It’s a classic Twist

It’s a classic Twist
What the Dickens! Dodger steals lead role from Oliver
By JIM SLOTEK
January 15, 2003
Canoe.ca

TORONTO — In a west-end warehouse/studio, I’m standing to the side as Gary Farmer and Nick Stahl rehearse a scene from Twist. Stahl is made up to look as if he’s beaten to a pulp. Gary Farmer, twice his size and age, is dabbing at him, treating “cuts and bruises.”

As director/writer Jacob Tierney stops to assess the scene, I realize there’s something squishy on the floor beneath my foot. It’s a still-wrapped condom.

“Well what do you expect?” says Cynthia Amsden, the unit publicist. “It’s a movie about male hustlers.”

Truly, this is not your father’s Charles Dickens.

Yes, this is that Twist. Stahl — best known as the murdered son in In The Bedroom — is “Dodge,” an updated version of The Artful Dodger, and the protagonist in the 23-year-old Tierney’s gritty update of the dark Victorian novel that earlier became a jolly musical. (That Oliver guy, played here by Joshua Close, has been reduced to the status of key supporting player).

And Farmer? The veteran Canadian aboriginal actor is Fagin, no longer a Jewish caricature or the mentor to mischievous pickpockets. Large and malevolent, with almost incongruous attacks of compassion, he’s the pimp and protector for a pack of young adults who make their living servicing the rich — including a repeat client known only as The Senator.

“I came up with the idea watching a production of Oliver the musical a few years ago,” the Montreal-born Tierney (TekWar, This Is My Father) said just before the feature production wrapped at Christmas. It was a longish writing process, but I decided I wanted to tell the story from the point of view of The Artful Dodger. He’s a mysterious character in the book. He doesn’t come from anywhere and he doesn’t go anywhere. He’s kind of abandoned in the novel.

“In the book, the central character (Oliver Twist) was the character who never belongs with this working-class crowd, and he gets out and gets the life he deserves, which is kind of a fallacy. Our Artful Dodger is the rich kid who’s slumming it, if you will, and Oliver is the kid who grew up in foster care.

“Beyond that, it’s still the same themes as the book, the exploitation of children and the commodity of youth. I wanted to explore themes of sexual abuse, that’s pretty well what this is about. This man, Fagin, runs a brothel of young boys, sends them to work and brings them home and takes care of them. It’s an identical structure, except they’re hustlers.”

As he was banging out the script, Tierney was rooming with Stahl, who, as luck would have it, is now on the cusp of becoming a big enough star to sell a movie. Following the Oscar fuss of In The Bedroom (for which Tom Wilkinson won best supporting actor), this year moviegoers will see Stahl as the older John Conner in Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines.

“We were roommates in L.A.,” Stahl says of Tierney. “We had a friend in common and we all ended up living in this house in Santa Monica with a bunch of guys for two and a half years. It was like a big actor frat house.” (Castmate Tygh Runyan is also an erstwhile member of the “actor frat house.”)

It’s an interesting experience for Farmer, who is so much bigger and older than his fellow cast, that he looks like he was dropped in from another planet. Farmer sees the movie — particularly the off-camera Senator and the mysterious “Bill” to whom Fagin answers — as a metaphor for an upper class that commits crimes without getting its hands dirty.

“Bill, who we never see, represents that mysterious corporate world that we’re all supposed to respect for some reason,” says Farmer, who also just finished filming Deepa Mehta’s The Republic Of Love.

“The whole theme of the corruption of innocence is very timely. Stories like the abuse at Maple Leaf Gardens, the underworld and the corporate world, it kind of mirrors what’s happening to us as a society.”