Showcase for talent and area

Twenty-six TV series were filmed in B.C. last year and this year has started out even better. So what's the big deal about one more show?

Numbers such as last year's $800 million in film production don't tell the whole story, says B.C. film commissioner Peter Mitchell.

"There's profile and cachet," he says of the prospect that producer Chris Carter's Vancouver-made Harsh Realm could become a critical and audience success.

"The publicity around X-Files, the fact that everybody knew that it was a Vancouver crew doing that -- it was a great opportunity to showcase the talent and the area.

"Carter's got an automatic following, people will watch that show simply because it's a Chris Carter show, right off the bat. It means more publicity for B.C., the kind you can't buy."

Mitchell said Carter's shows have always been well-organized so that ambitious location shoots have generally gone off with minimal disruptions to neighbours.

And Carter has showcased home-grown talent in front of the camera as well, by choosing Canadian actors as three of six Harsh Realm regulars.

"That's part of a trend," Mitchell says. "Producers who come here regularly figure out that talent is here at all levels."

Mitchell, himself an X-Files fan, is curious about the highly-secret new show as well. "I look forward to seeing Harsh Realm. His shows are generally more intelligent than the average fare."

Role heats up Martini's career

Max Martini looks under the outdoor table at a downtown cafe, after he's asked the name of his character in Harsh Realm.

"Is this thing bugged?"

He's only half-joking. The 29-year-old Martini is one of the regulars on Chris Carter's new Vancouver-shot series.

"I just got off the phone with Chris," says Martini as we sit down. "He said, 'Don't say anything about the show.'"

Oh all right, he plays a soldier named Waters. But you didn't hear it from me.

Martini, back in uniform for Harsh Realm after playing one of the soldiers in last summer's Saving Private Ryan, first met Carter at an audition earlier this year in Los Angeles, where he got a taste of the legendary Carter secrecy.

"The audition scripts were printed in red, so that if you try to photocopy them they come out black," says Martini. "And each page I got was stamped 'Max Martini,' so if they got out, they'd know where they came from. This is like the top-secret show in America."

The cast -- including Martini, D.B. Sweeney, Scott Bairstow and Terry O'Quinn -- were in Vancouver last month and did three days of military training in the Coquitlam woods prior to filming.

"We were eating these MREs (military rations) that were packed in 1993. They're supposed to have a shelf life of 75 years," complains Martini. "Everybody told me not to eat the peanut butter, 'cause it's made to constipate you. Now I haven't had a decent bowel movement in ages."

The people doing the training were the same ex-U.S. military consultants who worked on Private Ryan for director Steven Spielberg.

Martini, who grew up in and around Saltspring Island with his mom Pat and actor-director stepfather Stuart Margolin, has had his share of breaks in 12 years of acting. Aside from Private Ryan, he played a scruffy space-watcher opposite Jodie Foster in Contact and scored a choice role closer to home as a wayward cop last year on CBC's hit series Da Vinci's Inquest.

His wife, fellow actor Kymberley Restell, had a recurring role on Poltergeist: The Legacy.

But the new Carter series is a whole other level.

"This was the show in L.A. for actors to get," Martini says. "When my agent got the news she was screaming on the phone but nothing was coming out."

News that he was signed to do Harsh Realm is already heating up his career outside the show. Suddenly, movie scripts are coming in -- one with Robert De Niro already attached, another with John Travolta and one from Gus Van Sant.

Says Martini: "You can't pay for that kind of publicity."

Carter is known for playing off his actors' own personalities in devising his plot lines and Martini -- good-looking in a guy-next-door, red-haired kind of way -- is looking forward to seeing how that develops.

"It's amazing -- as I talk to the producers there's so much flexibility to the storylines," he says. "Every day I learn something more about my character and its twistedness."

Not that he's learned anything he can reveal, you understand.

The Harsh Realm role also means they'll have to figure out a way to write his recurring character out of the Vancouver-set Da Vinci's Inquest.

Meanwhile, the Harsh Realm cast have all been signed to seven-year contracts, in anticipation of a long series run. This kind of security has to mean something financially to a young actor, doesn't it?

"It's decent," Martini admits. "I know Kym and I spent all last night on the Internet, checking out ranches for sale in Montana."

Not such a Harsh Realm to be in, actually.