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by Gordon Pinsent

  Back in Toronto I was doing guest stints in weekly series like Blue Murder, hoping something wonderful would happen. And it did. As far as director Lasse Hallström was concerned, the only place to film The Shipping News was Newfoundland, so working on it was a treat, especially for me and fellow Rock climber Bob Joy. Based on the book by Annie Proulx, the film had a wonderful cast: Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn, all chosen for the special shades and colours they could bring to the project.

  Being über-professionals, of course, they wanted to sound like the Newfoundlanders they were playing. But some found the accent more difficult than others.

  “It’s easy for you, Gordon,” Judi Dench teased me. “You’ve got the beard, you’ve got the accent, you’ve got the look … I’m the one who has to do all this work. You just did this to get a ticket home!”

  All in all, I thought they did very well. Purists on the Rock thought Julianne Moore sounded a bit too Irish, but I thought she handled it fine. Also, none of them was used to dealing with Newfoundland weather. I remember shooting one scene with Kevin Spacey, where it was spring in the morning and snow in the afternoon. About four seasons hit us before it was over. But it was great to be on a big-budget film for a change. We still struggle in this country to get films made. On Shipping News we had sushi breaks in the afternoons, and anyone who tells you they don’t enjoy having perks like that is lying. So we had a fine time, and it didn’t end there for me. At the London opening CBC commentator Ann MacMillan and I were feted by the Maple Leaf Club, a wonderful Canadian-themed pub in Covent Garden. Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, and I were all on hand for the premiere, with Harvey Weinstein and Peter O’Toole and other celebrities in attendance.

  When I think of filming The Shipping News, I remember it as an easy shoot. But of course it was home, so it seemed easier.

  Charm was doing a Noel Coward classic, Present Laughter, with Martha Burns and Allan Hawco, as her first play with Albert Schultz’s dazzling Soulpepper rep company in Toronto. She was back onstage. She was home. A few weeks later she would be in repertory with Albert Schultz and Diego Matamoros in Uncle Vanya, and a few weeks after that, with Bill Hutt and Araby Lockhart in Inherit the Wind, playing the Rev. Jeremiah Brown. At seventy-six she was a working actor in her prime. For me it was more gaps, more random guest shots, more waiting. It was time to start writing again. At the very least, it was time to get serious about what I was writing. Along the way I took a look at writing from the other side, playing Morley Callaghan in the CBC mini-series Hemingway vs Callaghan. I thought the producers did a great job of capturing that particular era, that summer in Paris and beyond. Vincent Walsh played Hemingway. Michelle Nolden, who has the most gorgeous eyes, played Hadley Hemingway. Robin Dunne played the young Morley, and I think he had more fun than I did. Callaghan was not the most exciting guy to play. Reagan Pasternak was very impressive as Zelda Fitzgerald. I was pleased to see audiences discover her for themselves a few years later on the CBC TV series Being Erica.

  Next thing we knew Charm was back in rep at Soulpepper, doing Uncle Vanya again with Albert and Diego and the Jean Genet play The Maids with Martha Burns and Nancy Palk. The years seemed to be tumbling by, and decent parts were more than ever at a premium.

  Charm and I were at a fundraiser, I can’t remember which one, when Sarah Polley came up to me to say hello.

  “Gordon,” she added, “have you read ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’?”

  “No, no, I haven’t.”

  “Well, you should pick it up,” she said. “It’s very good, you know.”

  I had known Sarah and her family since she was a child, so of course I was intrigued. Onscreen she had graduated from being a child star and the heart and soul of Road to Avonlea to playing grown-up roles in serious films – far more serious than the fluff most of her contemporaries were doing. And although she made more headlines as a social activist than as an actress, she also seemed quite intent on becoming a filmmaker herself and had already directed some intriguing short films.

  “It’s a story by Alice Munro,” she added, gently but pointedly.

  “I know, I know. I’ll pick up a copy tomorrow,” I lied.

  Meanwhile, I landed a meaty role on an episode of The Eleventh Hour, a weekly dramatic series on CTV, and was nominated for another Gemini. ACTRA named me as its recipient of our union’s 2003 Award of Excellence, and I was both pleased and chagrined.

  “Some are saying I’m not getting this most coveted award for the last performance, but to cover the amount of time I’ve spent in the industry,” I told my fellow union members that night. “And some are saying I wore diapers to my first audition … all the way to where I’m wearing them again. That’s a lot of crap!”

  The actors running ACTRA must have agreed. By that time the union had created a free resource for ACTRA Toronto members, a space where members could record auditions or rehearse on-camera and then send those tapes to producers and directors in other parts of the country. That ACTRA space was now renamed the Gordon Pinsent Studio. As if I hadn’t been flattered enough.

  The following year the Banff Television Festival’s Board of Directors voted me their Award of Excellence. As if I wasn’t paranoid enough. Here’s your trophy, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out! But I would, as always, defer to Charm, who was wise about such matters. It was Charm who assured me, and then reassured me, that this was not a conspiracy to get me to quit show business. And at times I almost believed her.

  Michael McGowan’s script for Saint Ralph had a nice bite to it, and I wanted to give Father Fitzpatrick the same teeth. I played him with authority, probably because I had just finished playing a cardinal in a 1974 thriller with Christian Slater, Molly Parker, and Stephen Rea called The Good Shepherd. That one was later released on DVD as The Confessor to avoid confusion with the 1976 Matt Damon–Robert De Niro–Angelina Jolie thriller The Good Shepherd. But I still had a good time playing Father Fitzpatrick. Then I did a bit in Paul Gross’ TV thriller H2O (our fellow Due South alumnus Callum Keith Rennie was more prominently featured) and amused myself, and hopefully the audience, by playing the president of the CBC in an episode of the screwball Comedy Network series Puppets Who Kill.

  Long before she surprised television executives with her engaging, smart series Harry’s Law, I knew Kathy Bates pretty much the same way you did, as the Academy Award–winning actress who turned James Caan into a cripple in the screen version of Stephen King’s Misery and who won another Oscar nomination for horsing around with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. I also knew she was a big deal on Broadway, where she’d originated roles in ’night, Mother and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, the latter with my friend Kenny Welsh. She had already directed half a dozen episodes of Six Feet Under and a couple of TV movies when she hired me to play a horse trainer in a movie of the week shooting in Nova Scotia called Ambulance Girl. We got along famously, of course, because by now it was clearly apparent to everyone, including me, that I was attracted to strong, independent, and outspoken women, and Kathy qualified on all fronts.

  We were dealing with a serious subject, clinical depression, but we still had a lot of fun. One morning after we finished one scene she came up to me, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “That was terrific, Gordon, just terrific.”

  Later that day, after she finished one of her scenes, I just couldn’t resist.

  “That was terrific, Kathy, just terrific!” I told her.

  “Oh, fuck off, Gordon!” she snapped.

  I’ve got to stop being so nice.

  I ended up playing the Canadian poet Al Purdy almost by accident. Yours, Al started with a CBC radio show, A Night at the Quinte, in the Glenn Gould Studio – just me and a jazz combo and Al’s poetry. It took me a while to get it, but when I got it, I hung onto every word that would make a difference. And it did.

  Onto another show business function. Sarah Polley stops by my table. It’s two
years later and, frankly, Alice Munro is not top of mind. For me, that is.

  “Gordon,” she says, “did you ever read ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’?”

  “No, Sarah,” I confess. “No, I haven’t read it.”

  “Well, read it, Gordon. It’s very good!””

  That’s all she says. But that’s all she needs to say. I now realize she wants to turn it into a film. So of course I am now very interested, because Sarah is one of those individuals who knows how to get things done, one way or another.

  At the beginning we only had the Alice Munro short story to read. I quite liked it. And Charm liked it too, well enough. I was aware there had been a couple of other major films about Alzheimer’s disease; one of them, Iris, with Jim Broadbent and my Shipping News comrade Judi Dench, had just opened. But I knew I was going to say yes anyway, because it was Sarah. And then I read her script, and Charm and I agreed that it was just too good not to do. So we would wait for Sarah’s call. I didn’t know the inner history of the project, of her struggle to get it done, to get it through Telefilm. Besides, I was trying to get my own film off the ground.

  I have always thought of CBC as my home studio, feeling much the same way about the Mother Corp as Hollywood actors in the fifties felt about MGM and Paramount. I’ve never forgotten the first time I walked into the Sumach Street rehearsal studio. The place was pulsing with its own heartbeat, with singers, dancers, actors, craftsmen spilling into the halls. It was so exciting. I loved it there. Over the years I learned, frequently the hard way, that regardless of how you feel, a studio cannot love you back. But I had been through so many CBC doors, so many CBC radio and television studios, that it always felt like home to me. Logic had little to do with it.

  Accordingly, when I finished my latest script, I submitted it to CBC. The network gave us the green light, and soon we were shooting Heyday, my celluloid memoir of those heady days in the early forties when movie stars still roamed the streets of Gander. Consequently I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the character of Terry Fleming, the young busboy played by Adam Butcher, was based almost entirely on the experiences and fantasies of young Porky Pinsent. Mark McKinney played Bob Hope, Frank Holden played Winston Churchill, and, in the role inspired by the real-life visit of Maria Montez, Leah looked every inch the movie queen. And of course I loved shooting it in Newfoundland.

  “Is it fun directing a period piece?” one of the younger actors asked me.

  “Not as much fun as being there,” I told him honestly. “It wasn’t a period piece when I was living it!”

  Peter Keleghan had shot a new pilot for CBC for a new weekly comedy called Walter Ego, about a cartoonist. The pilot, an intriguing mix of sitcom and animation, was undeniably impressive, and so was his supporting cast, led by three high-octane leading ladies: Jackie Burroughs, Diane Flacks, and Charm. By now Peter was part of the family, so we were all waiting, fingers crossed, to see if the series would get a green light. It didn’t.

  I blinked, and suddenly I was seventy-five, and Harry called to remind me that it was also the centennial of Grand Falls. Why he was really calling was to tell me the Board of Directors wanted to change the name of the Grand Falls–Windsor Region Arts & Culture Centre to the Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts. Would Charm and I attend a special Grand Falls evening in my honour?

  I said Yes.

  As if I would ever dream of saying No.

  When we arrived in Grand Falls, centennial chairperson Paul Hennessey personally escorted me to the local radio station, ostensibly to do an interview. Unbeknownst to me, the Gordon Pinsent Birthday Committee had imported two surprise guests: my best friends Larry Dane and Perry Rosemond. They got to the radio station ahead of me and were doing a bogus interview that had been set up so that I would hear it just as I was arriving. I could hear Perry saying, “Yes, yes, he’s finally come to terms with his sexuality.” And Larry, adding, “Of course, he was drinking then.” And then I could hear Perry saying, “Yes, but that’s under control now.” And right then and there I knew we were in for quite a night.

  It was a wonderful evening, made even more wonderful because we could share it with our three children, Barry, Beverly, and Leah, and with all the surviving Pinsents, most of whom showed up to celebrate with us. Charm looked dazzling in her ivory evening gown, and I was appropriately black-tied. And in addition to the Grand Falls speakers we expected to hear from, Perry and Larry got the evening off to a roaring start. Or, to be accurate, a roasting start. Neither Larry nor Perry could ever let an occasion like this go by without sharing a few well-chosen barbs.

  Larry took the podium first.

  “Gordon, old friend,” he began, “I’ve got to tell you, from where I stand – you look terrible.” He then proceeded to read a series of bogus telegrams from everyone from Shania Twain (“Gordon who?”) to Heidi Fleiss (“Gordon, because it’s your birthday, you can forget about the twenty grand you owe me”) to Kevin Spacey (“Gordon, after working with you on Shipping News I’ve decided you have more talent in your little finger than you have in your whole body”). And then he added a few zingers of his own. My favourites: “Gordon has done as much for acting as Michelangelo did for fifteenth-century computer repair.” And, “Gordon’s idea of being unfaithful is turning away from the mirror. If ego ever gets to $50 a barrel, Danny Williams will want drilling rights to Gordon’s head.” But it was his closing remark that was the most touching.

  “Gordon,” he said softly, “you are the boy who built the boat. And you are the boy who sails her.”

  Perry, a past master of deadpan stand-up, picked up where Larry left off.

  “I’m honoured to be asked to speak about Gordon Pinsent,” he began. “But this hardly seems like the time and place.”

  A respectful pause, and then laughter bubbled up. Perry smiled.

  “I’ve known Gordon for fifty years. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. And for fifty years we’ve done absolutely nothing for each other.”

  Perry then proceeded to recite a verbal biography of my existence. “July 12, 1930. Gordon is born. His big brother Harry is ecstatic. For the rest of his life, Harry Pinsent will seem normal!”

  He also had some well-chosen words for Grand Falls, still not the easiest place to get to. “I first came to Grand Falls about forty years ago, and I got here this time the same way Gordon did – via Kingston, Moncton, Gander, Steubenville, Costa Rica, and by mule team from Deer Lake!”

  The first time he visited, he said, “my reaction to Grand Falls was probably much like yours – too many damn Pinsents!” Which, as you can imagine, sent a room full of Pinsents into gales of laughter.

  Barry and Leah continued the roast. Leah informed the crowd that I was a good but strict father. “I wore this cleavage for my dad,” she quipped, a little dig about the rigid rules I had set for her teenage years. And Barry turned in a boffo stand-up performance. “After this is all over,” he said, “there is a good chance we may break this old bugger when we give him the bumps!”

  He also noted that I had received “lifetime achievement award after lifetime achievement award after lifetime achievement award. Oh yes, and I’ve got a lot more to do,” he added, mimicking me. “A man your age just can’t take a hint. Do we have to pry your honours from your palsied hands??”

  An unexpected highlight was an email from the Yukon sent by an old friend who couldn’t make it to Grand Falls. Shelagh Rogers and I shared a special and unusual history. One fall morning in 2001 I was her guest on her CBC Morning show, when I saw her eyeline shift from me to a television monitor outside the studio. I turned slightly, to see if her director was telling her to wrap it up, and then I saw the smoke pouring out of the World Trade Center towers. It was September 11, and Shelagh had just seen the second plane crash into the second tower. That moment in time had given us an inexplicably unique link, and we have been fast friends ever since. So I was very touched by her electron
ic greeting:

  Brown is the new black.

  In Vancouver real estate, 500K is the new 100K.

  And in terms of age, 50 is the new 40, and 75 is the new 55.

  But oh, there is a man who time does not age, with the same aptitudes and appetites he had in his 30s. And there’s no mistaking his face, his voice, his presence.

  He has this ability to make everything he touches more beautiful.

  When he enters the room the temperature goes up, the laughter grows deeper, and the stories get better.

  His art is art, and he is my favorite work of art.

  He has led us and all his creative outlets to a greater understanding of what it means to be human – and how wonderful that can be.

  Gordon, I just got off the plane in Whitehorse, or I would be there to say thank you for 75 years of you, and for all you have given us of you. And if I was there you would certainly get a big bosomy hug from me.

  Dear Gordon – with you in the room, our revels now never end.

  I love you. Happy birthday.

  Shelagh

  And just when we figured nothing could top that, Beverly, who was not scheduled to speak, approached the podium and surprised everyone, including herself, by asking if she could sing her tribute to her father.

  Charm and I both knew, from talking with Barry, that Beverly had sung professionally, but we had never heard her warble a single note.