Fubar boys have more 'r to give
Unfortunately, the Calgary-born actor came with his eight-month-old son, who took grave exception to his father donning the headbanger that helps him transform into Pilsner-swilling hoser, Dean Murdoch.
So the boy started screaming and crying just as he was carried into the theatre lobby, causing more fuss than when he got his tetanus shot, Spence says. Needless to say, he was forced to break character.
"I can't imagine what was going through his poor baby brain," says Spence, joining costar Dave Lawrence and director Michael Dowse at a downtown Calgary hotel earlier this week as part of a promotional tour for Fubar II. "He wouldn't stop crying. I took my wig off and was holding him. So everyone in the lineup was looking at Dean with his off , holding a baby. I ruined Fubar for probably 50, 60 people."
Yes, when it comes to Dean and Terry -- the foulmouthed, long-haired heroes introduced in the 2002, Calgary-shot mockumentary Fubar -- it seems many fans would prefer the illusion not be burst by revelations that the two are in fact played by actors Spence and Lawrence.
"At the Q&A, they took their off ," says Dowse, about the Midnight Madness opening of the new film in Toronto. "And there was definitely an audible gasp. People were like, 'F--k! Santa doesn't exist.' "
It's a credit to the Calgary actors, who developed Terry and Dean more than a decade ago on the improv stage of Calgary's Loose Moose Theatre, that people seem unwilling to separate them from their most famous creations. Paid for by maxed-out credit cards and fuelled mostly by improvisation, Fubar entered indie-movie lore when it became a cult hit in Canada and the U.S. after a raucous screening at Robert Redford's 2002 Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Introducing Dean and Terry as terminally underemployed, hard-drinking headbangers who come face-to-face with mortality when Dean is discovered to have "nut cancer," the film helped introduce terms such as "give'r" and "turn down the suck" into the modern vernacular.
