The Wild Guys, an independent Canadian film featuring Beachcombers star Jackson Davies, debuted in B.C. at the Raven's Cry Theatre in Sechelt on June 16 to a less than full house. Perhaps potential audiences were still shuddering from memories of other so-called comedies made in Canada, but the modest turnout was a pity, since The Wild Guys from MVP Entertainment is one of the season's better, light, funny flicks now being launched into the troubled world of independent film distribution. Recently, the film picked up an award as Best Feature Film at the World of Comedy International Film Festival in Toronto. Davies, who also scripted the film, took the stage to explain some of the finer points of the shooting accomplished in the forest around Squamish and in the Fraser Valley. Based on an award-winning play by Andrew Wreggitt and Rebecca Shaw, The Wild Guys throws together a motley crew: a grocery clerk and guide (played by Davies), a tofu-eating, New-Ager (Hrothgar Mathews), a lawyer (Lochlyn Munro) and a Seattle tycoon (Kenneth Welsh) who travel to the Canadian wilderness for a male bonding weekend. Their doofus guide, who elects to carry only beer in his backpack, quickly gets everyone lost in the woods. They encounter a raging river, a bear and gun-toting grizzly poachers - and are forced to open up to one another in order to survive. Though lost, they find themselves, as it were. Okay, so it has a few clichés, but it's a sterling cast, directed by William Gereghty, who all have extensive credits and awards to their names, and it offers good family fun. Producer Robert Frederick, who worked on Paramount's action show MacGyver and also on The Beachcombers (he used to live in Roberts Creek), was also in attendance to drum up private investment in small movie companies like MVP that want to show quality work with no gratuitous sex or violence. The reality of the movie industry is that films usually rely on a box office star, he told the crowd. Their challenge was to make a theatrical feature film using a strong cast. Davies will be back on the Coast in July during the filming of the New Beachcombers Christmas episode that he will co-produce.
