Real life adventure while shooting true-to-life story

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Nathaniel Arcand of North of 60 and American Outlaw fame is a busy man. The Edmonton-born actor will be seen in early December in the CTV's Literature Series movie called 100 Days in the Jungle, the real-life story of eight pipeline workers kidnapped in Ecuador in 1999. In February he'll be seen in a Warner Bros. remake of the Lone Ranger (Arcand plays Tonto). In March he has a role in the Hallmark production called Wildfire 7. He plays the role of a smokejumper called (eh-hmm) Red. (It must be funny south of the border.)

When Windspeaker caught up with Arcand recently he was taking it easy with his wife and two children contemplating where his career would take him next. He had put behind him the adventures of shooting 100 Days, complete with earthquake and kidnapping threat, and was looking forward to watching the final version of the two-hour movie directed by Emmy award-winning Sturla Gunnarsson on television on Dec. 15.

A gentle nudge prompted some memory of the ordeal of shooting in the rain and muddy jungles of Costa Rica last November and December, and of the relationship he developed with a gecko as protection from the cockroaches that shared his South American sleeping quarters during the month-long shoot.

"Geckos eat cockroaches, so I said 'OK.' I was going to kick it out, but I just left it in my room," said Arcand. "It kind of freaked me out, because I was going into my room one day and I turned around to shut the door and it was right on the door handle and I touched it. I thought it was a mouse or something, but it was a gecko and he scattered off into the corner."

Things that crawl and creep were a major hazard for the actor who plays the Navajo and only American in a crew of Canadian workers sent to repair a pipeline only to be captured and held hostage by Colombian guerillas for 100 days.

In real life the fellows were marched through the jungle at gunpoint, given rotten food to eat and squalid conditions in which to live until an RCMP officer and ex-CIA operatives negotiated their release.

In movie reality the actors had an authentic, but brief, taste of the difficulties the hostages endured.

"We were pretty much running in and out of the jungle all the time," said Arcand. "Crawling through it and really close to it....Like I was dealing with scorpions and stuff like that. And snakes. And these little bugs that I had never seen before.

"Like every time I saw a bug it was a new bug I'd never seen before, and some people would say, 'yeah, watch out for those bugs. You don't want them to get in your ears. You don't want them to get in your system...'"

He said the conditions worked against the morale of the actors, but helped them capture the essence of the roles they were hired to play.

"We used it, every bit of it, what was going on in the show. We all looked tired and haggard. We actually were....We were all pretty down and out about it. We were all trudging around in muck that smelled like shit all the time. It was a constant everyday for two weeks, two-and-a-half weeks, and beside the threat of being kidnapped for real, which I thought was kind of crazy. We were told not to go out anywhere unless we were in a group."

Oh yes, the kidnapping threat. It was made online, and considering the material they were in South America to shoot, the producers took the possibility seriously.

"After it was said, I noticed that we had more guards," said Nathaniel Arcand. "These guys are like something right out of a movie like Columbian drug lords. And they're all carrying these M-16s on their sides, you know, ready for action."

And the earthquake? A 6.9 on the Richter scale, according to Arcand, and his first.

"There was about 20 of us at this big table and we were all having dinner and everything just started shaking, and you could hear that sound like the whole ground shaking, everything shaking...," he described. Then everyone scattered, except for a guy called Adrian and himself. "...and Adrin's saying 'Everybody just stay calm, just stay away from the chandeliers and stuff above you.' And then he looks up and he's sitting underneath a fan. It was so freaky."

His role in 100 Days required real physical strength, not just to get through the shoot, but because his character is a rough and tumble guy that doesn't take too much abuse from anyone, even hostage-taking guerillas. In one scene there is a chin-up contest that put Arcand's long-time weightlifting training to the test.

"We did that (scene) about 10 times, so I'm like trying to do 17 every take. It was really tough. After about the fifth take, you know, that's like 60 chin-ups already. By then, I'm like arrrgh."

Arcand gets physical in the Lone Ranger movie as well. His martial arts training comes in handy in his role as Tonto with what he describes as a nod to the spirit of Bruce Lee and humor of Jackie Chan. But that's a story for another day.

CTV's 100 Days in the Jungle is a well-told tale of real life adventure. Be sure to check out the local listings for viewing times in your area.