OSOYOOS TIMES-April 21, 2010

By Paul Everest - Osoyoos Times

A wild and crazy guy, Shallow Hal and a wedding crasher are coming to town.
If you’re in the right place at the right time this June, you’ll likely catch a glimpse of comedic heavyweights Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson on Osoyoos’s Main Street.
The trio will be in town to film The Big Year, a comedy based on the 2004 book, The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, written by Mark Obmascik.
According to its profile on the Internet Movie Database, the film is about “three avid bird watchers (competing) to spot the rarest birds in North America at a prestigious annual event.”
In the world of bird watching, a “big year” is an informal competition amongst bird enthusiasts to see or hear the most species of birds within a specific area during one year.
The film, which is scheduled to be released next year, will be directed by David Frankel, who also directed The Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me.
Jon Summerland, commissioner of the Okanagan Film Commission, said cameras are expected to roll in Osoyoos for roughly a week beginning June 7.
He said the production company behind the film has decided to shoot in Osoyoos because of its unique desert characteristics and the community will be standing in for Arizona and Brownsville, Texas.
Other filming locations for the feature around British Columbia include Vaseux Lake, Tofino, Whistler and Vancouver and the production is expected to last three months.
Summerland said how the producers of the film picked Osoyoos as a location all comes down to “good timing.”
He said he knows Michael Williams, the production and location manager for the film, as well as one of the film’s producers and brought them a bottle of wine last year when Williams was working on the Megan Fox film, Jennifer’s Body.
“I said to the producer, ‘Don’t forget this,’” Summerland said, adding that he also texted Williams a message some time later saying “You owe me.”
Williams responded by saying Summerland’s text came at a beneficial time for the commission since the producers of The Big Year were looking for filming locations around B.C. and he asked Summerland to send some pictures and information about  the Okanagan Valley for consideration.
Members of the production company came to scout the Osoyoos area in December and Summerland said the visit persuaded them to make a “75 per cent” committal to filming in the area.
Eight more scouts came to the area in the past two months and the producers sealed the deal to shoot here this month, Summerland said.
Osoyoos can expect between 130 and 190 crew members to descend upon the town when filming begins, along with roughly 20 actors.
And the local economy, Summerland said, can expect a daily bump of anywhere from $125,000 to $150,000 thanks to the production.
The focal point of filming, he added, will be Osoyoos’s Main Street.
Shooting for the film will take place one year after crews descended on Osoyoos for four weeks to film the Canadian-produced Western-comedy Gunless, starring Paul Gross.
It was estimated that having the cast and crew for Gunless in town for roughly a month pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Osoyoos’s economy.
Summerland said that since this is a Hollywood production, the community can expect even bigger benefits.
“Gunless was great,” he said. “But this is going to be much grander.”
He added, however, that locals may not experience the same level of accessibility to the cast and crew who come to town to film The Big Year.
“It’s going to feel less friendly because they’ve got three months to shoot in lots of locations,” Summerland said. “It’s going to leave a footprint, but it’s also going to leave buckets of money.”
news@osoyoostimes.com