It was the year that Steve Nash went Hollywood, three local 20-something actors found fame, Brooke Shields snuck into town long enough to film a werewolf comedy, and we learned a respected Victoria producer appeared in a porn flick.
Over the past 12 months, Tony Curtis also took me by surprise when he called from his home in Las Vegas to confirm that his much younger self was the mystery actor in a photo we found that had been taken at the Odeon in 1949.
As well, this was the year Caprice Showcase Cinemas celebrated its 20th anniversary, the Roxy Classic started showing first-run movies, and Jo Anne Walton was appointed Victoria's new film commissioner.
That's just scratching the surface of activity on our showbiz and film and TV production scene in 2009.
When Nash wasn't busy shooting his ESPN documentary on Terry Fox, the two-time NBA MVP made a cameo appearance on HBO's hit show Entourage and on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Corey Monteith, a former Bluebird Taxi driver and Wal-Mart greeter, became an overnight sensation, attracting a huge fan base of "Gleeks" after being cast as Finn Hudson in Fox's hit series Glee. It was also a breakout year for Beau Mirchoff, the Mount Doug grad who plays brooding Danny Bolen on Desperate Housewives; and Shaun Sipos, a former St. Andrew's Regional High school student and Peninsula Panthers player, signed to play David Breck in the CW's Melrose Place reboot.
Victoria-raised moviemaker Jeff Renfroe learned that you can go home again in 2009. The Spectrum grad came back to shoot the Lifetime mini-series Seven Deadly Sins and Stranger with My Face. That supernatural thriller's star, devout Roman Catholic Catherine Hicks of 7th Heaven fame, not surprisingly spent some of her time off at mass at St. Andrew's Cathedral.
One of Renfroe's Seven Deadly Sins stars was Leslie Hope, back for the first time since 1983 when she attended St. Michaels University School and made her film debut there opposite Andrew Sabiston in Paul Almond's Ups and Downs.
Which brings us to Timothy Williams, Sabiston's former SMUS classmate and collaborator on the musical Napoleon.
Williams, whose credits include scoring and conducting music for 300, composed music for parts of Watchmen this year.
His euphoria gave way to sadness over last week's loss of Roy Disney. He recalled the Mouse House scion as akin to a "beloved uncle" when Williams presented Snow White classics he arranged and scored for Disneyland's Snow White Spectacle.
"He had that old Hollywood charm, a real gentleman," recalled Williams, who'll never forget the day he spent time alone in a room with Walt Disney's nephew and a piano, and asked Roy to help him as he sang the songs.
"Without hesitation he began to sing along and we spent two hours going through the show as I played him the arrangements and new underscore," he said. "He turned to me and said 'Fantastic! You've done it proud!' "
Another loss in 2009 was David Carradine, fondly remembered as "one of the most charming and professional guys I've ever met" by assistant director David Mills, and others who worked with him on the homegrown thriller G.O.D. here in 1991.
Victoria's Cebas Visual Technology Inc. was in the news again with the release of 2012, Roland Emmerich's doomsday epic that featured eye-popping scenes of mass destruction created with the help of the firm's visual effects software.
Also in the limelight was Gord Cruse, the retired youth supervisor at Victoria's Youth Custody Centre who was one of the newsreaders and disc jockeys on the Radio Caroline ships featured in Pirate Radio.
While it's too early to tell whether we topped 2008's $7.3 million in production revenues, local film and TV activity was slow but steady. In addition to Seven Deadly Sins, four made-for-TV movies -- Hallmark's Among Friends and Freshman Father, Lifetime's Stranger with My Face and Nickelodeon's The Boy Who Cried Werewolf -- were shot here, as were four episodes of Red Letter Films' Eaux Troubles du Crime (Dark Waters of Crime). Homegrown projects included another season of Tiga Talk for Aboriginal People's Television Network.
Despite obstacles such as sweetened tax incentives elsewhere and the economic downturn, the local industry held its own.
"Holding is good in this environment," said B.C. Film Commission director Susan Croome. "There's more competition coming from other states, the dollar is high and there's a bit of a perfect storm."
She said 2009 has been "a pretty strong year" provincewide, but with a slowdown in the last quarter.
"It has a lot to do with financing," she said, noting that while large features such as Sucker Punch, Tron, The A-Team and the Twilight movies have kept crews busy, mid- and lower-budget projects haven't been as plentiful.
"The economic downturn has made it harder to finance shows in the $10-to-$35-million range."
Laura Benson, president of the board of the Greater Victoria Film Commission, was cautiously optimistic. "We're happy to have some of our local producers continue to do business here and see some producers from the mainland coming over," she said. "We're hopeful this is a good sign for the coming year."
Benson, who was re-elected as president, said she was also impressed with the dozens of local film industry workers who showed up at the commission's annual general meeting, electing a board now loaded with workers from the trenches.
And that local guy who appeared in a porn flick was Art Holbrook -- "fully clothed," he stresses. The filmmaker's cameo in The Sexual Adventures of Little Red was an integral part of My Son the Pornographer, his emotionally wrenching documentary about a father's love for his son Kole, a porn filmmaker whose rebelliousness clashes with his own conservative values.
mreid@tc.canwest.com
