Drunk Alien Clears Hurdles

Rob Stefaniuk is more than unapologetic about Phil the Alien's low-budget short-comings. He's proud of them. "This movie is a celebration of missed opportunities," he told the Georgia Straight during a recent visit to Vancouver, where he had come to promote the film, which opens here on Friday (March 11).

"There was not a lot of preparation or care or thought put into the film," he says, adding just enough pause to show he's kidding. Stefaniuk is looking over a sunny street scene as he surveys the town from his perch in a downtown meeting room. "No, wait; that would be going against the idea of what we're doing here."

In fact, he is willing to admit that the film-like E.T., about a wayward outworlder who makes an emergency landing on Earth-has a certain, uh, provisional quality to it.

"It was all very fast. We came up with the idea-an alcoholic alien meets a talking beaver!-came up with the script, and then we were immediately into preproduction, but still with no money. Some things you get lucky on, some not so much."

One reason for the hurry was that the first-time feature maker saw an opportunity to exploit-er”¦utilize- the talents of his brother, Ron Stefaniuk, a veteran special-effects expert and creature designer. With his bro available for a limited time, and with the knowledge that a sci-fi spoof would bring in a certain amount of investment, the director knew he'd have to start with the weird stuff and move out from there.

"Well, there was the alien on stilts, and the talking beaver, a spaceship, night shots, and I knew things would have to fly," he says, referring to one impressive sequence in which beer nuts fill the air and stay there. "So we had to work that out in advance. But other than that, everything was subject to location availability or actor availability, so we pretty much just had to shoot whenever we could."

There were numerous hurdles. Stefaniuk had already hired Joe Flaherty, Graham Greene, and Nicole de Boer to play supporting roles. (Ubiquitous comic Seán Cullen has the funniest scene, as an overly talkative alien who no longer fits in.) But the director went against his own first impulse by casting himself in the lead. That would be Phil-short for Filthy Alien-who's handed hard-distilled "medicine" on his first day in rural northern Ontario-after which he just fits right in. Plus, he can make stuff move with his mind, which is always good for a drink down at the local pub.

"Of course, I wanted to get someone famous. When you're going low-budget, that's just the smartest way to go in terms of keeping your film out of total obscurity. But the fact is that I knew I'd be available all the time. And I'd be cheap. It's kind of a weird part, in that the character is drunk for half the film. So you'd have to play him a certain way or you'd lose the audience."

Previously, the spiky-haired 33- year-old had worked as a film editor, a character actor in TV series (such as Monk and Street Legal) and independent films (Blown Away, The Law of Enclosures), and as a voice man on cartoon shows like My Dad the Rock Star. Still, he knew wearing this many hats on one set could be problematic. (He also went on to edit and write music for the film.)

"The only thing I insisted on, though, was that I not be on-camera for the first day of shooting, 'cause that would just be too difficult."

Conversely, he wasn't too worried about giving the film a lot of meaning. Still, the movie is concerned with current modes of Canadian masculinity.

"I knew that underneath the comedy I wanted it to be about an innocent person lost in a strange, slightly exaggerated world, a place where everyone's drinking, everyone's got guns, and everyone's praying for a quick death. Other than that, you're reading way to much into it. But it's true, there is all that stuff about being a tough guy and territorial attitudes. There are also prostitutes and female assassins, but those are issues I'm only grappling with now."

In any case, Stefaniuk sees his creation as a presexual creature baffled by the gender roles he's shown. Maybe that's the reason the movie has no nudity.

"No, that's not it," he says with a snort. "You try paying people what I paid and try getting 'em to take their clothes off!"

It also has an amusingly skewed view of how Canada would appear to a being who doesn't know a thing about the country. Which would explain the Rush tune on the soundtrack.

Next up, Stefaniuk is playing the title character in Bart Fargo, from the legendary Don Shebib. And he's developing another story to direct, this one about a "rock 'n' roll vampire". It's called Suck. So much for innocence.

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