A new twist on the western
In Gunless, Paul Gross plays an outlaw with a broken pistol who can't shoot his way out of problems.
Paul Gross is the closest thing to a homespun screen icon that English Canada could hope for.
He's played hero, villain and ordinary shmo in a variety of stories from north of the 49th parallel. From a stranded motorist held captive by a psychotic tow truck driver and his sex-crazed daughter in Vic Sarin's creepy Cold Comfort (1989), to a broken man turned reluctant war hero in 2008's Passchendaele, Gross has taken on just about every archetype and made it his own.
He doesn't worry about déjà vu or cliché, because the Canadian sensibility will always find the difference in a world of sameness, he says. That's why Gross was eager to pick up the spurs on Gunless, a new western from the uniquely warped mind of Canadian writer-director Bill Phillips. The film has its
Ottawa premiere tonight in a special showing at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, with Gross in attendance. It opens in movie theatres Friday.
"The western defined the frontier, with its 'wanted dead or alive' ideology," says Gross. "That control tenet really continues to define the American outlook -- and we saw that directly with George W. Bush's language regarding Iraq.
"What Bill did with Gunless is turn all those iconic touchstones of (the western frontier) on their head. He twists it up like rigatoni."
CONTINUES
Paul Gross is the closest thing to a homespun screen icon that English Canada could hope for.
He's played hero, villain and ordinary shmo in a variety of stories from north of the 49th parallel. From a stranded motorist held captive by a psychotic tow truck driver and his sex-crazed daughter in Vic Sarin's creepy Cold Comfort (1989), to a broken man turned reluctant war hero in 2008's Passchendaele, Gross has taken on just about every archetype and made it his own.
He doesn't worry about déjà vu or cliché, because the Canadian sensibility will always find the difference in a world of sameness, he says. That's why Gross was eager to pick up the spurs on Gunless, a new western from the uniquely warped mind of Canadian writer-director Bill Phillips. The film has its
Ottawa premiere tonight in a special showing at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, with Gross in attendance. It opens in movie theatres Friday.
"The western defined the frontier, with its 'wanted dead or alive' ideology," says Gross. "That control tenet really continues to define the American outlook -- and we saw that directly with George W. Bush's language regarding Iraq.
"What Bill did with Gunless is turn all those iconic touchstones of (the western frontier) on their head. He twists it up like rigatoni."
CONTINUES