Gross takes aim in ‘Gunless’
Close your eyes and imagine the voice of the Old West American gunfighter. You’ll likely conjure up some kind of vocal sandpaper, somewhere between Sam Elliott and Kris Kristofferson.
That sound, says Paul Gross, is 95% dust.
“I wasn’t really terribly conscious at first of where it came from, other than that I love Westerns,” says Gross, who plays The Montana Kid, a displaced outlaw trying unsuccessfully to stir up a gunfight in a peaceable Canadian town in the quirky Western comedy Gunless.
“But to be honest, it was largely because it was so f---in’ dusty out there,” he says of the desert near Osoyoos, B.C. “And my throat was kind of dry all the time. I’d be sitting around reading the script and find myself talking lower. It was phenomenally dry.
“That part of B.C. is actually the northern edge of the Sonoran desert that goes all the way to California. Come the morning you’re in this pristine staggering wilderness. You ride a horse to the base camp. It was just a fun shoot.”
An absurdist film built around the “comfort myth” that Canadians have of being nice people, Gunless follows The Montana Kid as he arrives, unconscious (having escaped his own hanging back in the States) in a small town, where the only firearms are shotguns for hunting. When the local blacksmith (X-Men’s Tyler Mane) takes the trouble to shoe his horse, unasked, The Kid accuses him of horsethievery and challenges him to a gunfight.
Trouble is, the only pistol in town is short of parts, and he’ll have to wait until they can be ordered in. So he takes a job as a labourer with the local widow (Sienna Guillory) to while away the time.
Meanwhile, kicking up dust at the border is Ben Cutler (Callum Keith Rennie), the bounty hunter who nearly had The Kid in his grasp.
Those with long enough memories will recall Gross and Rennie in the ’90s as co-stars of Due South, a series about a by-the-book Mountie in Chicago who partners with a brash American cop (David Marciano for two seasons, and then Rennie).
“What was true of Due South is also true of this film,” Gross says. “It’s a clash of national mythologies, that we are nice, accommodating people. And the United States we view as being bullish and self-centred, solving everything with a gun. Neither is necessarily true, but it’s fun smashing those mythologies together. Just the whole idea of a town with no guns, and having to wait around to order a part to have a gunfight. That was the twist that made me want to do this. The idea made me laugh.”
Gunless hits the screens on the heels of Gross’s first Hollywood foray in nearly 15 years, playing The Devil in the ill-fated ABC series Eastwick (based on the movie/novel The Witches Of Eastwick). How many actors can say they’ve had a successful career almost entirely within Canada? “Me and (Gordon) Pinsent, I guess,” Gross says with a laugh.
“It was absolutely fascinating to be back in Hollywood after such a long time. Back then, the general feeling was sort of wild confidence, a braggadocio born out the fact that they were generating bottomless buckets of cash. And that’s all fallen apart. So now the overwhelming feeling is one of fear and anxiety and it kind of found its way into that show.
“It was The Witches of Eastwick, and ABC got real nervous thinking it would alienate too many people if it was about witches and magic and The Devil. So through the first I-don’t-know-how-many episodes, they kind of rinsed it of that. The thing about something like that is the Bible Belt is not going to watch The Witches of Eastwick anyway. If you have a problem with it, don’t tune in. But because they’re so fearful, they overthink everything.”
Meanwhile, up in the kinder, gentler Great White North, he says the movie business has its own very Canadian problems. “We have endless conversations among ourselves, the people who make movies. And they all seem to revolve weirdly around the paradigm of government funding policy.
“I just think it’s a bit silly. In the end, you can’t sell policy to moviegoers. They want to be entertained.”
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