Affleck effect grips North Cowichan
Is there anyone in North Cowichan who isn’t talking about the Casey Affleck movie shoot?
If you pass through Maple Bay before the filming of scenes for Light of My Life wraps in the next while, chances are you’ll meet someone who has had an encounter with cast or crew.
And while you might not run into the film’s Oscar-winning star, writer and director, you’ll feel his presence at the Lion Rampant Scottish Pub, where there is a new menu item: Casey By The Sea: Steak Oscar.
“It’s a play on Manchester by the Sea, just to bring a little attention to the fact Casey is here,” said owner Bruce Findlay, whose staff is also hatching a “Casey of Beer” promotion at the pub’s liquor store.
“Now we just have to have Casey come down and try [the steak oscar] for himself.”
Creating a movie title reflecting the shoot’s impact on Maple Bay, where filming has been taking place in the historic Elkington House in a Garry Oak preserve, appears to have become a local pastime.
In a Duncan Cowichan Chamber of Commerce Facebook page posting, Maple Bay By the Sea was suggested as an alternative title for the survival drama, about a father and his young daughter trapped in the woods after a deadly pandemic.
While pub patron Rob Saare of Auctus Construction described the shoot as “a big blessing” economically for Cowichan Valley, co-worker Brian Cryer dismissed the jokey Maple Bay by the Sea title.
“Why would we want to piggyback off some other movie title?” Cryer said. “We need to create something new and unique for our area.”
Cowichan Bay artist Kristine Paton was thrilled to learn about the shoot, especially when the art department requested the use of some of her paintings.
In the scene, Anna Pniosky, who plays Affleck’s character’s daughter, is walking around the house looking at the art, she said. “The couple who lived there travelled around the world collecting art.”
When Paton first received an email inquiry via her website, she assumed it was a scam, until the set dresser and set designer showed up at her studio.
Paton said it was “a weird coincidence,” since she and a friend had just been discussing one of their favourite Affleck films, The Finest Hours.
“The first time I’d heard of him was when he did The Assassination of Jesse James, and he was so good in Gone Baby Gone,” Paton said. “He’s a phenomenal actor.”
Twelve of her works were enlisted, with the “cosmopolitan” look the designers required, including one featuring a smoking man seen through a window at New York’s National Bar and Dining Rooms.
Amy Melmock, Cowichan’s manager of economic development, said the film crew “inadvertently started the ball rolling” on remediating Elkington House. “They had to do some remedial work on the house first, which was nice for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.”
While the Nature Conservancy owns the Garry Oak preserve the house sits on, it’s not the conservancy’s mandate to preserve historic buildings, “so it fell through the cracks as to who would do that.”
The shoot has refocused attention on the huge, spooky-looking heritage home, which, North Cowichan community planning co-ordinator Natasha Horsman said, could now have a new lease on life.
The Nature Conservancy, North Cowichan and community members are “exploring options to manage the historic Elkington House through a partnership,” she said.
Nanaimo-based casting director Jacqui Kaese said she can understand why there’s been so much buzz about Light of My Life, and why filming is on a closed set.
Kaese, who isn’t working on the film, said the climate of secrecy brought back memories of working as an acting coach on the 2004 drama Birth during filming in New York.
“Like Casey, Nicole Kidman had just won the Oscar, for The Hours,” Kaese said, recalling how Central Park was “on lockdown” while Kidman filmed there.
“So you know this is going to be big. He has just won an Oscar, and everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what he’s going to be able to do next.”