SHAWN Williamson, co-founder of Brightlight Pictures, is working on a low-budget period piece based on a video game about the love and wrath of a half-human, half-vampire.
The director and scourge of the geek community, Uwe Boll, is planning to decorate a set with human blood-fountains played by real Romanian prostitutes, but that's not on Williamson's mind.
After the movie is finished, Williamson will go on to produce the hit comedy 50/50 with Seth Rogen, as well as movies with Hollywood icons like Al Pacino and Robert Redford, but that isn't on his mind, either.
On that cold morning in Romania, Williamson only has one thought on his mind: the star actor is big, drunk, and ready to fight.
"Suddenly I'm in the middle of Bucharest with this showdown with a star actor who's had too much to drink at ten o'clock in the morning," Williamson says.
The incident began as a tiff between actors and escalated into a stare-down that stopped the movie.
Boll and the actor had a brief conversation, which somehow ended with Williamson on the wrong end of the type of sour-mash breath that can strip the spots from a lynx.
"He pushed me across the set and wanted to engage in a fight," Williamson says. "It turns out Uwe had blamed me.
"The entire set has stopped," Williamson says. "You've got a crew of 100 watching this exchange.
"I had to talk very, very fast and very quickly to get out of this and it ended up with him hugging me and telling me literally, in quotes, 'I love you, man.'"
The Lynn Valley native was first stirred by cinema as a child watching the imperial cruiser fill the movie screen in Star Wars and that rubbery shark threatening to swallow chunks of celluloid in Jaws.
Although he exhibited no talent as an actor, Williamson found himself propelled to the theatre department at Argyle secondary.
Working as a sound and lighting technician in high school, the eventual producer of the slugploitation sensation Slither earned his start by stage managing musicals like Ain't Misbehavin' at the Arts Club Theatre.
"It was an amazing place to start," he says of the theatre. After seven years of working on plays and musicals, Williamson was lured to TV by the wiles of a lamb.
Before Dolly became the first cloned mammal in the world, Lamb Chop, voiced by Shari Lewis, may have been the world's best-known sheep.
"Working on the Shari Lewis Show at a really young age was marvellous," Williamson says, noting the ventriloquist's experience as a TV pioneer and her appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.
"There's an old lesson in film: it's shut up, listen and learn, and I learned that from her," he says, quickly adding: "She never said that."
"I don't know that much of my career was conscious, often it was accidental," he says, discussing his transition to feature films.
Williamson is the executive producer of The Company You Keep, a recentlywrapped thriller about a former political radical being chased by the FBI after years of living underground.
The film was directed by Oscar-winner Redford, and features a cast of Hollywood luminaries including Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper and Terrence Howard.
"I never thought I'd work in film, because no film industry existed here," he says.
Williamson is currently laying the groundwork for comedian Brent Butt's first
feature film, which will be a rare movie shooting in Vancouver as Vancouver.
As a member of the Capilano University Film Advisory board, Williamson says he's keen to see Vancouver remain a hub for the movie industry.
"There's been a brain drain of producers moving to Toronto in the last couple of years, which is unfortunate. We need to stem that," he says. "It's training producers long-term that will create a sustainable industry in Canada, because it's us, ultimately, that will create the work."
One of the producers who keeps productions in Vancouver may be Williamson's son.
"He thinks it's destiny," Williamson says, explaining the 50-question career survey that determined his son's ideal profession would be film producer.
"He only sees the fun parts," Williamson says. "He shows up on set, meets the actors, gets to hang out and eat a lot. . . . He doesn't always see the underbelly."
That includes shadiness on the business side of things, he says. "The one bit of advice is: Make sure your contract's signed before you shoot. That, I learned, on a spectacular film I made that didn't end well."
Due to ongoing litigation, Williamson couldn't name the film, but says it was a hard lesson to learn.
"I've never been screwed, ever, and I've produced 90some odd films, and I've only ever really worked with people who were true to their word, and I found one producer who wasn't."
As co-chairman of Brightlight Pictures, Williamson produced the thriller 88 Minutes, the horror film White Noise and Gunless, a western comedy.
While the films are diverse, the key for the production company is to make films that translate to countries around the globe.
"We say in quotes, 'Speak American,'" Williamson explains. "So we can create films that are Canadian that don't feel Canadian. . . We're proudly Canadian, but there can be a feel to certain Canadian films, that means it doesn't translate internationally."
While his movies have travelled with ease, Williamson hasn't always fared so well.
"I almost got arrested in Bulgaria at one point, four in the morning, driving to watch a Lakers game with a financier I was working with, and I don't even really like basketball," he says. "That's not the fun part of producing."
Cruising through Sofia, Bulgaria with producer Avi Lerner, best known for his work on The Expendables, the two movie magnates found themselves on the side of the road at the behest of two of Sofia's finest.
"In my head, it was 'I'm going to be in a Bulgarian prison tonight,'" Williamson says, recalling the officers who wore guns hanging from their belts like they were scheduled to storm the OK Corral.
"The driver got lost and we got pulled over," he explains. "I think it was a shakedown."
Anxious to see the beginning of the basketball game, Williamson says Lerner asked him to intervene.
"He turned to me at one point and said, 'Shawn, make them go away.' I thought, 'What does that mean?'"
Much like his showdown in Romania, the standoff in Bulgaria ended peacefully, according to Williamson.
"They were nice ultimately," he says of the police. "I don't know if the driver paid them money or what he did, but they eventually drove us to the bar, which was two blocks away."
Defusing difficult situations has become routine for Williamson.
"The stage management training that I got from the Arts Club . . . has made a big difference in my career, because you end up becoming quite a diplomat," he says.
Although he has regrets in his career, (Williamson turned down the chance to produce the teen-pregnancy comedy Juno), his success may be due to his willingness to fade into the background.
"At the end of the day, the only things that matter on film are the actors, the script and the director. Everything should be there to support them, which is a lesson that you're taught in theatre," he says.
"The good thing about doing a lot, and getting old, is that you end up with some great stories. I've been fortunate to make movies all around the globe, on most continents, and you meet some amazing people and work with some amazing talent."
