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Motion picture magic
Michael Eklund gives life to one of cinema’s forgotten founders in Eadweard Sabrina Furminger Reel People @Sabrinarmf
They’re separated by centuries and geographical distance, and yet Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Eklund share an inextricable link. In the trippy sphere of cause and effect – where a single act can set something beautiful or mundane or horrible in motion – Muybridge (born in England in 1830) lit a spark that, more than a century later, impacted the trajectory of Eklund’s life. The Saskatoon-born, Vancouver-based actor would likely not be a Leo Award-winning screen actor today had 19th century photographer Muybridge not conducted exhaustive investigations into movement and photography. Muybridge’s studies led to motion picture projection, and, ultimately, to showbiz as we know it. So if you consume film or television or work in the industry, you’ve got Muybridge to thank, too. But if you haven’t heard of Muybridge, you’re not alone. Eklund hadn’t either, at least not until Vancouver director Kyle Rideout and producer Josh Epstein approached him to play Muybridge in Eadweard, a drama about a transformative and tumultuous period in the eccentric photographer’s life. “We all know the name Thomas Edison, and he usually gets the credit, but we’ve never heard Eadweard Muybridge’s story, and he was actually the beginning of all of it,” says Eklund in a recent phone chat. Muybridge is finally having his moment in the spotlight, thanks to Eklund (who ultimately took the role) and Rideout and Epstein (both graduates of Langara College’s distinguished Studio 58 theatre training program). To date, their locallyshot period piece – filmed over 29 days in 2013 and featuring an impressive roster of BC talent, including Eklund, Sara Canning, Charlie Carrick, Christopher Heyerdahl, Torrance
Coombs, Aleks Paunovic, Ian Tracey, and Jonathon Young – has won five Leo Awards and scooped up a boatload of accolades on the film festival circuit. There was a best acting nod for Eklund at the Alhambra Theatre Film Festival, and the audience choice award for best narrative film at the Nashville Film Festival. It’s played to packed houses in Edinburgh and Munich, Maui and Brooklyn, Newport Beach and Cleveland. And on Aug. 31, Eadweard will finally play for the hometown crowd in a special red carpet screening at the Rio Theatre. It was in a similar theatre that a five-year-old Eklund got his first taste of movie magic (and where Muybridge’s long-ago work affected his life journey). “I remember walking into the movie theatre with my eyes open and my mouth open and thinking, ‘what is this magical place?’” says Eklund. “I knew something was going on when I went to the theatre that day, and I remember sitting down in the movie theatre seats and that’s when I was seduced by the magic of film.” The film? Lassie Returns (adorable, right?). “I was five-years-old, and that was the first time I remember wanting something,” says Eklund. “I didn’t know what at the time, but I wanted to do that, and that’s when I started to realize that I wanted to be an actor and that I started to have to think about how to get that, at five-years-old, coming from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.” It was a slow start. Eklund couldn’t get cast in a school play, although he auditioned every time. After high school, he went to art school to be a painter, but “I realized it was too much of an introverted art form for me. When I sat in my studio and painted, I could feel the world was passing me by, and I knew that it didn’t work for me.” Eklund decided to embrace whatever fears he had and make a go of acting. He moved to Vancouver, took classes, answered open casting calls (including one for an audience-participation dinner theatre), and
16 W July 23 - July 29, 2015
Saskatoon-raised Vancouver actor Michael Eklund portrays the innovative and eccentric photographer Eadweard Muybridge in Eadweard. The Vancouver-shot film celebrates its hometown premiere on Aug. 31 at the Rio Theatre. Robert Gilbert photo wooed his first and only agent, Deb Dillistone, who he’d heard was the best in the city. “It took me six months, but then I finally convinced [Dillistone] to take on this prairie kid with no experi-
ence,” says Eklund. “She started sending me out on auditions, and just by using instinct, I started working. That’s when the noes started turning into yeses.” And there have been a lot of yeses, among them: 88
Minutes, Battlestar Galactica, DaVinci’s Inquest, Intelligence, Bates Motel, Cruel & Unusual, Gotham, and The Call, with Halle Berry, for which Eklund won a Leo Award for best supporting performance by a male in a
motion picture. Eklund’s 2015 releases include WWE’s actionthriller Vendetta (directed by Vancouver’s own Soska Sisters), Mr. Right with Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick, and the final season
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