Tag Archives: Netflix

Featured, Frontier

Frontier’s Greg Bryk on Cobb Pond’s Season 2 journey and how Paul Gross saved his life

Fifteen years ago, Paul Gross saved Greg Bryk’s life. I was on the phone with Bryk to talk about Season 2 of Frontier—Discovery’s historical drama about the history of the Canadian fur trade returning Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT—when I mentioned Men with Brooms came out 15 years ago.

“He saved my life,” Bryk says of Gross, who wrote, starred and directed the feature film. “I was going to go to law school. I had babies and I couldn’t pay any bills and I was walking away from it all. And then he cast me in Men with Brooms and threw me a lifeline. He was incredibly generous with his time and was kind of the rogueish older brother that I never had.”

The role of Alexander “The Juggernaut” Yount was the first of many, many memorable characters Bryk has played over the year. Whether it’s alpha werewolf Jeremy Danvers on Bitten, the Jack of Knives on Wynonna Earp or Grady on Mary Kills People, Bryk has amassed an IMDB page packed with memorable characters. We spoke to Bryk about his acting choices and what’s to come for Cobbs Pond, business associate/lover to Montreal businessman Samuel Grant (Shawn Doyle), in Season 2 of Frontier.

They say that the clothes make the man. Is that true for Cobbs Pond?
Greg Bryk: He has the best wardrobe. The best. When [series creators] Rob Blackie and Peter Blackie approached me, they had another character they were interested in me for. I was under option for Bitten at the time and that part was recast. A few weeks later, Bitten was cancelled and I was no longer under option. Rob called me, and I remember being in a parking lot in the Distillery District [of Toronto]. ‘Greg, hear me out on this. We have a character. So far we haven’t written a line for him yet. We have no idea what he could become or will become. He’s a cross between this real-life assassin-gunfighter that exists—historically from Boston—and Oscar Wilde.’ I’m like, ‘Done. Let’s have an adventure.’

We literally created this character from scratch and when I first walked in and I saw the fox hat. When [costume designer] Michael [Ground] handed me the hat I had everything I needed to know about this character. There is such a playful malevolence about him and the idea of sexuality and femininity and being placed in that historical context but to be this completely complicated and contemporary man, in a lot of ways, was a fascinating adventure. We found moments throughout Season 1—some dark, horrific moments and moments of real longing and being lost—and that arc/descent accelerates during Season 2. Cobbs goes to some places that I was so thrilled to get to be able to take him and really explore what love means to this character, what loyalty means, what ambition means, what greed means, what savage revenge means … all the while spinning in the most beautiful clothes one could ever hope to dress themselves in.

“When the lights go up and the camera goes on, it’s like a cage opens and the lion hunts the zoo.”

It sounds like you personally had a hand in creating Cobbs.
They fleshed the character out in very broad strokes and allowed me to bring so much of myself to the character. I’m really lucky in that a lot of directors and showrunners that I have worked with trust me to personalize the work and bring elements of myself to the character. There are things this year that happen with Cobbs and parts of monologues that are straight camera roll and they just let me go into myself. There are a couple of scenes which are shocking and brutal and violent but also incredibly vulnerable. It’s me transferring an experience I had being in love with this girl when I was in Grade 5—that first love—and they let me drag Cobbs into my longings and my wants and my vulnerabilities. But, also, this strength emerges in Cobbs this year where he is a force to be reckoned with.

There are some moments that are absolutely crazy. There are places Cobbs goes that I think the audience—who enjoyed him in the first season as this glitter who was thrown into a very dark world—will be slack-jawed at some of the things that will happen. He’s quite, delightfully, mad.

You’ve created memorable characters throughout your acting career. Where does that come from?
I’m a very cautious, almost timid, person in real life. I like routine. I stay in my house with my kids and my wife and my dogs. I literally walk the same path every day and I like that. In the real world, I like to control as much as I can. But in my work, it’s the chaos, man. I’m fearless. There is nothing I won’t reveal about myself or someone else and I don’t ever apologize for anything that I do. I am utterly without censure when the cameras roll and I think it saves my life. I became a father in theatre school and I had to learn to compartmentalize. Discovering myself as an artist was walking in step with being a husband and a father. There have always been these parallel tracks. I can happily live away from that live wire in the middle, but goddamn it I love to dance on it. When the lights go up and the camera goes on, it’s like a cage opens and the lion hunts the zoo.

Frontier airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on Discovery.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

 

 

 

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Trailer Park Boys

Link: ‘Trailer Park Boys’ actor John Dunsworth has died at the age of 71

From Alexander Quon of Global News:

Link: ‘Trailer Park Boys’ actor John Dunsworth has died at the age of 71
Actor John F. Dunsworth, best known for his portrayal of Jim Lahey in the comedy series Trailer Park Boys, has died at the age of 71.

The news was confirmed by Dunsworth’s daughter Sarah in an email. Continue reading.

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Featured, Slasher

Slasher: Guilty Party tips the typical horror genre on its head

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It’s understandable if you’ve dismissed the Slasher horror anthology series as simply a gore-fest jam-packed with characters ripe for picking off. But you’d be totally wrong. Though the genre is bursting with projects like that, Slasher isn’t just about the scare and the gore; Aaron Martin has created intricate storylines and interesting, believable characters that you feel badly for as they’re being dispatched in horrible, awful ways.

Just in time for Halloween, the sophomore season Slasher: Guilty Party drops on Netflix in its entirety on Tuesday, with a some returning faces to augment newbies assembled for slaughter. Where Season 1 of Slasher followed murders committed in a small-town, Guilty Party boasts the classic horror movie setting: a summer camp. It’s there that a group of former summer camp counsellors who—while attempting to cover up a crime they committed years before—become the target of a murder spree. Is it revenge, or happenstance?

Martin has assembled an impressive all-Canadian cast for Season 2, including Degrassi‘s Melinda Shankar as Talvinder, Being Erica‘s Paula Brancati as Dawn, Alias Grace‘s Rebecca Liddiard as Andi, The Strain‘s Jim Watson as Noah, Heartland‘s Kaitlyn Leeb as Susan and Lost & Found’s Music Studios‘ Lovell Adams-Gray as Peter; the sextet portray the counsellors. The ensemble is rounded out with Season 1 performers Joanne Vannicola, Christopher Jacot and Jefferson Brown in new roles alongside Leslie Hope, Paulino Nunes, Ty Olsson, Sebastian Piggott and Madison Cheetatow.

Though there are plenty of scares, Guilty Party does have some sweet moments; one we watched during filming at a Scouts Canada camp just outside Orangeville, Ont., boasted Shankar’s Talvinder receiving a necklace from Brancati’s Dawn.

“It was a bonding scene between the two,” Shankar says. “Tal is being gifted a nice necklace, but of course whenever there is a nice, sweet moment there is always something to contrast that.”

For Brancati, who had worked with Martin on Being Erica, signing on to Slasher: Guilty Party was a no-brainer.

“Dawn is a character that I don’t always get to play,” Brancati says. “On the outside, she’s wealthy, privileged, with a crusty exterior and a bit bitchy at times. She comes from a divorced home and has a lot of vulnerabilities that she’s masking with her sarcastic humour. She definitely has no filter.” Brancati says none of the characters is an archetype; they’re layered and very flawed.

“Aaron is unafraid of being unfiltered,” Brancati says of her showrunner. “He’s got a really dark mind and isn’t afraid to push the envelope.” Brancati, who is new to acting in the genre, admits she’s had nightmares after reflecting on the scenes she and her co-stars have filmed after a day of production. The result? It’s not hard to play scared.

Brancati divulges a bit more of the plot of Guilty Party, explaining the counsellors return to the camp, which has since become a commune, creating conflict between the visitors and those who now call the place home. Weather also adds to the drama: a massive winter storm ensures everyone is kept in tight quarters and unable to escape.

“There is a lot of gore and a lot of horror, certainly, but the characters are really textured and the relationships are really interesting and complicated and messy,” Brancati says. “Character-driven stories are interesting TV to me.”

Slasher: Guilty Party‘s full season of eight episodes arrive Tuesday, Oct. 17, on Netflix.

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.

 

 

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Industry News

Link: In the era of Netflix, what do we want Canadian Content to be?

From Callum Marsh of the National Post:

Link: In the era of Netflix, what do we want Canadian Content to be?
What these flustered complaints share is an uncertainty about the very nature of “Canadian Content.” The presumption that we have an accepted, universal definition of “content that reflects our identity and our history” – fostered by politicians eager to appear patriotic and protective of national interests – makes it difficult to determine realistically what we want from art and culture in Canada, and next to impossible to legislate the kind of policy that could make it happen. It’s easy to say that Joly’s plan doesn’t do enough. It’s harder to say what it ought to do better.  Continue reading.

 

 

 

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Industry News

What Netflix’s half a billion CAD investment in Canada is really about

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From Corie Wright, Director, Global Public Policy of Netflix:

Last week, we received approval under the Investment Canada Act from the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Hon. Melanie Joly, to create Netflix Canada, a new home for Netflix original productions in Canada. It’s our first permanent production presence outside of the U.S. Netflix will use Netflix Canada to work directly with Canadian producers, creators, talent and crews to create more great content.

As part of this approval, Netflix committed to invest at least half a billion CAD in movies and television shows produced in Canada, both in English and in French, over the next five years. This means certainty that Netflix will continue to play a large role in the Canadian production community. We have invested in Canada because Canadians make great global stories. That says more about the quality and strength of Canadian content, talent, and crew than a commitment of any dollar amount.

We have more work to do when it comes to finding great stories from Quebec told in French. That is why on top of the half a billion CAD investment, we made a commitment to invest CAD $25 million dollars in market development activities over five years. Netflix will use that additional investment to host pitch days, recruitment events, and support local cultural events to ensure Netflix Canada reaches vibrant Canadian production communities, including the French-language community in Quebec.

Setting the record straight

Since the announcement we’ve seen lots of excitement, questions, and even some conspiracy theories about our investment. We’d like to set the record straight:

  • The recent price increase has nothing to do with our investment or commitments. That price increase was planned a long time ago.
  • We have not made any deals about taxes. Our investment was approved under the Investment Canada Act. No tax deals were part of the approval to launch our new Canadian presence.
  • Netflix follows tax laws everywhere we operate. Under Canadian law, foreign online services like Netflix aren’t required to collect and remit sales tax.

Netflix is an online service, not a broadcaster

Some say Netflix got special treatment because the government didn’t force us to meet special content quotas as part of our investment – that’s wrong. Netflix is an online service, not a broadcaster. No online media service — foreign or domestic — is subject to traditional broadcast media regulations like quotas or content levies; they’re also not eligible for the regulatory benefits that traditional media enjoy. The CRTC decided in 1999 (before Netflix even had a streaming service) that these regulations would not apply to internet-based media. We think that’s the right approach. Internet-native, on-demand services like Netflix are consumer-driven and operate on the open internet. We don’t use public property like broadcast spectrum or rights of way and we don’t receive the regulatory protections and benefits that broadcasters get (and, by the way, we’re not asking for them).

Canada’s exceptional, world-class stories and production community

People choose what they want to watch on our service so we have to invest in the best content from around the world. We didn’t invest in ANNE, Frontier, Travelers or Alias Grace to fill a quota, we invested because they are great global stories. We will continue to invest in great Canadian content, and in other productions made in Canada like Hemlock Grove, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Okja, that are not Canadian content but that make use of, and showcase to the world, Canada’s outstanding talent, facilities, resources and locations.

What’s next

We understand that people are curious and eager for immediate details about what comes next. But remember: our commitment marks a long term investment in Canada — not just a next week, next month, or next year investment. That means that now that we’ve been given the green light to establish a local production presence, we have some planning and hard work to do before we can make any additional official announcements.

There is more to come. Stay tuned….

– Corie Wright, Director, Global Public Policy

 

 

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