By Brad Brown
Citizen Staff

It was last year around this time that Kipling’s Nolan Hubbard found himself en route to California to shoot his role in a new Corbin Bernsen movie project. The role was given to the Town of Kipling by Kyle MacDonald in exchange for his house on Main Street, and was in turn won by Hubbard through a series of auditions.

Almost exactly a year later that movie - entitled Donna On Demand - is finally nearing completion.

Less than 24 hours after his return from a quick business trip to put some finishing touches on the film, the Citizen caught up with Hubbard to talk movie.

This week we get to the bottom line with Nolan Hubbard.

Q. What was this trip all about?

A. I just had to go down and do what they call an EPK - an electronic press kit. It’s just a five-minute interview about the role and some of the things I did, and a few pictures, and some ADR (audio) work, things like that. It was real quick. It was probably 20 hours of flying for an hour of work but I guess that’s the movie star lifestyle (laughs).

Q. So where is the movie at right now?

A. It’s pretty much finished. They just have to go through some final touches this week. By Friday (today) they’re hoping to have the whole thing done. They just have to add some titles, credits, and some audio tracks and hopefully we’ll have a premier before too long.

Q. How long were you actually down there shooting for?

A. It was about a 28-day shoot.

Q. Tell me a bit about your role.

A. I play a guy named Ned Palmer and pretty much what he does is goes to this Ben Corbin’s place - he’s a washed up actor - and (Ned) wants to change (Ben’s) life around. He wants to write him a script and get him back on his feet because he’s a big fan. (Ned) is just a small town kid who wants to see his favourite actor back in business. It was really cool.

Q. What was your lasting impression of the whole experience?

A. I found out moviemaking was a lot more than I thought it was going to be. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work, continuity, making sure scenes match up right, timelines, and some other things.

Q. Is this the start of something bigger for you?

A. Yeah, I’m hoping this will lead to other roles and auditions. I’ve talked to a few people and really the only thing I need to kind of get started now is a finished product.

Q. Did you ever consider checking into rehab or something to boost your career?

A. (laughs) I thought about it. Experience wise it was really cool because I got to know the audio and sound and lighting and how they do that so it’s almost like a fallback in case the acting doesn’t work out for whatever reason.

Q. So what are you doing now while you wait for the movie to come out?

A. Just working in Regina, manual labour, doing the 9 to 5 thing and waiting for everything to get finished up.

Q. Thanks Nolan.