We shot that chilly wedding sequence in the forest outside of Squamish, British Columbia. Squamish had a population of about seventeen thousand people and, as far as I could tell, only one hotel capable of housing a film crew. The production company rented out the whole place.
The hotel was set back from the road and surrounded by grassy fields. My room was on the lobby level and faced the back of the grounds, overlooking a little lake and thick woods that started about a football field’s length from my window. It was probably quite pretty in the summer, or the deep winter, but muddy early spring gave it a foreboding quality. The only book I brought with me, I swear on my life, was The Shining.
It was a large hotel, much larger in fact than our crew needed, so the place was eerily empty. Renting out every room seemed like overkill, but by the time we made Breaking Dawn, the Twilight-mania had reached critical mass. Certain precautionary measures had to be taken for the security of the cast and crew. So it was just us. The lonely patients of an expansive asylum.
At least twice a day, someone I didn’t recognize would be in the lobby, getting kicked out as they protested that they really were waiting for a friend. The hotel staff knew no one was staying there but the cast and crew, and none of us had invited friends up, because no one wants to come to Squamish.I
I struck up a conversation with the receptionist and she said they were trying to stop people before they got onto the grounds, but the more innocuous-looking ones slipped through. The paparazzi, on the other hand, knew that legally they had to stay past the end of the long drive. She pointed down the road to five black SUVs, parked and running, just at the entrance to the hotel. Ho. Ly. Shit. I hadn’t even noticed them before!
I stayed in my room. The paps didn’t care about me—they were there for the Kristens and Robs of the world—but it was creepy knowing they were out there. Inside, I had nothing to do. The internet didn’t work and the TV was . . . Canadian TV, so against my better judgment, I read The Shining.
Our wrap party was that weekend. I felt like I hadn’t really earned the right to go to the wrap party, considering I showed up to film my entire role in the last two weeks, but I was happy to get out of the room. The wrap party was at the restaurant in the hotel, thirty feet from my room. Fair enough, and still counts! I had a few drinks, heard some stories about paparazzi caught sneaking around the back field, and after a while someone offered me some weed.
The paranoia came quickly, so I excused myself. Thank god my room was on the same floor; I wouldn’t have made it through an elevator ride without having a full-on claustrophobic breakdown. I got into my room and double-locked the doors. Then it hit me that being on the ground floor, overlooking those ominous woods, was not ideal in my current state, either. I couldn’t decide if having the curtains closed or open was more terrifying. Paranoia is one thing, but when people are actually watching you, it’s hard to talk yourself off a ledge. I paced manically across the room, alternately looking through the peephole and the curtains on the back window. Why had I smoked weed in this creepy hotel? Why had I smoked weed after reading The Shining all day? Why did I read The Shining in this creepy hotel?!
I woke up the next morning to find all my luggage and a few pieces of furniture piled against the door.
Chat, Die, Repeat
The best part of Breaking Dawn (and maybe the whole series) was when we shot a dream sequence in which I was a dead body. It was so much fun! And inside a room-temperature studio! Kristen’s character has a nightmare in which she imagines she is marrying her beloved—totally normal, nothing weird going on—only to discover that she is standing on a veritable funeral pyre of her closest friends and family! (Man. Those movies got dark.)
Before shooting, everyone in the scene had to line up in their perfectly white dream-sequence outfits and get sprayed down with fake blood. That was someone’s job for the day, to be fake-blood-spray-down guy. Each of us then climbed into a preordained nook in an enormous pile of bloody mannequins. My nook was toward the top of the pile, near the happy couple, giving the impression that I was just underfoot. It was actually pretty comfortable, and I chatted with Kristen and Rob from my prostrate position. Then we’d hear “rolling” and “action” and I’d hold my breath and fix my eyes on one spot. Then I’d go back to chatting with Kristen, occasionally making sure that the actors pressed around and under me weren’t too uncomfortable. The spray-down had apparently not been thorough enough, and after a few takes, a stocky crew member in hiking boots climbed up the pile and poured blood on us from a bucket. It was so awesome.
Covered in blood, but her foundation is flawless. Movies make sense.
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I. Beautiful country up there, I highly recommend a visit. Perhaps with a non–Stephen King novel.
big breaks
Up in the Air, a.k.a. Everything Is Amazing, Everything Is on Fire