In the new Canadian comedy Gunless, Paul Gross plays an American gunslinger that shockingly finds himself in a sleepy Canadian town where there isn’t even a working pistol for a good ol’ shootout. Clearly, a unique twist on the American Western, Gunless will surely attract a few fans of the genre when it opens in theatres April 30th.
I had the chance to sit down with writer and director Bill Phillips and here are a few random thoughts about the classic Western genre, why living in Los Angeles won’t steer him away from making Canadian movies and the challenge of shooting Gunless in our nation’s hottest, most arid region - Osoyoos, British Columbia:
“Kind of like horror, (Westerns are) such a specific genre its almost like you have to check the boxes off and make sure you have a fist fight and a town with dust and all these things that make a classic Western. And the notion of being able to put those together and have fun with it at the same time was very attractive to me.”
“It was either a Canadian goes to the wild west – I’m not sure how funny that is – but bringing an American up to Canada…..the fact that we have a very different feel and we settled the west in a different way and the Canadian identity is so much different I thought that would be a lot of fun.”
“There is something about taking those iconic elements (such as saloons, showdowns, etc)…these are all things you find in the classic American Western. You drag that north of the 49th parallel and start playing with it, bringing in the Canadian elements which are sometimes – we can be goofy people – it begs comedy.”
“I’m not breaking the doors down (in Hollywood) because I’m making films in Canada and it’s a great place to make movies…look what we’ve done with Gunless – we’ve made a big Western with horses and gunfights and a massive scope that would match any Western that was made in the United States and I get to make it up here and I get to be a Canadian about it – why would I change that?”
“Making a Western, it’s a blast. You got a crew of fifty people all playing the game. We’re playing cowboys and that is a lot of fun, I wouldn’t take that back at all.”
“(Shooting in Osoyoos), you are living in the West a little bit. That town was our home base and it was a rugged town and even going to lunch was a bit of a deal. Now it was only the tiniest taste of what pioneers had to go against but working in that environment was just a challenge. It was also beautiful and it was well worth it. Anywhere you pointed the camera, it looked great and it looked like a Western.”
“You’d have to wash your hair two-times to get all the dust out. I don’t think anybody got all the dust out of their lungs until two months after the shoot was done….(at least) it wasn’t asphalt dust, it was nature’s dust.”
