A Huckleberry Christmas Eve
AULD LANG SYNE – a film by Joan Carr-Wiggin – SPOILERS ⁓
Millie and Nell
It is the day before Christmas, and Nell (Mimi Kuzyk), a veteran actor reduced to being props master on a low-budget indie film, is talking things over with the film’s AD as they are about to leave the suburban home where the film is being shot. Mimi has been nursing a grudge for years because her friend Millie (Linda Kash) once stole the love of her life. (She only stole him for five days, but Nell is not the forgiving type, and left the guy.) Once the AD leaves, Nell believes she is alone at last with the house to herself until Boxing Day, but she soon discovers that Millie, a background performer on the project, has exactly the same plan.
The Director, his AD, and Nell
Earlier, in the home’s parlour, a nameless director (Gregory Ambrose Calderone) filmed a scene involving a woman named Piper who has just lost her husband and is being portrayed by Jenny (Katie Boland). The director is dissatisfied and interrupts. “Jenny,” he says, “in this scene, you’re Madeleine in Vertigo.” Jenny is confused and says she thought her character’s name was Piper. “What? No no no, I mean you’re Marlene in Blue Angel,” he says, expanding the metaphor. “You’re Sugar in ‘Some Like it Hot‘, Garbo in ‘Ninotchka‘. You know what I’m saying? You’re every woman and you’re no woman. That’s what I want you to play.” Jenny seems unenlightened but nods.
Mimi and Nell discover one another.
Lurking in the background is Millie. Though she and the other background performers have been cautioned to not draw attention to themselves, Millie jumps into the scene, offering advice and a glass of wine to the bereaved Jenny. To sell the script change, she regales the director with tales of her personal experiences with such luminaries as Kubrick, Capra, and Kurosawa. Then she flatters the director by agreeing with what he told Jenny. “In ‘Some Like It Hot’,” she tells him, “when Sugar drinks she is showing her joie de vivre. When Greta Garbo drinks the champagne, she’s finally embracing shechen.” (She does not try to explain how Madeleine might be similar to those two.)
Millie and Jenny
The wine is brought to Jenny by Millie’s old acquaintance, props master Nell. When Millie tries to expand her involvement in the scene, and make herself more money, Nell spills wine on her, and Millie is removed from the scene entirely. This makes the assistant director (Daniel Jun) happy because he can wrap shooting early, and everyone can go home for Christmas.
It seems that Millie is surprised to find Nell working on the set, and is more surprised later when she finds her dozing on the living room couch. But Millie is an actor, and could be feigning surprise. (One is not certain at this point.) Nell is not pleased when Millie wakes her up, and threatens to turn Millie in for trespassing, but when another member of the crew stops in to retrieve something she forgot, the two old friends dive behind the couch and hide there together. (They are both wearing Santa hats and it might be the funniest scene in the film.)
Donald as Marc Antony
Like a beardless Santa, Security Guard Donald (Ryan Allen) arrives on his nightly rounds. Millie’s first reaction to the unexpected intruder is to sneak up behind him and whack him with a baseball bat. Nell prevents this; the two have some wine; and Millie tries to figure out the exact cause of Nell’s hostility toward her. Millie was sex-addicted and Nell tried heroin for a while, so they are both addicts, but beyond that they are not at all similar. When Nell asks: “What’s the closest you ever came to — oh you know — did you ever think about that?” Millie relates the time she almost was Phoebe in a Broadway production of ‘As You Like It‘. Nell puts her question another way:
NELL: “Were you ever tempted to like give all this up and live a normal person’s life?”
MILLIE: “No. I mean even if i can’t play the lead anymore, I could still land something juicy.”
If one were to cast these two in ‘As You Like It‘, Nell would be a better fit for Phoebe, and Millie might be Rosalind.
Millie and Nell’s food fight is interrupted before it can begin
Memories of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz spring to mind as Millie and Nell teeter on the verge of a Christmas Eve food fight. Then Donald returns unexpectedly and the pair seems in danger of being arrested. But Donald is an aspiring actor, and would rather audition. He begins with a scene from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest‘ (which did not impress Millie and Nell, but was not that bad) and finishes with Mark Antony’s speech from ‘Julius Caesar‘. Like Antony burying Caesar, Millie and Nell bury the hatchet.
Is Millie role-playing throughout? Might she be working through a twelve-step program? One is not quite sure in the end, but the conflict over Nell’s long lost love is miraculously resolved.
NELL: “I don’t believe in happy endings,”
MILLIE: “The question is, do happy endings believe in you?”
Linda Kash as Kathleen Keene in the mystery comedy PAIGE DARCY: RELUCTANT DETECTIVE. Alice Moran, who wrote the screenplay, stars as Paige, a “former precocious teen sleuth” who becomes unwillingly entangled in a murder investigation.
Katie Boland (Jenny) is Melissa Garfield, daughter of missing person Ellie Garfield (Diane D’Aquila) in NEVER SAW IT COMING, a film based on Linwood Barclay‘s novel about a psychic con artist (Emily Hampshire) who looks for a way out after she becomes entangled in the Garfields’ family secrets. Film critic Richard Crouse called the film “a very dark comedy set against a backdrop of violence, murder and fraud.” Directed by Gail Harvey from a screenplay by Barclay himself, NEVER SAW IT COMING can be streamed on TUBI.
Mimi Kuzyk (Nell) will be Helen in Jesse Zigelstein’s upcoming drama NEGATIVE CAPABILITY, a follow-up to the director’s award-winning 2018 feature NOSE TO TAIL. The film stars Jonas Chernick as Joel, a middle-aged English teacher and failed novelist struggling with self-doubt. Sarah Canning and Athena Karkanis are also in the cast. NEGATIVE CAPABILITY wrapped production in Toronto at the end of 2023.