Movie being filmed set at site of fatal shooting last week

Some residents say the filming brings positive attention to an area recently affected by trauma

Late Monday morning, passersby stopped to nervously inspect a small residential stretch of Cole St. in Regent Park that had been blocked off.

A police officer stood at the intersection of Cole and Regent St., redirecting car and foot traffic.

The pedestrians’ apprehension at the sight was understandable — only one week previously, police officers gathered at the same intersection to investigate the fatal shooting of 30-year-old Lemard Champagnie.

Curious neighbours quickly discovered, however, that the cause of Monday’s road closure was not another tragedy, but the filming of an upcoming Hollywood movie Code 8.

The movie, starring Sung Kang (of the The Fast and The Furious franchise), Stephen Amell ( Green Arrow) and his cousin Robbie Amell ( Flash), is about a clash between a militarized police force and a young man who commits a petty crime to pay for his mother’s medical treatment.

A small memorial for Champagnie, fixed to a pole across the street, was the only visible sign of recent violence in the vicinity.

Residents said that the recent shooting may have left some in the neighbourhood feeling uneasy at the sight of a police presence in the area once more.

“When they see the police, at that time people become a little concerned about that . . . What’s going on here?” said Mohammed Rahim, a resident of the area that was sectioned off for the filming.

Once his neighbours realized what was actually going on, however, “there was no problem.”

Rahim said that the general sentiments about the filming in the neighbourhood were co-operation and pride — both welcome for an area that is recovering from loss.

“They are asking people to give them space for filming,” he said, and “it’s good — like, excellent. People are helping them.”

It helps, Rahim said, that it seems the neighbourhood will be pictured in a positive light.

“It’s a nice area now,” he said. “It’s good, because in the film we can see our neighbourhood . . . And that’s wonderful.”

Not all residents were initially pleased to hear about the filming. Some felt that it was inappropriate for a movie about a police officer to be filmed in a location where the police had so recently been called to the scene.

A Facebook post in the public Regent Park Neighbourhood Association group read “this is seriously not the time or place right now in my opinion.”

The poster later followed up clarifying that the scene to be filmed would not include any guns or police action.

Mary Anne Waterhouse, a production manager on the film, said Monday that she wasn’t aware that a fatal shooting took place on the set until the previous evening, when a resident of the area raised a concern about the appropriateness of the filming location.

“I explained the nature of the scene we’re filming today,” Waterhouse said, which involved Kang’s character picking up his daughter from his ex-wife’s house.

Once it became clear that the filming would not include scenes about police action or violence, Waterhouse said, the resident’s concerns dissipated.

“So that’s why we’re out here,” Waterhouse said.

Waterhouse added that all of the neighbours had been co-operative and helpful.

Stephanie Beattie, another resident of the area, said that she heard some “positive buzz about celebrity sightings and the fun of having a production” in the neighbourhood.

“We’ve had a couple of instances of filming here in the last month or so, and the crews have been great, in my experience,” she said.

Beattie added though, that she understood why some neighbours might have felt a filming about a police officer in the area hit too close to home.

“I think the concern expressed earlier was about the type of scenes to be filmed here,” she said.

“I certainly wouldn’t dismiss any of my neighbours’ sensitivities around that.”

Code 8 will finish shooting in Toronto on Friday.