Actress Edi Patterson foiled by famously frigid Winnipeg intersection

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This article was published 15/03/2022 (918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On last Wednesday’s broadcast of The Late Late Show with James Corden, actress Edi Patterson (a writer and star on the cable series The Righteous Gemstones) told a startling story of travelling to frigid Winnipeg to shoot a movie.

The film, which she didn’t mention by name, is Violent Night, the Christmas-themed action movie starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo and Beverly D’Angelo, directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters). It was recently announced Patterson had joined the cast alongside Cam Gigandet (Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, Twilight, Easy A).

Talking to Corden, Patterson told of facing two Winnipeg perils during her work in February: freezing cold and the intersection of Portage and Main.

Needing to pick up lotion and shampoo, she learned of the existence of “a CVS equivalent called Shoppers Drug Mart” 500 feet from her hotel, presumably the Fairmont.

But getting from the northeast corner of Portage and Main to the southwest corner, where Shoppers is located in Winnipeg Square, proved to be logistically daunting due to the barricaded intersection.

“I started going in circles on this corner, and I remember almost going ass over teakettle eight times… black ice everywhere.”

“And then you find out you can’t cross the street, and it’s just this hellscape of snow and ice.”

Adding to the situation, Patterson recalled the famous wind at that corner: “You feel like an invisible giant is bullying you and pushing you.”

Coincidentally, Patterson’s fellow guest on the show was Bob Odenkirk, who shot the action film Nobody in Winnipeg in late 2020.

“It’s famously the windiest corner in North America,” Odenkirk said. “I know exactly where you mean.”

Patterson elaborated on her experience in a piece for New York magazine’s Grub Street column, discussing the weather and Winnipeg’s culinary options.

“It’s almost one of those things that’s so extreme, you can’t help but laugh at it,” she told columnist Chris Crowley. “I don’t wonder why people live here because the people here are really nice. I just wonder how they continue to. I think I’m convinced that they’ve all got some kind of superpower blood, and they’re just the heartiest people on earth.”

She evidently figured out how to get to Shoppers. She mentioned stocking up there on pistachios and yellow mustard, and later exploring takeout options including Thailand Foods 1619, and Banh Mi King, both “awesome.”

Other actors in the movie’s cast have been bravely venturing out to restaurants. Harbour and Leguizamo were recently spotted dining at Deer & Almond.

• • •

Violent Night is expected to wrap around March 26. Wrapping this week is another action movie King of Killers, starring Alain Moussi, Frank Grillo and Stephen Dorff, written and directed Kevin Grevioux, co-creator of the Underworld franchise. A surprise addition to that cast was Montreal-born mixed martial artist Georges St-Pierre (Captain America: The Winter Soldier).

• • •

Now that the temperatures are getting more moderate, other actors are expected to arrive in town for more film shoots. Among these are a horror thriller titled All Fun and Games, scheduled for an April shoot with stars Asa Butterfield (Hugo, Ender’s Game) and Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things).

The film has been described as a horror-themed variant of Jumanji in which a group of siblings find themselves in a game with a demonic twist.

Another Captain America link: The film is executive produced by Anthony and Joe Russo, who co-directed two Captain America movies and the last two Avengers movies, Infinity War and Endgame. It will be directed by Ari Costa and Eren Celeboglu, who co-wrote the script.

• • •

A snowstorm figures prominently in the Christian feature film Ordinary Angels. Winnipeg may yet oblige with the real thing during the scheduled shoot from late March to early May for director Jon Gunn.

The film is set in 1994 in Kentucky, telling the true story of Sharon Stevens, an alcoholic hairdresser who turns her life around when she meets a widower whose five-year-old daughter is in need of a liver transplant. No cast has been announced for that film yet.

• • •

Another horror film, The Elevator Game, looks as if it will finally be going up.

It had been announced more than a year ago, but it finally found its way onto a production schedule, from May to June.

The film is based on the online phenomenon of the same name that suggests supernatural powers may be behind mysterious elevator-related deaths and disappearances, such as that of student Elisa Lam at L.A.’s Cecil Hotel in 2013 (the subject of the Netflix docuseries Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel).

In the film, a socially awkward teenager investigating the disappearance of his sister discovers she may have been playing the titular game.

Last year, the announced director had been cinematographer Michael Goi, but new announcements suggest the director will now be Rebekah McKendry (All the Creatures Were Stirring).

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