A sell-out crowd of hockey fans is needed on Wednesday night at CN Centre, even though the Cougars are out of town.
Instead of the Cats or even the Spruce Kings, a film crew will be there making a movie.
They have been in town for a couple of weeks filming the independent drama Hello Destroyer, and part of their plot requires a scene at a rowdy junior hockey game. Part of the reason producers Haydn Wazelle and Daniel Domachowski agreed to base the shooting here (also some in Vancouver), at the urging of writer-director Kevan Funk, was the hockey culture in this winter city.
"I didn't want a location to just be a service centre, I wanted its character to be involved," said Funk, who grew up in small towns in Western Canada and developed an affinity for setting stories in rural locations.
"I knew there was a flavour, a quality, to this place," he said, based on family trips in his youth to visit relatives here.
"We started off wanting a place like Prince George for a number of story-related reasons. Like football is a religion in the States, we wanted to capture the Canadian spirit of hockey, so that meant a place smaller than the big cities in the Lower Mainland. We also needed a town big enough to have a junior-level hockey team, because that's what our main character does, he plays junior hockey.
"For that to be authentic, we needed somewhere like Kamloops, Kelowna, Fort St. John. There had to be an impactful arena, a proper home rink for a junior hockey team, not some old barn and not a coliseum.
"We also wanted a place that could convey a sense of winter.
"So you see, the more boxes we checked off, the more Prince George just sort of selected itself," Funk said.
"More than a backdrop, Prince George became a fundamental part of the fabric of the film, and that wasn't exactly what we expected."
The crew of about 20, along with a small group of the acting cast, made the trip up intending a short visit. Plans to return to Vancouver quickly fell apart, for all the right reasons.
"We were supposed to be here for six days and we just kept finding more and more ways that Prince George could provide the things we needed, and way cheaper, way easier - the support was just crazy," said cinematographer Benjamin Loeb.
"The City of Prince George, with capital letters, has been just great to deal with," said Domachowski.
"Kathleen Soltis (city manager), Lyn Hall (mayor), a bunch of the staff people at City Hall, they have been amazing to deal with. Whatever we've needed, it was just done, with a smile and a great attitude."
Funk gave praise as well. "The Cougars organization has been brilliant to deal with, and I can't say enough about Clint Fraser (marketing director for Northern BC Tourism, holders of the Prince George Film Commission portfolio). He has been absolutely instrumental in us being able to stay on here. He has gone above and beyond."
If it wasn't people doing their jobs to the nth degree to help Hello Destroyer succeed, it was regular people providing extraordinary support. A server at The Keg overheard the senior crew talking about how hard a time they were having locating a ranch for a crucial part of filming.
They meant the Lower Mainland, but the server interrupted helpfully with some Prince George options that turned out to be perfect, visually, but also perfect was the response of the landowners.
They needed to film inside a meat cooler for one scene. Prince George's abattoir Kawano Farms gave the crew the run of the place.
That, said Domachowski, is how Prince George has really emerged as an asset to the project: a willingness by ordinary average people to get them whatever they need to turn their vision into tangible art.
But the crew interjected frequently about the other elements of the city they appreciated.
"Nancy O's needs to jack itself up and move to Vancouver," said one.
"The Flaming Nancy burger is, bar none, the best burger in Canada," another added.
"I can't believe how good this beer is, I couldn't believe it was brewed in P.G.," said a third, raising a glass of Pacific Western Brewery's Schwarzbock. The crew member across the table had a stubby bottle of organic Scandal beer and he said "I drink this stuff in Vancouver. I didn't know until just now it was brewed in Prince George."
It was a relief to have something go so well on the project.
Making a movie is a challenging endeavour at the best of times, and it is especially hard to make one rooted in hockey. It isn't easy to film the on-ice action and it isn't easy to score financing. Domachowski said TeleFilm Canada was quick and deep in their support, but private funding was harder to come by.
"Our film was incredibly hard to make, from the financing standpoint," said Domachowski.
"So many people said no to us. We are doing something really rarely done, when you think about it. This is a drama, a serious story, and it happens to use hockey as a vehicle for the story. I bet all the hockey movies you can name are comedies. And in the States, where a lot of the funding and distribution comes from, hockey isn't a big thing. They don't get it like we do in Canada."
But funding has been gathered, the project is a go, and the cast is strong. Some of the on-screen names are well known to viewers like Ian Tracey (he's been a regular on Bates Motel, DaVinci's Inquest, Intelligence, Continuum and many more projects), Sara Canning (recurring on The Vampire Diaries, Remedy, Hell On Wheels and more), Paul McGillion (he was Dr. Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis) and the lead actor Jared Abrahamson (movies Seattle Superstorm, Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, the TV series Awkward, etc.).
"Jared is a really exciting actor. He has a lot of talent, he is really carrying his part well, and he also just signed on for a really exciting project, I predict his career is going to blow right up, and Prince George can say they had him at the start," said Funk.
To see Abrahamson in action, come out to CN Centre from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday (no admission charge), bring your noise makers, paint your face, and support the Hello Destroyer team.
Funk said, "You'll get to be in the film. We'll be doing a lot of crowd shots, and the closer you are to the glass the more the camera might see you during the action shots.
"But the really fun part is seeing behind the scenes. You'll be watching how the film is made as you do your part. All you have to do is show up, and cheer like it's a hockey game. Wear red and blue if you've got it; the film's team colours look just like the Spruce Kings."
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