The Divide filmmakers take rare route from A to Z

on Wednesday, the producers of Xavier Gens' The Divide unveiled a minute-long teaser-trailer for the post-apocalyptic thriller, cut together from footage shot in the first day of Winnipeg shooting at the Millennium Centre on Main Street.

Wow.

The trailer depicts something going very wrong in an old building in New York City, where a handful of people run to a basement room to escape the destruction wrought by an apparent nuclear blast.

Even more impressive than the teaser is the set constructed on the Manitoba Production Centre soundstage, designed by Tony Noble (whose credits include last year's sci-fi film Moon), with art direction by local talent Gordon Wilding.

It's an impressive 2,000-square-foot labyrinth of basement rooms, including the shabby domicile of Michael Biehn's character Mickey, a janitor with a past as a survivalist (and, judging by some of the posters pinned to the wall, a white supremacist).

Director Gens offers a cursory tour of the set, showing off the fallout shelter's secret nooks. But he is clearly distracted by the business at hand: getting the film made on time within a tight 31-day shooting schedule.

The cast is a blend of seasoned pros such as Biehn, Courtney B. Vance and Rosanna Arquette as well as comparatively new talents including Lauren German (Hostel Part II) and Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes).

Producer Ross Dinerstein says the cast is especially pumped by the prospect of shooting the film in chronological sequence.

"Michael Biehn has been making films for 35 years and this is the first time in his career that he's ever shot a film in sequence," Dinerstein says. "It's very attractive for the actors to shoot from page one to the end."

Seconding that emotion is Ventimiglia (who politely requests that we keep to the subject of the movie and not "other stuff" such as the recent cancellation of ).

"Shooting in sequence is an incredibly rare thing and it's an amazing opportunity to be given," Ventimiglia says. "My character completely unravels in the film and suffers from radiation. He's irradiated, basically, so imagine him rotting from the inside out.

"So to go through that physical transformation in order of it happening, for Xavier and for everybody, it's such an advantage as opposed to going back and forth and shooting clean one day and a mess the next," Ventimiglia says. "It helps us out."

That decision also accommodates the weight loss that will be endured by most of the cast as they live in the close living quarters.

"We've all signed on," says actor Vance, perhaps best known for his role as assistant D.A. Ron Carver on the series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

"A nutritionist came by and talked to everyone and started us on a diet plan."

Vance says the film may be small by Hollywood studio standards, but it's exciting.

"These small little projects are the ones that surprise you and surprise everyone," he says. "Xavier, we love him. He's an actor's director and he's very well prepared and his team is well prepared.

"And we've only got 30 days so we're crankin'," Vance says. "We've got to make our days."

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 22, 2010 C11