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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2015)
12A • January 30, 2015 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com Episode No. 2 of web series ‘Culpa’ premieres Director boosts production values of quirky black comedy By Erick Bengel of Arch Cape Studio’s low-budget independent web series named “Culpa.” “Edgar” premiered at Manzanita’s Hoffman Cen- ter Jan. 9 and is available for download at culpa-online. com. Cannon Beach Gazette A ‘humbling experience’ A private investigator named Ronny Glasswell is hired to track down the stolen skeleton of a man named Edgar, whose wid- ow, Mona, is losing her mind. En route to a cliffhanger, Ronny is forced to contend with Mona’s dysfunction- al family and a retired cop seeking revenge for the incarceration of his grand- daughter-molesting twin brother. Meanwhile, elder abuse, drug addiction and other sordid subplots play out against a backdrop of vivid Oregon locales. This is the quick and dirty synopsis of “Ed- gar,” the second webisode “Edgar” — another for- ay into the creepy, quirky FKDUDFWHUVWXGLHVWKDWGH¿QHG episode No. 1 — takes place about six months after the events in the pilot, which pre- miered last July. Drew Reid, the Manzani- ta-based writer/director, shot the 29-minute black comedy over four months (plus one month of editing) in Arch Cape, Mohler, Wheeler, Ne- halem, Manzanita, Portland and Oregon Route 53 — all for approximately $750, he said. ³,W¶V GLI¿FXOW WR PDNH D ¿OPZLWKDKXJHEXGJHWDQG talented actors, but just try to do it on a shoestring budget with volunteer people,” said Judson Moore, a cast mem- ERICK BENGEL PHOTO From left: Winston Laszlo, a cast member and co-producer; Drew Reid, the writer, director and producer; Judson Moore, a cast member and production assistant; and David Dillon, the Hoffman Center’s film program coordinator, make sure their projection equipment is working moments before the premiere of “Culpa: Episode 2.” ber and production assistant from Manzanita. “I’ve just been really impressed with Drew’s ability to direct this whole thing and really pro- duce something that’s very watchable and really interest- ing.” Moore is part of a local cast that also includes Can- non Beach resident Pia Shep- herd as Mona. For three of the main roles, Reid snagged actors from the Portland Ac- tors Conservatory. “It’s a real humbling ex- perience just to be involved with people who are really trying to do their best work,” Reid said of his cast and crew. “It’s so exciting to watch the words that I write, which are just cold black dots on a piece of white paper ... They breathe life into them. They really give them form and structure. That’s really cool to watch, man.” “I’m curious to see what’s going to happen in episode three,” said Shepherd, who was in Los Angeles when the second episode premiered. ‘Cracking the whip’ With each new episode, Reid aspires to raise “Cul- pa’s” production values — acting, editing, writing, com- position, etc. Winston Laszlo, a cast member and co-producer from Wheeler, said that “Ed- gar” represents “some steps forward” from episode No. 1. Reid himself remarked, “I can’t stand to watch episode one, to be honest with you.” The series “feels like it has the potential of growing into something,” Laszlo said. “I don’t think it’s there yet, but I think that, if we keep at it, and Drew keeps cracking the ZKLSZHPD\NLQGRI¿JXUH out how to do this.” “Culpa” appears to be building an audience of North Coast residents eager to see the direction the show will take, Moore said. 7KH¿UVWVHDVRQZLOOFRQ- VLVWRI¿YHHSLVRGHVDQG5HLG intends to produce the re- maining three before the year is out, he said. By season three, Reid wants the show to be avail- DEOHRQ1HWÀL[+XOXRU$P- azon. “That’s my goal. That’s where I’m headed,” he said. Tenacious McQuhae is not afraid to jump into a fray McQuhae from Page 1A but the Cannon Beach citi- zenry seemed mostly to side with McQuhae, he said. The same can’t be said of the proposed Chapman Point dune grading project that McQuhae helped bring before the planning com- mission last spring. The sand dunes in Chap- man Point, where McQu- hae owns a home with his wife, Diana, have grown by tens of feet, blocking the beachfront views of houses built in the late 1990s and early 2000s. McQuhae and the Chapman Point Home- owners Association had hoped the city would lift the subdivision’s restriction on dune grading, allowing them to shave down the dunes west of their prop- erty just as homeowners at Breakers Point and Ocean Avenue are allowed to do. But the opposition came out in force, arguing that it would degrade one of Can- non Beach’s most striking landscape features and di- minish a beloved public resource. These arguments do not resonate with McQuhae. “Society places a pre- mium on things of beauty, like views. Views go with property,” he said. “Land that has a view commands a premium. It does; it’s more expensive. It’s more expen- sive because it has a view.” People who own their property, he said, “have a right to protect the value of their property. I can’t imag- ine why (some residents) think that we would want to despoil our front yard, but they seem to think that that’s what we’re up to.” Dune grading at Chap- man Point eventually will have to happen, he said, be- cause letting the dunes con- tinue to build up unchecked is “just not cricket. It’s not fair to have people lose a great portion of the value of their property due to public opinion.” Into the past Born in Saskatoon, Can- ada, McQuhae — who also owns a home in rural Wash- ington County — earned a bachelor’s degree in applied science at the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. at London’s Imperi- al College of Science and Technology. For 30 years, he worked in the semicon- ductor industry. At North- ern Telecom Limited in Ot- tawa, Canada, and at Intel in Hillsboro, he helped devel- op the processes for manu- facturing silicon chips for modern electronic devices. After retiring in 1999, he began looking into the origins of his unusual Scot- tish name — “You don’t ¿QGWRRPDQ\RIXVLQWKLV world,” he said — and em- barked on a family history research project. “I got into that in quite a big way.” Ten years later, McQu- KDH KDG PRUH RU OHVV ¿Q- ished the project. He spent many hours sifting through sheets of PLFUR¿FKH DQG UHHOV RI PLFUR¿OP SLHFLQJ WRJHWK- er his lineage as far back as he could. Through the Church of Latter-day Saints — which has an enormous database of birth records, burial records, marriage records and census records — he traced his ancestry, on his mother’s side, back to Germany in the early 1800s and to England in the mid-1700s. On his father’s side, he traced it back to Scotland in the mid-1700s. Beyond a certain point, his family history goes silent because there are QR PRUH UHFRUGV WR ¿QG Nevertheless, McQuhae’s research gave him tremen- dous insight into the past. “You’re learning about the times, the era they lived in, the type of con- ditions there were, what people did for a living, what things cost,” he said. “You’re just absorbing all kinds of information that’s there, not because you’re looking for it but because it’s peripheral to what you’re looking for, and it just presents itself.” A family’s having up to 13 children was “quite common,” he said. “Los- ing three of those children to childhood illnesses was quite common. They didn’t have cures for diphtheria, measles. Many children died of tuberculosis.” He never met his fa- ther’s mother and barely remembers his father’s father, “but through study- ing family history, I feel I know them, and I feel I know their parents.” Asked whether he enjoys the spare time retirement affords him, McQuhae smiled and said, “I seem to ¿OOLW´