Winnipeg a character all its own onscreen

Watch something shot in Winnipeg with a Winnipegger, and you will be treated to a live running commentary. We can’t help playing “spot the location.”

When we recognize that field/statue/mall/intersection/theatre, we have to say it. It’s practically civically mandated.

A friend told me she was at a film screening at which people literally applauded footage of the Mint. (That likely would have been 2005’s The Constant Gardener.)

Being excited about seeing Portage Place Mall at Christmastime in the trailer for Violent Night 2 — and then exclaiming, to your husband, “Oh, look, it’s Portage Place Mall at Christmastime!” — is not, I will admit, particularly cosmopolitan behaviour. In fact, I could be accused of suffering from a mild case of Podunkitis.

Podunkitis, as I have bristled before, refers to the Very Winnipeg Thing of getting excited every time a famous actor even utters the word Winnipeg — especially if it’s just the cursory “It’s cold there” mention on the late-night circuit, suggesting, to me, that those people didn’t really leave the set or their hotel rooms.

To wit: Sinners actor Michael B. Jordan saying “I don’t not love Winnipeg” got news coverage from at least three major local news outlets.

I will say, the flavour of the Celebrity Winnipeg Mention has sweetened, as of late, with actors such as Jon Hamm and Bob Odenkirk actually getting out and experiencing the city — including, yes, in the winter. And look: it’s always nice when people see what you see about your hometown, especially when you live in a city.

Which is also why I’ve been absolutely flooded with pride watching some recent series shot here.

Netflix’s adaptation of Little House on the Prairie, which arrived on the streaming service this summer, is an absolute showpiece for a rural Manitoba summer. The grasses gently bending in the breeze, the golden solar flares, the painted skies: the landscape became a character all its own, as it did in the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder on which the series is based.

Similarly, American Hostage, the eight-part miniseries starring Hamm, makes an argument for Winnipeg in the winter. The city’s stock of brutalist architecture — including Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre — gives it not only a sense of place but tone.

Winnipeg and Manitoba rarely play themselves onscreen; Manitoba is 1860s Kansas in Little House on the Prairie and Winnipeg is 1970s Indianapolis in American Hostage, but it’s also guest-starred as so many other places in so many other movies and series shot here. It can be cosy and brutal and desolate and stunning. It can be stark and brooding and warm and quaint.

The appeal of our province and its capital is easy to understand through the lens of film and TV crews, but I also think it helps us see where we live through fresh eyes. And some of these locations — such as Portage Place — will only live onscreen.

There is this persistent idea I encounter online that Winnipeg is not beautiful. I happen to disagree with that — have you watched the seasons change in the crown of an elm canopy? — but I think Winnipeg offers something more interesting than beauty. It offers character.

Which is perhaps why it can play so many.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com