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Windspeaker.com Staff
With files from Dustin McGladrey, CFWE-FM
Actor Tom Jackson is heading to British Columbia to shoot the film “Hard Powder” with Liam Neeson after Parks Canada denied the film’s production team access to Banff and Jasper national parks.
The film begins shooting on March 20 in a variety of locations. A casting call for extras, beginning in April, was put out by Andrea Brown Casting Hardpowder@xtracasting.com for the Fernie and Cranbrook areas. If you are interested email a photo/ snapshot and your contact information.
The film’s premise is that Neeson plays an honest snowplough driver whose son is murdered by a local drug kingpin.
Jackson was not impressed with the decision of someone “somewhere in the make-up of Parks Canada” to “pull the plug” on the film’s locations in the parks, based on what they read in a scenario, “not the script, but the scenario”, Jackson told Dustin McGladrey of CFWE-FM, the sister station of Windspeaker.com.
And while it’s too late for “Hard Powder”, Jackson wants us all to have a good, long think about censorship so that other film-makers won’t be caught up by somebody’s “arbitrary decision.”
“I think that we should address it,” he said. “I think we should go back to where we live and sit down in our living room and have a conversation about this,” Jackson said.
Parks Canada rejected “Hard Powder” when it was found that Jackson is to play an Indigenous gang leader in the film.
“Parks Canada’s commitment to reconciliation and respect for indigenous peoples was an important factor in the agency’s final decision on this matter,” said a Parks spokesperson.
“I think that should be reviewed for future projects that come in,” said Jackson. “It shouldn’t be in the hands of somebody to make an arbitrary decision, or at one or two people’s discretion.”
“Take that to your leadership and say ‘wait a minute, maybe I can’t do something like this, or maybe I can, but I know you can. Take it to somebody with influence who can actually make a difference in the future.
“It’s not too late to state, ‘listen, the next time this comes around, if it comes around… let’s take the time to rethink this deeply, and make sure we’re making the right decisions for the right reasons. I don’t think they have,” Jackson said.
Jackson said he has been consistent in his statements on this issue. “I want to be clear that I applaud them for being sensitive and respectful to the First Nations,” but “it feels to me like it’s a censorship issue that goes beyond what I think the range of the decision-makers should have.”
Jackson told McGladrey there was “nothing disrespectful in the script, and at the end of the day, it’s very funny. It’s a funny show.” He said the producers had worked on the film “Pulp Fiction”, and it’s satirical in this vein.
Jackson said he made small suggestions for the script that the production team agreed to, but they were minor.
“If I thought that it disrespected First Nation people in any way, I would not have chosen to do this film.”
Jackson was asked if the film played on First Nations stereotypes. “Not at all. Not even a little,” he said.