Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie takes a smoke break between shots. The Edmonton native, who's watched Slap Shot a dozen times, has relocated to Los Angeles where he regularly plays hockey with other Canadian expatriates. 'I'm playing hockey in L.A. to get away from the business,' he says. 'Now, in Vancouver, I'm in the business playing hockey.'

[picture] Co-star Jessica Steen, with director Steve Boyum, lives in L.A. but is from Toronto. 'When I told a buddy back in Toronto that I was the coach he couldn't stop laughing.'

It's always hockey night in Canada. That's because somewhere, any time, somebody is watching Slap Shot. The movie about a minor-league hockey team was released to little fanfare in 1977, drawing meagre crowds and quickly making its way to television. But slowly Slap Shot became the hockey movie. Abetted by the birth of the VCR, hockey fans gave the movie another look . . . and another . . . and another.

These days, in Vancouver, the making of Slap Shot 2 is generating an unusual excitement for a city that sometimes seems to have grown a bit blase about the film industry.

Actors and crew wanted to be in on the remaking of the cult movie, thousands of fans showed up at the Pacific Coliseum Thursday to portray the audience in a staged hockey game, and amateur hockey players were eager to share ice with the Hanson brothers

Yes, the Charlestown Chiefs' battling Hanson brothers are back. Then again, they never entirely left, continuing to make personal appearances at hockey rinks.

Why this fascination with a hockey movie a quarter century after its release?

Hockey and the movies have always been an uneasy mix. There were low-budget Hollywood hockey movies as far back as the 1930s (King of Hockey) and low-budget Canadian films in the early 1970s (Paperback Hero). But hockey was a marginal, regional sport in the U.S. so it didn't draw the big-budget, big-star interest from studios that, say, baseball has many times.

With Slap Shot, however, hockey finally had a movie with strong production values, a solid director (George Roy Hill) and a fine actor (Paul Newman).

It also had the Hanson brothers and, for now, so does Vancouver.

[article - and photo of CKR and of Jessica Steen - available at:
http://www.vancouverprovince.com/newsite/entertainment/010422/5053126.html]

AND

THere is a review of his recent movie MEMENTO at:
http://infoculture.cbc.ca/archives/filmtv/filmtv_04212001_mementoreview.phtml

as well as a link to the entire interview on it. No sign of CKR though.