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CC: | Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood usually plays Presidents or villains - sometimes both at the same time. But as Peter Granger tells us in his latest flick - Racing Stripes - Greenwood is happy to be showing us a sensitive side we rarely see. |
clip from I, Robot |
| PG: | After playing yet another bad guy last year in the lensed in Vancouver sci fi thriller I, Robot, Bruce Greenwood needed a change. It ended up being a drastic one. |
clip from Racing Stripes |
| PG: | In Racing Stripes, Greenwood sauntered into the world of Nolan Walsh, a world weary widower who is raising a high spirited daughter while working on a failing farm in Kentucky. Although the Kentucky that you see is actually South Africa where the cast and crew spent 3 ½ months working on a movie that is actually a domestic drama with comic overtones. |
| BG: | The father was a stretch 'cause I'm not - the nice guy even more of a stretch. The nice guy was what I was after. I wanted to do something where the guy was just a decent human being. He's got problems and everything - He doesn't want to let his daughter grow up and go away. He wants to protect her from the world - and he can't. |
| PG: | The Nolan Walsh character is a former race horse trainer who retired after his wife was killed in a horrible racing accident. Stumbling into this family scene comes Stripes, an abandoned circus zebra. As it transpires, Stripes, who is voiced by Frankie - Malcolm in the Middle - Munoz, wants to be a race horse. There's a resistence from the bluebloods on both side of the fence - human and animal. As to whether this black and white interloper should do it or could do it - |
long clip from Racing Stripes |
| PG: | According to Greenwood seeing a zebra competing at a race track is not all Hollywood bunkum. Zebras ARE almost as fast as horses - they can clock speeds as high as 30 miles per hour |
| BG: | Off the mark zebras are like greyhounds - bam! They're gone! It's the fight or flight reflex - their flight reflex being much more highly developed than their fight reflex, which is sort of pretty much biting and kicking. And then - after whatever - 30 yards or something - a thoroughbread is going to overtake them... but not this one! [nodding at the stuffed zebra.] |
clip from Racing Stripes |
| PG: | Besides the acting challenge of playing a nice guy for a change, the other test for Greenwood was working with the 5 zebras on set. They are generally a nervous, aggressive animal. But then, Greenwood can relate to that. Nervous and aggressive is his stock in trade. Peter Granger, CTV News. |
