Montreal Gazette

T H A T F A M O U S S U D B U R Y S O U N D

- Bill Brownstein

Curiously, Born to Be Blue was mostly shot in an Ontario town renowned for its nickel ore and barren, rugged landscape. A place where NASA once brought astronauts, the apocryphal story goes, to offer them a glimpse of what the moon’s terrain might most resemble on this planet. Yes, that would be Sudbury, a city not known for its jazz. “Perhaps, but what I loved about Sudbury was that it was so easy to focus on work — because there was nothing else to focus on,” mused Born to Be Blue star Ethan Hawke. Director Robert Budreau chose Sudbury because of “regional incentives to shoot in northern Ontario” and its interior spaces and retro ’ 50s buildings. “It worked out really well. That’s the magic of cinema,” said Budreau, who grew up in Ingersoll, Ont., and also directed the documentar­y The Deaths of Chet Baker. “OK, so it wasn’t obvious to be shooting, in October/ November, Sudbury for L. A. So we shot a few days in L. A. to get the beaches and ocean — unavailabl­e in Sudbury. “In fairness, though, Sudbury doesn’t look much like the moon anymore.”

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