Film’s vigilantes dine, bicker, discover a body in cafe full of bears
The director of the first “Twilight” movie may have passed up filming at Neder’s Cafe in Washougal, but that doesn’t mean the small-town restaurant lost its only chance at fame.
This weekend, the restaurant is the filming location for “Bucksville,” a thriller/drama by the Portland independent film company Running Deer Films. A crew of about 40 people first descended on the restaurant Wednesday afternoon. They filmed into the early morning hours and returned Thursday afternoon. They’ll be back again today and Sunday.
“It’s just been exciting,” said Neder’s Cafe owner Debby Brink. “It’s been really exciting.”
The film company approached Brink about using her restaurant a month ago and she eagerly accepted.
When scenes for “Twilight” were being filmed in the Portland area in the spring of 2008, Brink received a similar call. Brink said she was excited about the opportunity and told everyone she knew that film crews were coming to town.
But the “Twilight” crew never called back and the filming never happened.
That wasn’t the case this time around, though.
Neder’s Cafe is in a 60-year-old building on E Street. Brink said her restaurant is down-to-earth and decorated wall-to-wall with bears.
“They loved the interior of the restaurant,” she said. “It’s just exactly what they needed.”
In the movie “Bucksville,” the restaurant is owned by the mayor and his wife, Brink said. In the first two days of filming at the cafe, crews completed several small scenes, including comical exchanges between patrons bickering over eating oatmeal instead of bacon and eggs, Brink said.
But not all of the scenes at the restaurant are light-hearted, she said.
“All the bad things go on in the restaurant,” Brink said, citing as an example a scene when a dead body is discovered.
According to the movie synopsis provided to the city of Washougal, the main character in the film is 25-year-old Presley Alan French. The man grew up in a small Northwest town in the shadow of a secret vigilante brotherhood called The Lodge. The brotherhood was formed 17 years earlier by French’s father and three other respected civic leaders in the town after a local girl was murdered and the killer was set free. Acting on their own codes of morals and justice, the brotherhood captured the man and executed him in the woods. Throughout the years, the men continue the vigilante killings in the name of community service.
When French’s father dies, he begins to question the brotherhood’s ideology and his own desire to move to the German Alps. French decides to dismantle The Lodge and flee the town. But before he can escape, the brotherhood catches wind of his plan and lures him into a trap. French finds himself on trial, like the other people the vigilantes called criminals, his life on the line.
The film’s director is Chel White, who worked as the visual effects supervisor for the movie “Milk” and directed TV episodes of “Live Earth” and “Saturday Night Live.” The cast includes Gretchen Corbett, who starred in “The Rockford Files,” and Nathan Dunkin, who plays French, according to the online movie databass imdb.com.
Filming for the movie also took place at a Camas barbershop and various locations in Portland, Zigzag and Vernonia, Ore.
The crew visited Sportsman Barber Shop in Camas for a few hours a month ago. In the film, French’s father owns the barber shop and sells guns out of the shop’s back room, Brink said.
The film company’s movies usually air on the Sundance Channel, Brink said. “Bucksville” is scheduled to be released in September 2010.
For allowing the movie to film in the restaurant, Brink said she received $100 a day and will get a DVD of the movie once it’s released. But for Brink, the experience was about more than the money; it was about the action inside her small-town restaurant and finally getting that shot at fame.
“Every day it’s a new adventure,” she said.
Marissa Harshman: 360-735-4546 or marissa.harshman@columbian.com.
