Time flies when you're making a movie, eh?  Day Five/Week One is over, at least for me.  This morning we shot the scene with my favorite speech.  I needed some quick basic retraining when they decided to have me use a rifle in the scene.  I thought I'd have a little time with the gun wrangler before the hunting scenes, but it worked out.  I creeped myself out with my delivery.

With a few minutes to check e-mail I read that USAirways had withdrawn their offer for Delta.  I guess they were afraid of having their luggage lost too.  Sorry, "delayed."

I was on the set most of the last two days (12-hour days, plus an hour for lunch and dinner at the end), and got to see some of the dailies (shot on Super 16 and transferred to digital for editing), which look awesome.  It's funny how pissed off everybody is at the D.P. (John Lesavage) all day when he's being finicky about lighting and camera placement, and how he becomes a hero when they see the result of his work.

Got some good news yesterday.  The lawyer said my salary wasn't high enough to require Canadian withholding.  I don't know if that means I'll have to file Canadian taxes at the end of the year and pay the 23 percent then or what.

The best assistance I've ever had in understanding a character came about completely by accident.  Last Sunday, the morning after my arrival, I went to a buffet breakfast at the ski lodge where the film company's housing me.  There I was able to observe a group of snowboarders, exactly the kind of young men my character, Ivan, tortures and eats in "Scarce."  They were easy to observe because I, being older, was invisible to them.  (Ironically, one was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with The Who, a band of "M-m-m-m-my Generation.")  Watching them, I began to understand how Ivan could see them as useless for anything but food.

I start each day of the shoot having my teeth painted a hideous brownish-yellow by one of "The Gore Brothers," our special effects makeup guys who also made some of the disgusting prosthetics and edible props.  A local dentist, one of the film's investors, had molded acrylic tooth coverings for us cannibals, but we weren't able to talk normally with them in place.

Yesterday I got to pour some of the Gores' "meat juice" on two of my victims, Thom Webb and writer-director John Geddes.  These two guys spent a large part of Week One in their underwear suspended from pipes they were chained to in our cold dungeon set, frequently being brutalized.

I've got to hand it to Geddes (when I'm not throwing it at him).  He's the epitome of a leader who wouldn't ask his troops to do anything he wouldn't do himself.  Watching him hanging there, shivering and in real pain, I felt sorry for him but thought of a couple of directors I'd pay to see in a similar situation.

This production has at least three Johns, three Jeffs, two Jasons, a Jesse, a Jackie, a Josh and a Jake (Jacob).  And speaking of J's – but that's a subject for a more private blog.

For all the advance planning a lot of things change every day.  The remaining schedule will be reworked over the weekend.  Apparently the new plan is to shoot the remaining interiors next week and save the exteriors for the following week, perhaps to keep everyone relatively healthy as long as possible.

As for me, I'll spend the weekend catching up on the rest of my life, exploring the nearby town, learning lines for next week and maybe watching some of the DVDs I brought along.

It's been a great first week.  If I'd known how nice Canadians are I might have dodged the draft back in the day and become one of them.  As it is I could live in Canada – if they'd move it someplace warmer.

As Sarah Miles says in "White Mischief," it's "another fucking beautiful day" here in Collingwood, Ontario.  Not as many skiers going past my window as on the weekend, but enough to remind me I'm not home in East Atlanta.

With so much snow outside, and a few more inches fell overnight, you'd think Canadians wouldn't be so concerned about global warming; but there seems to be a greater degree of environmental awareness here than in the U.S.  Of course an indie film crew isn't representative of the general populace, but I've seen some local media too.

Finally got my luggage last night.  It's amazing how wonderful brushing your teeth and putting on clean underwear can feel after three days!  I'm thinking of removing my name from the petition to stop the takeover of Delta Airlines, if that's the best they can do.

Doing the research I should have done before signing on, I found the company's website: http://www.twodoorfourdoorpictures.com/  The poster is admittedly a ripoff from "Misery" they used in their fundraising, and will be changed.  The site at this point is geared more toward potential investors, but a full film site is planned during the post-production period.

Production, after two days, is a little behind schedule.  Shocking for an independent film, I know.  I've had one scene pushed back each day, so I didn't get my first shot in until the second day.  It involved brutalizing two of my victims, including one of the directors, who was pleased that I threw an extra punch at him and yanked him by the hair.

Tomorrow, first thing (more or less), a dialogue scene left over from today with my co-cannibal, Wade (played by Toronto's Gary Fischer).  In an early draft of the script he had been my son.  Now we're not sure whether we're brothers or "Brokeback Cannibals" living together in cannibial bliss.  Don't worry – character development will not be this movie's long suit.

Got better acquainted with some crew members during down time today.  As usual when meeting foreigners I get my political feelings out in the open before they can hate me for being American.  If any of them like W more than I do they don't say so out loud.

Another of my lines for charming Canadians: "Why should you have a national inferiority complex?  You gave us Leonard Cohen, k.d. lang, Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley, and we gave you two George Bushes and a Madonna."

Forgot to mention in the first post that during the week before "Scarce" shooting started came the exciting news from Sundance that "The Signal," in which I played a small part, sold to Magnolia Pictures for $2.3 million after its midnight premiere.

Next year, maybe "Scarce" will sell at Sundance; but at the moment the filmmakers are hoping to get it into this year's Toronto Film Festival.

I peered through the curtains Sunday morning to see people skiing past my window.  Toto, we're not in Atlanta anymore.

Two weeks ago this would all have sounded like a dream, yet here I am in Canada, on location for my first top-billed role in a feature.  Fellow actors, don't let anyone tell you it can't happen.

It started, for me, with a craigslisting for "Villainous Hicks."  Fortunately Atlanta's not as provincial – or is it progressive? – as Philadelphia and other cities where the listing was pulled because of objections to the H-word.

So I submitted the usual stuff and got an unusual response: they wanted me!  Shooting was to start in two weeks, on January 29.  John Geddes, one of the two (with Jesse Cook) writer-producer-director-actors, called to discuss it.  Hearing his two-line description of the film, "Scarce," I responded undiplomatically, "It sounds like 'Wolf Creek.'"  He agreed there were similarities but didn't withdraw the offer.

There followed a few furious days of script-reading and decision-making.  One speech, in which my character, Ivan, relates how he became a cannibal, sold me on the project.  So did Geddes' professionalism.  For a young indie filmmaker he seemed to have his bases covered; and he used the same lawyer as Atom Egoyan.

Later Geddes and Cook would spend most of their last five days before filming working up a shot list so they wouldn't have to waste their creative energy on set doing the basics.  I also learned they had spent a year raising their budget, in the six figures, before going into production.

Their offer, reviewed by my agent at Houghton although she wouldn't officially get involved with a non-union project, was generous and well thought-out.  They would pay me in U.S. dollars, worth about 15 percent more than Canadian, but I would have to pay taxes in both countries (23 percent in Canada, according to information I found online).

There were a few other things to work out.  I had agreed just before Geddes' offer arrived to work in Atlanta on Craig Vogel and John Grubb's "Our Perfect Lives: The Death of Rocco," on January 28, and Geddes was hoping I could come up a few days early.  I got the other shoot moved up to the morning of the 27^th and flew out that afternoon, keeping everybody happy.

Incidentally, the phrase "on fire tonight" was in both scripts by both pairs of young writer-directors who offered me roles the same day.  Too much coincidence!

Then there was a backache I aggravated by walking in the MLK March just before the offers came pouring in.  I put off final acceptance of the Canadian offer until I saw my chiropractor that Friday.  Although I was in pretty bad shape at the time he encouraged me to take the job, perhaps because I told him I'd be able to afford to pay him if I did.

Over the next week my back improved ever so slightly each day, but three adjustments later I could barely stand erect or walk without a limp.

Still I got through the Saturday morning shoot, which was a blast, and made it to the airport.  There I learned of a strange Delta policy: If a ticket is purchased within five days of a flight, you have to present the credit card it was purchased with upon check-in.  Since the card in question was in Canada they issued a refund and I had to purchase a new ticket on the spot. 

That's not the worst.  My bag didn't make it to Toronto when I did, and when they located it the next day Delta couldn't deliver it to our location, 100 miles North near Collingwood, because the weather was too bad.  It reportedly made it to Geddes' house Monday morning.

The good news is that Geddes and Cook met me at the airport Saturday night and drove me to Collingwood, giving us about two hours to get acquainted.  As we had discussed, they would need my help in getting the "Canadianisms" out of their speech, eh?  For obvious commercial reasons the story is set in the U.S.  They're returning to their New Jersey home from a Colorado snowboarding vacation when they get stranded near my rural Pennsylvania cabin.

The better news is that my back improved about 500 percent between Saturday night and Sunday morning, even without the pain medication in the bag Delta had misplaced.  I've still got some occasional pain but I'm pretty functional and can at least fake whatever the role calls for.

It's Monday afternoon and I'm waiting to shoot my first scene, where I throw one of my victims down a flight of stairs.  I haven't yet gotten to know everyone in the crew of 30 – some from Collingwood, some from Toronto – but like indie filmmakers everywhere they seem like good people.

Well, I'd better get ready for my scene.  I have to figure out how to make "You're gonna know what real pain is" sound nasty.  Acting is such hard work.