West Kootenay town stars in thriller
Castlegar was both the inspiration and setting for movie with strong female lead
For actor Shawn Ashmore, the filming of the movie Hollow in the Land was a new and authentic experience.
Written and directed by Vancouver’s Scooter Corkle, the film is shot and notably set in Castlegar, the West Kootenay town where Corkle grew up.
“What was incredible was I read the script and I knew what the story was and the world he (Corkle) created and then I landed in Castlegar and I was like, oh, it’s already here, he doesn’t have to create anything. Obviously this is where he is from. This is what he wrote,” said Ashmore, a Richmond native who had never been to Castlegar. “So that was really cool. The whole town felt like the set. That was really cool to step into.
“In moviemaking, most of the time you are shooting somewhere and pretending that it is somewhere else,” added Ashmore, whose big screen credits include the Bruce Willis film Acts of Violence and a handful of X-Men movies.
The movie is a thriller featuring the character Alison (Dianna Agron), a small town woman trying to track down her on-the-run troubled teen brother Brandon (Jared Abrahamson) and clear his name in a murder case. Ashmore plays a cop trying to find the brother and help Alison.
The story travels around the Castlegar area, giving the film a strong sense of place. You feel Corkle’s memories and recollections in every scene. His writing, combined with director of photography Norm Li’s deep, dark, richly layered look and Agron’s stoic and unwavering Alison, create a small-town tightness that can be both comforting and restricting.
The restricting part here is Alison is not only unable to shake the sins of her father but she has to constantly clean up after her brother and his poor choices.
The whole “good kid stuck in a bad family” is not what you would call new territory, but what freshens up this fable is the strong female voice.
Shot over 19 days, Hollow in the Land is a story Corkle has been living with for close to a decade. When he conceived it, Alison was Alfred. But Corkle realized there were more stakes attached to telling this story from a female perspective. In this case a gay, blue-collar, job-holding woman whose family is a notorious mess.
“Everything is against her,” said Corkle, who has done just about every job on a film set. “By creating the female character, the whole story opened up to being a whole lot more meaningful.”
It was the female voice that Ashmore said interested him.
“I think there could have been a different version of this movie where you follow Brandon and he is the one on the run the whole time, escaping and having his life threatened” Ashmore said. “That could be an interesting movie as well. When I read it I thought that I had seen this kind of movie before. But the lens in which Scooter is telling this is from a slightly different perspective. I thought it was interesting. I bought in really early.”
Corkle credits his strong female voices to being raised by a strong single mother who left an abusive relationship and moved Corkle and his two older brothers to Castlegar when Corkle was just a toddler. Corkle also gives a nod to his mother’s family for influencing his writing.
“My mom grew up in a group of 11 children. So there were a lot of aunts that came around. All of my aunts and mom are chatty Cathys,” said Corkle with a laugh.
The timing for this film is worth noting as Hollywood is awash in sexual harassment cases and gender inequality. Corkle, of course, gets that, but he doesn’t want to be seen as a flag-bearer for a movement.
“It’s not my job to be a voice for people. It’s my job to listen,” said Corkle, who conceived of Alison and her story long before Harvey Weinstein was in the news. “This was before the whole thing came about but even back then I felt it was important to be telling female stories. I’ve always been writing them, for whatever reason, I guess it has a lot to do with my mother.”
Hollow in the Land opens across the country Jan. 26. It will play in Vancouver at The Park Theatre. Corkle will be on hand after the Jan. 27 7:30 p.m. show for a Q&A.