It was obvious one day in February 2011 that Something Was Going On in the gravel pit behind Pemberton Plateau, the little cluster of houses where I lived at the time, perched on a hill just north of town. A mass of trailers was parked in the pit; guys with headsets stood around waiting for something important. On my walk that day, I asked one of the movie-making minions what, exactly, they were filming. “I can’t say,” he replied, and then smirked, “it has something to do with wolves.”
A year later, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 hit screens. I confess to watching it. A little over half an hour in, all three stars of the series (Kristen Stewart, newly turned vampire; teen-idol vamp Robert Pattinson; and everyone’s favourite werewolf Taylor Lautner) drove up my old street, Pinewood Drive in Pemberton, to the house at the top of the road. Apparently a little nest of vampires was living there. Mount Currie loomed large in the background.
There’s something quite thrilling about seeing a familiar building, street or even mountain on the big screen. I don’t know why. In theory it should detract from the so-called suspension of disbelief that underlies the whole movie experience – that’s not Alaska, I should be screaming, that’s Pemberton! It should be annoying when Seth Rogen stands on top of the granite slabs near Squamish’s Chief, pretending he’s up some mountain in China. It should pop the bubble of the Star Trek world when they start boulder-hopping through the Squamish forest, all the while pretending it’s some alien planet called Altamid. But instead I feel a rush of something like pride: there’s my little home, lit large, for all the world to see and admire.
Vancouver has been called Hollywood North since the 1970s, with filming north of the border getting a big boost after the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was signed. The cheap Canadian dollar, the varied landscape, the low population density and high availability of empty gravel parking lots makes B.C. a great place to film. In the Sea to Sky, we have an iconic highway; communities that can be dressed up or down; not to mention towering granite slabs, old-growth forests, pebbled beaches and expanses of clean water.
The result has been a steady stream of movies and Hollywood stars parading through our communities, leaving a trail of encounters and stories in their wake.
SCENE SPOTTING
Squamish is perhaps the most popular spot for filming, with dozens of movies under its belt. Movies filmed at least partly in Squamish include 2007’s Jennifer Garner rom-com Catch and Release; the 2008 Ryan Reynolds bombed-drama Chaos Theory; the 2009 John Cusack natural disaster blockbuster 2012; Harry Potter imitator, 2010’s Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief; the 2011 low-key Jack Black comedy The Big Year; 2014’s sci-fi reboot Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; and the Oscar-winning 2015 Leonardo DiCaprio thriller The Revenant. Insomnia (2002) is clearly in Squamish.
Britannia Mine is a popular filming spot, says location manager Anne Goobie, who works in the area. That easily identifiable, stepped building was famously the hiding spot for secret files in episode 302 of the X-Files (1995), for example. Underground tunnels here are also frequently used in the ongoing post-apocalyptic science-fiction drama The 100 (after a nuclear disaster on Earth, humanity escapes to a space habitat, and eventually 100 juvenile prisoners are sent back down to the surface to see if it’s habitable). Paradise Valley and its outdoor school is also popular for scenes requiring long, uninhabited roads through the forest or remote cabins.
Another favourite location is Minaty Bay, just south of the Galileo Coffee Company. “It’s idyllic,” says location scout Joel Hurley. A gender-reversed remake of the 1980s rom-com Overboard began shooting there this May. In the new version, Anna Faris gets her revenge on (and presumably falls in love with) a spoiled, amnesiac Eugenio Derbez.
Minaty Bay is also the setting for Rogen’s SEAL-assisted escape from North Korea in the controversial 2014 film The Interview (after a cheesy tabloid newscaster, James Franco, and producer Seth Rogen get invited to North Korea to interview fan Kim Jong-Un, the CIA recruits them to assassinate the dictator). The Interview also features scenes from an area called the Makin Lands and Murrin Construction’s Watts Point Quarry near Britannia Beach. “We were looking for a non-descript North Korean look. Well, none of us know what that looks like anyway,” laughs Hurley.
Not every local project goes smoothly. When Star Trek Beyond came to town in summer 2015, it caused controversy with some rock climbers, who felt the crew was harming the landscape and unfairly restricting access to some of the trails at the base of the Chief. The crew used local climbers, including Perry Beckham, to get into the trees.
But some complained that the crew had cleaned chalk off some rocks with wire brushes, shellaced some of the holds on at least one route, and damaged some of the trees by removing branches. “I was very taken aback by the behaviour of some of the boulderers who were really abusive and acted like it was their park,” says Beckham. “I helped create that park back in the ’90s.”
Squamish local Brian Vincent wrote a letter to The Chief newspaper saying it would have helped if film crews had consulted with climbers and gave everyone forewarning of their activities. Others noted that the film crew surely had less of an impact on the environment, overall, than the climbing community itself.
“We are locals; we’re not going to destroy the forest, we enjoy them too. We’re not outsiders hell-bent on destruction,” says Goobie.
“They’ve made it harder to film there. I don’t think I’m ever going back to the boulders. It’s not worth it,” she adds.
But then, on reflection, Goobie changes her mind. “Actually, it’s such a beautiful setting. I can’t say I won’t go back. It’s pretty darn cool.”
MOVIE MONEY
According to a March press release from the District of Squamish, the town hosted 61 film and TV productions in 2016 (up from 35 in 2015), injecting $1.4 million into the local economy. Although more than a third of those were commercials, that still leaves a lot of movies.
All that action makes it easy to work in the film industry locally. Squamish Nation local Wayne Charles Baker makes his living as an actor, and has starred in films such as the 2007 made-for-TV Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee. His wife, Marlana Thompson Baker, has taken up doing the occasional extra spot; she spent about eight hours recently at Cheekye Ranch earning $70 and three seconds of screen time in the TV series Beyond.
“It’s a lot of waiting around, but it’s fun,” she says. “My husband said I’d be bored to death, so I brought beads and was beading on set.”
Squamish Coun. Peter Kent, elected in 2014, was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stunt double for 14 films over 13 years, performing feats that were deemed too dangerous for Schwarzenegger in movies such as Predator and Twins.
“I basically lied my way into it,” laughs Kent, remembering how he told James Cameron he had stunt experience when called in for a stand-in role for The Terminator. Next thing he knew he was diving backwards through a nightclub window. The bike jump scene in 1991’s Terminator 2 landed him in the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame.
Kent didn’t move to Squamish for the town’s movie connections, but rather as a fun place for his future kids. But, now 60 and dividing his time between local politics and his own stunt school (Peter Kent’s School of Hard Knocks in Vancouver), he is writing on the side and hoping to get funding to film a Christmas movie in Squamish.
“The movies are growing exponentially here,” says Kent. “It’s undeniable how the trickledown effect goes into everyone’s pocket.” Plus, there are a lot of people working on the movies in the corridor, from seamstresses to key grips. A lot of climbers turn their hand to rigging and special camera work, he adds.
STAR STRUCK
If you want to spot local celebrities, there are easier things to do than breaking on to set: just go for coffee.
Whitney Keyes used to work at the Starbucks in Squamish. During her two years there, from 2004 to 2006, she served and chatted with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine from the X-Men), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind), Anthony Michael Hall (of Breakfast Club fame), and Amanda Bynes (teen actress from What I Like About You), to name a few. “Hugh Jackman was one of my favourites. He is a musical theatre nerd like myself,” she laughs. “He is quite lovely.” Chatting while making coffee was made easier by the fact that they had a friend in common, she adds: Daniel Cudmore, who plays Colossus in the X-Men series, was raised in Squamish and his father is a local doctor.
It’s difficult to explain why seeing a celebrity in person can be so discombobulating. They are, after all, only people. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and firemen often do much harder, braver and more meaningful work, but we don’t dissolve into blather when we run into them in the coffee queue.
The best thing to do, advises local stuntman Kent, is to play it cool. “Just say hi, and maybe ask for an autograph – but the fawning just doesn’t go well.”
Kent once ran into Robert Redford at the Squamish Starbucks. “He looked up from the paper and I said: ‘Morning, Bob.’ And he said: ‘Morning.’ And I said: ‘Hope you have a nice day.’ And that was it.”
