The Weekend Australian
February 19, 2005

Lee Mylne

Hollywood has come to Newfoundland. Actually, it’s been and gone. But the smell of greasepaint lingers in the village of Trinity, where two movies were shot in as many years, giving the locals a taste of fame and its trappings.

Author Annie Proulx may be persona non grata for her portrayal of Newfoundlanders in The Shipping News, but actor Kevin Spacey was deemed a good guy for his willingness to put his credit card on the bar of not one but three pubs in the area. By the time he’d arrived to shoot the film of Proulx’s book, the trend had been set by local-boy-made-good, Daniel Payne who played one of the lead roles in the Canadian mini-series Random Passage, filmed near Trinity the year before.

The canny locals have made a living out of it. The sets for Random Passage are still there, and you can hear all the inside gossip from tour guide Fred Rex as you wander round the set. We arrive in pelting rain, and slip and slide across the grassy slopes, dotted with pioneer-style log cabins, perched on the wild rugged coastline above Trinity Bay. Fred’s in costume, although he confesses he was “too old and too ugly” for even work as an extra and relegated to the airport shuttle run for the stars. He’s making up for it now, with a gift of storytelling shared by many of his countrymen.

Playwright Des Walsh – who also wrote the screenplay for Random Passage - has even turned the visiting celebrities into characters in his Garland House- The Second, which combines a bit of local history with the chance to take a sly dig at the movie world.

We run five minutes from our B&B through driving rain to arrive bedraggled at the theatre for an evening performance, and are rewarded with belly-laughs as Trinity’s Rising Tide Theatre company takes a shot at fame, Hollywood, and even their own annual historical pageant.

On stage, a highly-strung starlet called Judith struggles to get the “Newfie” accent right, even with a dialogue coach to help her…and we know why as our ears are not always quick enough for this brogue.

“Was that part based on Julianne Moore?” my companion asks director Donna Butt after the show.

“Of course!” laughs a bystander.

“And you should see what they do to me on closing night,” says Butt, who founded the theatre company 26 years ago.

Even if the locals are less than happy with her, it’s easy to see why Proulx wrote her Pulitzer winner. One of the joys of a visit to Newfoundland is that the people are born story-tellers, and every tale is a potential novel.