In the Spring of 2000, I was cast in the role of "Teddy Chin", a top-notch computer programmer and devout believer in the "open-source" philosophy. I was living in Toronto when I found out I got the part, after four separate auditions. I was happy for the opportunity to work with director Peter Howitt, and even though the movie didn't do so well at the box office, I had some great experiences, and learned a lot.

Some interesting notes about the movie:

Hardcore computer geeks (I don't use the term as an insult, I'm geeking out on my website right now) will notice that the lines of code on the computer screens seen in the movie are all legitimate HTML and C++ scripts.

The video clips and stills of "Teddy Chin" accepting awards from Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, were shot at the Sun campus near San Jose. I flew down that day with the movie's 2nd unit and technical director (dammit, I've forgotten her name - I'll post it here when I remember) and flew back to Vancouver that same night. Their campus is HUGE. (I don't know if they've sold some of it off now...)

The aerial shots of the N.U.R.V. (big Microsoft-like company headed by Tim Robbin's character) were of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada. The other shots were done all over the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver. Those big computer parts sticking out of the ground in the movie were not CGI (computer effects), they actually erected these huge, fake statues.

While we were filming, some old friends of mine from high school were at the U.B.C. campus protesting the third-party rental of university lands, among other things. I invited them for a sandwich at our craft services table, but they weren't having it. Tee hee...

That egg-shaped building that was supposed to be N.U.R.V. headquarters is actually the Chan Centre for Performing Arts. In 2001, I shot another movie there called Stark Raving Mad, starring Sean William Scott. There were some problems with its release due to language and rating (every second line of that script had a swear word in it - or did we just add them in when we were saying them?)

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