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MIKE BEAVER - COOPERS' CAMERA
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER
For Cooper’s Camera co-writer and actor Mike Beaver serves up an unforgettable Christmas caper. As Uncle Nick, Beaver plays the drunken relative to end all drunken relatives. Interview by Bill Craske.
Ever wondered what the footage of a messy alcohol fuelled Christmas might look like circa 1985? Cooper’s Camera, a hilarious new comedy, part belligerent farce and tawdry family gathering, recalls, in unflinching detail, one long fateful day as observed from the omnipresent perspective of an ancient handi-cam. Cue the revelations, which come thick and fast. Nothing here is sacred. A pregnant woman, at bursting point, contemplates an affair; her husband later confesses his love of mannequins; the youngest son pays his cousin to remove her clothes; and his maladroit eldest brother learns that he might have been born a hermaphrodite.Gord Cooper played by Jason Jones of The Daily Show commences the debauched celebrations by spending the family’s vacation money on a used video camera – the sex tape of its previous owner left inside – and proceeds to document his subsequent unrelenting meltdown while boozed to the gills. Sporting a hideous collection of Yuletide themed Cosby sweaters, Gord is hell bent in his misguided efforts to justify his patriarchal role in front of the horrified extended family. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Enter Uncle Nick – the iceberg.Shuffling his bulk beneath an awful mullet and bushy moustache Uncle Nick is a daring and vulgar creation by Canadian actor Mike Beaver. His is an all-or-nothing turn, the equivalent of watching every party’s worst nightmare join the fray and refuse to budge. Beaver, who, among several outrageous displays of physical comedy, rolls down a snow covered hill in a wheel chair whisky in hand during one memorable juncture in the movie, says the character was inspired by a friend of his father’s.“My dad had a blowhard buddy who came over to our house every Christmas, Larry Brooks,” he recalls. “He was the guy who every single Christmas told the exact same stories over and over. ‘There we were, pants down around our ankles running through the snow,’ and everyone would laugh like they had heard it for the first time.”Beaver imbues Uncle Nick with the same infectious spirit. Despite his tall tales of sexual conquests – recalled tactlessly, what’s more, in front of the kids – Uncle Nick underpins the absurd and shambolic nature of a group of estranged relatives sharing the same oxygen. Beaver finds something endearing about idiotic behaviour and likens the scenario of family gatherings one of the most rich to tap in situational comedy.“Whether it’s abuse, alcohol or general idiocy, there’s always that layer of dysfunction that rings so truthful to any family,” he says. “Happy-go-lucky movies I don’t think are funny for starters. We didn’t want to write a happy Christmas movie. We wanted to write the most disturbing Christmas movie ever.”Mission accomplished. In collaboration with Jones, a long time friend who grew up like Beaver near the border, only on the American side, the Canadian actor insists that despite the almost improvisatory reactions produced by the actors the script made its way to the screen virtually untouched. “The actors can make a line their own as I’d expect any actor to do in the world of motion pictures,” he begins. “We let Dave Foley, the neighbour character who was flown in for a day play with it. He wanted to do a bunch of stuff.”He adds, jokingly, “We didn’t use any of it. On that day when he was there he felt like he was a star.”According to Beaver, who would rather be irreverent than sound pretentious, rehearsal time was negligible despite the complicated choreography of shooting whole sequences with multiple actors from the one point of view. The 11 day shooting schedule determined the point and go mentality for filmmaking.“We got very lucky. When you’re making a movie you’ve always got it in the back of your head, ‘oh this scene is going to stink,’ but it all came together beautifully,” Beaver recalls. “Even down to the bit when the kid throws the orange. If you recall he’s jumping on the couch and he grabs an orange off the table and he whips it at the camera? That was take one. The kid had a great arm, he hit it perfectly and we didn’t play it up for the camera. A lot of times the first takes are the best takes.”Beaver, who is also responsible for the online cult Shotgun Harley at Funny or Die, could not have been more pleased with the reaction the film has received from audiences. Whatever Cooper’s Camera might lack in budget it certainly makes up for in belly laughs.
“At the Toronto Film Festival premiere there were about 500 people in the theatre and I had to go catch a flight back to LA. So I was sitting with a lot of family of whom the characters are based,” he recalls. “Literally half way through the movie – which is all I stayed for – there was literally 40 moments of uproarious laughter. A really great comedy usually has eight big laughs. There was like 40. I was blown away by how well the audience responded.”
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