KRISTI TURNQUIST

Laurelhurst Park's ducks and seagulls make life interesting for the indie film cast of "Spiral" 

The Oregonian

The small crew making the independent movie "Spiral" is ready to shoot a scene on a recent crisp, clear, frosty morning in Southeast Portland's Laurelhurst Park. Stars Joel David Moore and Amber Tamblyn are sitting at a picnic table by the duck pond. The camera's in position. The microphone is suspended above the actors' heads. The assistant director begins the countdown to start filming:

"Let's roll sound."

"Rolling!"

"Everyone move over here, we're keeping the eye-line clear."

"Quiet, please, we're rolling."

Just then, a seagull decides to squawk loudly. Really loudly. And really persistently.

"Shut up!" one exasperated crew member yells.

"Hey, seagull, ocean's over there!" hollers another.

"Stupid seagull," Moore mutters.

Seagulls, apparently, don't take direction.

So it goes in the world of low-budget, indie filmmaking. Portland has done location duty for both big-budget, Hollywood-style efforts and do-it-yourself experimental films. "Spiral" falls somewhere in-between.

Moore, the star, co-writer and co-director, is a Portland native who attended Benson High School and grew up in the Mount Tabor area. Since moving to Los Angeles, he's worked steadily in commercials and TV but made his biggest impact in last year's hit comedy "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story."

In "Dodgeball," he was geeky Owen, and his standout moment came when he made calf-eyes at rival dodgeball player Fran Stalinofskivich (Missi Pyle), a unibrowed, bucktoothed babe from "Ramanovia." High comedy it's not; hilarious it is.

Bringing a movie to his hometown is a dream come true, Moore says. Even if the locals don't always know where they know him from. "In Los Angeles, people from 17 below know me for 'Dodgeball.' And from 17 above, they recognize me from commercials. Around here, they look at me like, 'Did I go to school with that guy? Does he work down at the Coffee Bean?' "

As Moore and co-writer and co-producer Jeremy Danial Boreing tell it, "Spiral" sounds like a cross between a Hitchcock suspense tale and a "Garden State"-style character study. Moore plays Mason, a reclusive loner who works as a telemarketer at a phone bank. Mason meets Amber (Tamblyn), a free spirit determined to draw him out of his shell. But there are secrets in Mason's past and. . . . Moore and Boreing aren't about to spill the twists and turns of their plot.

For now, they're scrambling to get the filming done in the 21 days scheduled -- they're supposed to wrap up tomorrow -- as they battle the chilly December weather. The duck pond at Laurelhurst Park, for example, was frozen over when the crew arrived. In the scene they're shooting, Mason and Amber sit at a picnic table at the pond's west end, and Amber walks down to the pond to feed the ducks chunks of bread. Which meant crew members started the day by breaking up the ice, to make a trail for the ducks to swim in to reach the west end. Neighborhood kids were pressed into service as duck wranglers, tossing bread in the water to lure the waterfowl west for their brush with movie greatness.

"We've got about 60 local people on the crew, and 20 people transported from L.A.," says Boreing, plunging his hands into his pockets. "Pocket warmers," he says, smiling. Crew members run around in knit caps, scarves, mittens, wrapped in coats donated by Columbia Sportswear. The petite Tamblyn shivers in her costume, a light green coat and jeans, her red-and-gold-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail. "This day's nice 'cause we have sun," she says. "But it's really cold. And I'm a total California girl."

Getting Tamblyn attached helped Moore, Boreing and co-director Adam Green raise money for "Spiral." With her track record, including the TV series "Joan of Arcadia" and the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," Tamblyn's a recognizable name.

"This character's going to be the first adult I've played," Tamblyn says. "The first character with any kind of sexuality. My character has this long romantic journey with Mason, but there's this secret. . . ."

Moore gives Tamblyn a look.

"The secret is not that he's a woman," she says, teasing him. "Or maybe he is?"

Tamblyn first heard about "Spiral" from co-star Zachary Levi, who she ran into at an awards show. "He said, 'I have a script for you.' Lots of people say things like that, and then you read the script and they're not great. But two weeks later, I read this and I thought it was really good."

Rachelle Ryan is a former Portlander who started the talent agency Ryan Artists and manages Moore. Ryan is the executive producer on "Spiral" and will be working on a distribution deal for the film once it's finished. "This is bound for the film festival circuit," she says, adding that the film's profile will be raised by a documentary that the Starz cable channel is making about the filming of "Spiral."

But first, they've got to finish the movie. Back at Laurelhurst Park, a posse of plump white ducks seem curious about the goings-on, and keep waddling up to the set. Boreing stares in particular at one duck, which seems to have a fluffy white feather pompadour on its head.

"That duck," he deadpans, "spent three hours in the makeup chair this morning."

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