gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Cinderella ram

Brushes with fame #3

(By a narrow margin [52%] Russell Crowe beat out Pierce Brosnan in my "which brush with fame comes next?" poll. Here's that story.)

I missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.

I could have easily precipitated an ugly incident with a famously hotheaded celebrity, one with deep pockets. I could have been sipping pina coladas off the avails of an out-of-court settlement. But it didn't occur to me until a couple of hours too late.

Here's the setup. A couple of years ago, I was riding my bike to work along my usual path: along the Lakeshore, over the Bump that Stumps, up Cherry St. and past the Distillery District.

I love the Distillery, and always have - even before the stunning redevelopment, I'd see it from the Go Train and dream of wandering around the abandoned Gooderham & Worts yard. At a minimum I figured there'd be some good photography spots to be found. I couldn't be happier with what they've done to the place, and if I were young and single (neither could be farther from the case) I'd have bought a condo there. Or at least be writing this from a tub chair in Balzac's, my favourite coffee spot in the city.

But back to the story. As I was riding up Cherry Street, I noticed a phalanx of white trucks parked on either side - a common enough sight, the hallmark of a movie shoot. Normally, I stop and check out the manadatory sheet of paper on the windshields of each truck, which tell you the title and type of film. But I was late, so I kept riding up between them.

As I passed bybbnnjjjhjhgmmkkkkkjjjjjjjhhggfgdszzzxcvb.btgtszzxcv bbbbngfdzaaaaadefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

(Sorry, my daughter just came by and wanted to try the keyboard. Where was I?)

Oh, right. As I passed between the trailers, I saw two guys standing in the road, tossing around what appeared to be a rugby ball. I had to swerve to avoid crashing into them, and as I did so I caught a glimpse of a guy who looked for all the world like Russell Crowe. Except he had black hair.

Sure looked like him, though. And I knew (from watching the extra features on the Master & Commander DVD) that Crowe, an Australian, was a huge rugby fan and often plays rugby with his cast and crew, so it certainly seemed plausible - but why would Gladiator be in my hood?

After turning the corner, I passed the main part of the shoot - the Distillery had been done up to look like a depression-era dockworks.

As soon as I got to work, I looked up Russell Crowe on IMDb, and saw that he was filming something called Cinderella Man, playing a boxer named Jim Braddock. Two more web searches, and I found that it was filming in Toronto, and that Braddock had black hair.

Back to IMDb, and posted a comment in their discussion threads to see if anyone could confirm my sighting. A few hours later, an extra on the set said that Crowe was indeed playing rugby on Cherry St. that day. Bingo!

A few weeks later, Cinderella Man came even closer - they began filming a street scene on my part of Queen St. E. (a few of my crappy PalmPilot photos are below. The shot of Crowe up top is not mine.)

You wouldn't believe the amount of work they did to turn our Depression-era strip into a... Depression-era strip. Storefronts on both sides of the road were completely redone for three blocks.

One of Toronto's busiest streets was sporadically shut down for days on end. And I heard they spent a million dollars just to move the overhead hydro wires.

How can such expenses be worthwhile? For a million bucks, couldn't they just digitally remove those wires? For that matter, you'd think it'd be cheaper to shoot the whole thing in a studio, rather than closing down a whole neighbourhood. Movie economics boggle my mind.

Of course, this is Queen East, not Queen West. Some of the stores didnt need any decorating at all. In fact, the Depression-era fascades were an improvement for some buildings, and they actually kept using the window treatments and blinds after the filming wrapped up.

The highlight for me was all the cars. They rented out almost every antique car in Southern Ontario (and their owners) to line the three blocks of Queen St. And when a particular shot was finished, there would be a mighty roar as all these jalopies were cranked up and shuffled around to different parking spots.

But the highlight for my daughter was the fake snow in the summer. Real snow, actually: they trucked in massive blocks of ice, shaved them down and sprayed them into drifts of real snow (they did place sheets of white foam underneath first.)

Neat, but my heart went out to the poor extras who had to stand around in their trenchcoats and fedoras all the sweltering day long.

Well, there you have it. With all that film money floating around, you'd think they could spare a few $100K for a near-miss on an innocent cyclist, right? I mean, I saw that look in Crowe's eyes... I'm pretty sure he was getting ready to hit me with a phone.