie."
And
what of Miko's neglected character? "We didn't want
to play the love story between Izabella and I," Smith says.
"There just wasn't room for it in the movie and it wasn't
appropriate. The relationship between Brendan and I...By
the end of the movie, we've gone through so many life or death
situations that we become friends. That's the kind of
relationship it is."
So
this isn't a case of the love that dare not speak its name?
"No, there's nothing like that," he smiles.
"It's not a bad thing, I'm just saying that was no our
intention." BACK
TO THE TOP
WILDERNESS
FILMMAKER
LOVED THE LATE COLD
09.05.01
- Director Wheeler found locations to her liking.
LOWER
FORT GARRY - Anne Wheeler, one of Canada's most celebrated directors,
is in jail.
Well,
not really. The Vancouver-based filmmaker responsible
for films like Better Than Chocolate and Bye Bye Blues
is actually just hiding out in one of the cells in the old jailhouse
at Lower Fort Garry. It's one of the few places she can
go to get a bit of peace and quiet and, if she's lucky, 10 minutes
of shut-eye during the 5.30pm "lunch" break on the
set of her latest film, A Wilderness Station.
Stepping
outside the jail, one would think they were back at a 19th-century
trading post if it weren't for the heavy film equipment strewn
about. Teepees and tents have been erected and campfire
pits and pelt-filled wagons have been set up among the buildings
at the national historic site - the oldest stone fur trading
post still intact in North America.
A
Wilderness Station is set in 1851 and though the Alice Munro
short story on which the film is based is set in Upper Canada,
Wheeler, who co-wrote the script, decided to set her adaptation
in the exact place it's being filmed.
"If
we were going to film it in Manitoba, we were going to set it
in Manitoba," she says. "And it's a great province
to shoot in. They're very sensitive to the arts here and
there's just a treasure trove of locations, this fort being
one of them."
Half-mad
A
Wilderness Station tells the story of Annie, an 18-year-old
who stumbles into the trading post barely alive, half-mad and
claiming to have murdered her husband. The town's legal
authority, James (actor Paul Johansson), begins the task of
looking into her past and discovers that her husband Simon,
with whom she entered an arranged marriage, was an angry and
violent man.
Unlike
the rest of us, Wheeler was pleased that spring arrived late
in Winnipeg this year; the script dictated that Annie arrive
at the fort in the midst of a blizzard.
"We
shot that about three weeks ago," she said. "There
was still some snow on the ground and the rest we made.
We used the magic of movie-making to make wind and blowing snow
and so on. We shot fairly tight and it looks pretty good.
It looks cold. Well it was cold. Much to our glee
and everyone else's dismay."
Scenes
were also shoot in the Minnedosa area; the cast and crew spent
a couple of weeks there before returning to Winnipeg.
"We
shot in a beautiful valley just northwest of there where you
could turn around 360 degrees and just see forever," says
Wheeler. "It gave us a great sense of being alone
on the planet, which is what we were looking for."
As
for the film's young cast, many of whom Wheeler says she's been
keeping her eye on, she's nothing short of pleased so far.
"Caroline
Dhavernas (Annie) was the lead in the Marilyn Bell story...and
I watched her very carefully in that because I had heard wonderful
things about her," Wheeler says. "I looked at
all her tapes, the work she'd done in both French and English.
In English, she has almost no accent whatsoever but I'm making
her speak with an accent. It's actually a bit of a risk
for her because she's probably trying to prove to people that
she speaks English without an accent."
Brendan
Fehr, the former Winnipegger and star of the TV series Roswell,
plays the brutish Simon. Wheeler came close to casting
the 23-year-old in her last project, a comedy called Suddenly
Naked.
"I
was very pleased that he was willing to play the kind-of dark
soul of the piece. A lot of people don't like being unlovable
on screen. But he's gone for it and he's really doing
something quite unlike anything he's done before and he's doing
a great job."
Fehr
is also faking an accent - his is Scottish.
"We've
tried to make the Scottish authentic but understandable,"
says Wheeler, who adds with a laugh that she once did a documentary
with a lot of Scottish participants and had to subtitle them.
In
general, she says, she's hoping to end up with a period film
told in a modern fashion.
"It
has quite a different look than most historical dramas.
It doesn't have your Sense and Sensibility smooth portrait
look. It's got a very contemporary look to it."
Wheeler
is hoping the film which wraps on May 11, will be finished in
September or October and eventually, she says, it will get a
theatrical release. She's mulling over her next project;
there are three or four that might go this summer but she hasn't
signed anything yet. But by Canadian filmmaking standards
- or any other for that matter - she's already had a busy year.
Marine Life, which stars Cybill Shepherd, recently arrived
in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver and prior to A Wilderness
Station, she finished Suddenly Naked, which stars
former Winnipegger Wendy Crewson as a "tough, bitter, cynical"
writer, according to Wheeler.
"She's
so funny," Wheeler says of Crewson, who also had a role
in Better Than Chocolate. "She has a wonderful
sense of humour and I was laughing every day on that set."
Source:
Winnipeg Free Press. BACK
TO THE TOP
FORSAKEN
ADDS FRESH TV TEEN BLOOD TO WORN VAMPIRE GENRE
03.05.01
- In the young and the restless vampire escapade The Forsaken,
gore and guts spill onto the screen in giddy profusion - it's
a slice of life, viscera and all.
Putting
a sardonic, postmodern kick on the undead-from-the-crypt horror
trip, director-writer J.S. Cardone (whose credits include Outside
Ozona, Black Day Blue Night and A Climate for
Killing) maneuvers his cast of ravishing kids - many from
the teen TV world - through the ravages of ghoulish possession.
It's an outing down Dawson's Creek by way of the River
Styx.
Things
begin genially enough. A young man named Sean (Kerr Smith,
who is on Dawson's Creek) embarks on a road trip to deliver
a classic Mercedes, this is a means of travelling to his sister's
wedding. However, disregarding warnings about giving rides
to strangers, Sean picks up a lone hitchhiker named Nick (Brendan
Fehr of the WB's Roswell). Though Nick seems to
be a devil-may-care slacker, it turns out that it is precisely
the devil Nick cares about.
Nick's
real purpose is to track down packs of wayward young vampires,
who survive by infecting ill-fated souls. Indeed, Nick
has contracted the fatal "blood disease" and must
exterminate the ghoul who bit him to return to normal.
Matters
get more maniacally macabre after Sean and Nick befriend a stunned,
terrified young woman, Megan (Izabella Miko), whom the fiends
have left for dead. She winds up as vampire bait, a body
the vamps' depraved leader Kit (Johnathan Schaech from the Fox
series Time of Your Life) is now insatiably drawn to.
Things go personally south for Sean after Megan sinks her teeth
into him, transmitting the cursed vampire pox. Now the
only thing that can keep Sean mortal is for Kit to be destroyed.
The
Forsaken vamps on its vampires with more than a little humour.
It's a boo-movie that does not take itself in a deadly serious
vein. In fact, The Forsaken purposefully forsakes
several key conventions of the classic bloodsucker canon such
as fangs, garlic and stakes. Yet it does present a back
story tracing its vampires' pedigree to cursed knights of the
11th century Crusades.
Additionally,
the movie draws on certain aspects of the genre that have enlivened
living-corpse flicks since Nosferatu first stalked cinemas nearly
80 years ago. Cut away from society, adrift in an age
that is changing too rapidly to be understood, the vampire endures
a melancholy estrangement.
Production
notes suggest that The Forsaken can be taken as a metaphor
for a world gone wrong; the vampire pox an allusion to contemporary
scourges such as drug addiction and AIDS. However, The
Forsaken is surely no social allegory but a loud, snappy
horror flick in which supernatural forces have their way.
This
slight but not altogether uninteresting monster opera can be
a hoot. Viewed as a quick, flip vamp on vampires, The
Forsaken packs the bite stuff. Here foolish, ghoulish
shenanigans can be bloody good fun.
*
MPAA rating: R, for strong violence/gore, language and sexuality.
Times guidelines: Heavy violence and plenty of bad language;
inappropriate for younger viewers.
Source:
The LA Times, Saturday 28 April. BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
FORSAKEN
BITES THE BOX OFFICE DUST
01.05.01
- The Forsaken had a disappointing US box office debut
last weekend, with $3 million in ticket sales and eighth place
in the rankings (by contrast, third placed Spy Kids,
in its fifth week on release earned about $5.7 million, taking
its total earning to about $93.6 million).
The
total five was:
1.
Driven, $12.17 million
2. Bridget Jones's Diary, $7.53 million
3. Spy Kids, $5.78 million
4. Along Came a Spider, $5.60 million
5. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, $4.66 million
BACK
TO THE TOP
BRENDAN
ON THE FORSAKEN
23.04.01
- Brendan recently talked to Horror
Online about his new film The Forsaken.
"It's
got a little bit of everything in it" he says about the
film. "It's part buddy movie. It's got a little
bit of action. It's not coming-around-the-corner, cat-jumping-out-of-the-closet
scary, per se. It's part road trip movie. The vampire
are treated as people with diseases instead of being these monsters.
So we've kind of put a little bit of a spin on it."
Brendan
plays Nick, a vampire hunter picked up while hitchhiking by
a guy driving across country on his way to his sister's wedding.
The pair pick up Megan (Izabella Miko), who had been left for
dead by a group of vampires. Soon enough, Sean, Nick and
Megan come face to face with the vamps, led by Kit (Jonathan
Schaech).
"Nick
is just trying to save his own ass," Fehr says about his
character. "He's been bitten and hasn't turned yet.
He's on these drugs that are keeping him from turning, and he's
got to figure out how to get his life back. He's done
research...and he's on a mission to kill the vamp that he thinks
is going to, in essence, save him and gave him his life back.
The film gets pretty violent. We did have to cut some
stuff out because on certain MPAA rules. It's still an
R-rated movie. It couldn't be NC-17 because it had to
appeal to the studio's concerns (about violence). But
where there's blood, there's blood. Where there's gore,
there's gore. When someone's got to go down, they go down
in flames of glory. It's very dark and it's very creepy,
so I still think we achieved what we set out to do."
BACK
TO THE TOP
FORSAKEN
MUTATES VAMP MYTH
19.04.01
- Kerr Smith told Sci Fi Wire
that The Forsaken takes a different bite out of vampire
mythology.
Smith,
who plays a young man who encounters a band of vamps during
an ill-fated cross-country drive, said Forsaken vampires
kill with guns, not teeth, and can't be killed with stakes.
"It's
different, because it's not about the fangs and all that,"
Smith said in an interview. "Being a vampire is treated
as a blood disorder, really: a disease. And the transformation
can be postponed through medication or drugs, what we call the
cocktail, a mix of a bunch of drugs. ... Unfortunately, the
drugs don't cure anything. The only way to cure it is
to kill these bastards."
Smith
plays Sean, a young Los Angeles film editor who is driving a
borrowed vintage Mercedes across country to his sister's wedding.
He picks up a mysterious stranger (Brendan Fehr) and encounters
a band of vampires led by Kit (Jonathon Schaech). "He
gets into a huge, huge hunt for these vampires, because in the
whole process he gets bitten and he's dying: he's transforming.
And the chase begins," Smith said.
Schaech
(That Thing You Do!) told Sci-Fi Wire that the film is
"an easy ride with a lot of lost boys and girls.
I am the Forsaken. ... My character's name is Kit.
I think that's a cover-up for his real name. ... I'm the one
who's got this disease inside his soul, and he goes out into
the world. He's been around for a really long time, travelling
around, feeding his appetite, his addiction, and he's found
himself in the United States, which is a great place to play."
Kit's
band of vampires includes Alexis Thorpe and Phina Orucha, who
Buffy fans may remember as Giles' girlfriend Olivia.
"Her function with the group [is] she's Kit's girlfriend...and
her function primarily is to lure people into the group to become
part of our clan," Oruche said. "I think it's
a real intelligent movie. I think it's different than
your quote-unquote slasher movie. There's not a man running
around with a mask and a knife. We don't have [vampire]
teeth. ... We don't have fangs. We have guns. So
we're leaving a kind of serial-killer kind of trail."
Forsaken
opens in the US on April 27. BACK
TO THE TOP
ROSWELL
STAR TO LAND IN MANITOBA
05.04.01
- Roswell star Brendan Fehr will be spending some quality
time in Manitoba this month, working on the feature film Wilderness
Station.
The
23-year-old actor is set to play a brutish 1850s homesteader
in the movie - a major departure from his brooding good-guy
role as an alien on The WB's Roswell.
"That's
why we took it, something different to do," Fehr's manager
Jim Sheasgreen says.
Wilderness
Station, based on a short story by Alice Munro, is about
a young woman who agrees to marry a homesteader named Simon
(Fehr) so she can get out of an Ontario orphanage. The
bride eventually falls in love with Simon's younger brother
and, after a woodcutting "accident", confesses to
murdering her husband.
Sheasgreen
says Fehr, who was in Winnipeg last month to co-host the 2001
Blizzard Awards gala with Terry David Mulligan, will be back
in town for wardrobe fittings tomorrow.
Then
he's off to New York City this weekend to do the talk-show circuit
to promote his upcoming feature The Forsaken, in which
he plays a vampire hunter. The thriller opens in theatres
April 27.
A
graduate of Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, Fehr has
been living in Los Angeles since 1998. He's just finished
the second season of Roswell, and will begin a new film
in L.A. after Wilderness Station finishes shooting in
late April.
Anne
Wheeler (Better Than Chocolate, The Sleep Room)
is directing Wilderness Station, which is a Credo Entertainment/CineGroupe
co-production. The film is to begin shooting next week
in Minnedosa and at other sites in Manitoba.
A
complete casting announcement is expected this week.
Source:
The Winnipeg Sun, 3 April. BACK
TO THE TOP
ALL'S
FEHR IN HOLLYWOOD
05.04.01
- Roswell star's goal is to take over the world - or at least
Tinseltown (from the Winnipeg Sun, 2 March 2001)
Brendan
Fehr has a simple plan. Work hard, have fun and, oh yeah,
become the single most famous person on planet Earth.
No,
Hollywood hasn't turned the 23-year-old former Winnipeg-ger
into a raving megalomaniac, but a few movie roles and steady
work on cult-hit TV series Roswell have given him a taste
for fame - specifically, for the things fame can buy.
"Basically,
what an actor tries to do, whether he wants to admit it or not,
is become the most famous person in the world, because in becoming
the most famous actor in the world you...hold a lot of power,
and in holding a lot of power you get to choose what you will
or won't do and you get first crack at all the scripts,"
Fehr says during a phone interview from his L.A. home.
"So
what I'm basically doing is trying to become the most powerful
and greatest actor that ever lived - to a certain extent, you
know what I mean?"
Yet
another reason to take in the 2001 Blizzard Awards gala at Prairie
Production Centre tomorrow night. Since Fehr is co-hosting
the event with Terry David Mulligan (MovieTelevision), you just
might be able to say some day that you knew him when.
To
be fair, the earnest young actor is flexible about world movie
domination. Being the greatest character actor on Earth
would be fine, and if he happened to land great roles without
being all-powerful, well that's OK, too.
"But
I won't continue this being on a TV show the rest of my life
- making a crapload of money but being on a TV show playing
the same character. It's not about the money, it's about
having fun and doing really great work," he says.
"In
getting there I'll be making a lot of money, but that's not
what it's about. It's about trying to become the most
famous person in the world so you can do exactly what you want."
On
the fame-o-meter, Fehr is moving in the right direction.
He had a small role in last year's thriller Final Destination,
he plays a vampire hunter in the upcoming chiller The Forsaken,
and he's amassed a respectable fan base - known as Fehrians
in Roswellian circles - for his role as teen alien Michael on
The WB series, which airs Fridays at 8pm on Space Ch. 39.
Living
in Los Angeles since 1998, he also attracts attention on the
streets, but not so much that it's a problem.
"Generally
people are very respectful and you get a lot of people coming
up to you and going, 'You're that guy from Roswell.'
And I'll go, 'Yeah',' and they'll go, 'No you're not.'
And they're like, 'See? I told you it wasn't that guy.'"
Now
in production on Roswell's second season, Fehr occasionally
spends weekends with his father in Vancouver, where his acting
career began with a role on Breaker High in late 1997.
He
spent Christmas with his mom in Winnipeg, but says the logistics
of flying back and forth from L.A. make frequent visits difficult.
He has to travel most of the day Saturday to arrive for the
Blizzards, and departs Sunday afternoon to get back to L.A.
in time for work on Monday.
But
with some family and pals attending the gala, Fehr says it's
worth the effort, and he was happy to oblige when Mulligan asked
him to co-host.
"Well,
I get a free trip to my hometown, so I get to see my family
and stuff like that. It's got to do with film in my hometown,
[it's a] pretty good cause, and a lot of fun for me, so why
not?" he says.
"I
plan on having a lot of fun. It'll probably be a lot better
than the Hollywood parties, they tend to be really boring."
BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
FORSAKEN
04.04.01
- The trailer for The Forsaken is now online here.
Thanks
to Ghosty for posting this to the RoswellUK mailing list.
BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
FORSAKEN
31.03.2001
- From Dark Horizons:
The
Forsaken: Remember that report...about how this Kerr Smith/Jonathan
Schaech vampire film was tested a few months back to only so-so
results, well here's a response from Sony: "The film has
been re-edited and was in fact re-tested in a Los Angeles suburb
a few weeks ago. Those test scores were over 2.5 times
better than the first research screening which you mentioned.
The cast of the film have since been informed about the new
cut." BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
FORSAKEN
28.02.2001
- The website for Brendan's new film The Forsaken is
now up and running in readiness for the film's opening on 27
April. Click here
to have a look. BACK
TO THE TOP
"I'M
A HUGE FAN OF METALLICA, NOT A RETARD"
25.01.2001
- According to E! Online's Print Soup, Brendan
Fehr seems to have it all: a TV series, movie offers, money.
But like all aspiring actors, he wants to get plenty of ink.
In Fehr's case, however, he's not looking for ink in the newspapers;
he wants it on his shoulder.
"I've
been thinking for about three years of getting a tattoo,"
Fehr says in the winter TM. "Because I'm a
huge fan of Metallica, people were saying I should get a tattoo
of Metallica's logo. I'm a huge fan, but I'm not a retard."
Obviously
that would be silly, so instead he's gone for something else
instead. "I had this one Metallica T-shirt with this
guy on it in flames" - that's the image tattooed
on his arm. BACK
TO THE TOP
THE
ART OF BEING...BRENDAN FEHR
18.01.2001
- From The WB's website:
Aw
shucks: "If you put a person on TV, even the ugliest
person - and I don't think very many people are ugly at all
- it's going to increase their sex appeal by 100 percent.
It's all a bit sketchy.
When
I have spare time: "I like to sleep, play Monopoly,
golf and walk my dog."
My
Monopoly addiction: "It's pretty hard-core. I
bought regular, Millennium Edition, Marvel Comics, X-Men,
NHL and NFL versions."
What
flips my burger: "I'm not into eating in some fancy
restaurant in Beverly Hills. I'd be content, you know,
to just go into some greasy little hamburger shop and grab a
burger."
My
secret obsession: "I collect Spider-Man toys.
Especially the 12-inch figures. Plus I just bought tow
Spider-Man rings for $200 apiece." BACK
TO THE TOP
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