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
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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.
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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
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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.
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intends to produce the re-
maining three before the year
is out, he said.
By season three, Reid
wants the show to be avail-
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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
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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-
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ished the project.
He spent many hours
sifting through sheets of
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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
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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
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