The Winnipeg Press:

Weary in Winnipeg

Actor, playwright, director, musician and composer Gene Pyrz has got so much on his plate... who's got time to sleep?

Sun Oct 16 2005 - By David Sanderson

"I can't go anywhere anymore -- the theatre, a hockey game -- without nodding off," he laughs.

It's easy to forgive Pyrz his narcoleptic ways; if there's one person in the room who has earned his shut-eye, it's the one opting for a Sleemans. The 40-something actor/musician/playwright/director/composer has, after all, spent the better part of his career exhausting anyone who has tried to keep up with him.

"Yeah, sometimes I used to think it would be nice if there were two of me," Pyrz admits between swigs.

Here's the good news: now there are. Pyrz recently met his match, so to speak, in the form of a synthetic look-alike. Pyrz and his counterfeit cohort worked together in The Plague, horror-meister Clive Barker's latest project, which recently finished shooting in and around Winnipeg.

The movie -- slated for general release sometime in 2006 -- centres around a mysterious apocalypse that has left the world's children in a comatose state. Mayhem ensues when the kids snap to and begin lashing out at anyone in their paths. "My character in the film is the preacher of the local church," says Pyrz. "He knows something about how to resolve the problem but he doesn't have the strength to do it."

He adds that a silicone stand-in was required for his "death" scene, when "the kids dislocate my jaw, turn my head completely around -- stuff I basically couldn't do.

"All in all, it was a really neat experience; I even managed to get a few pictures taken of me, with me."

In truth, 2005 has turned out to be one photo op after another for the Elmwood native. This summer, Pyrz cashed in his biggest Hollywood chip to date, sharing credits with Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger and Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man [as Jake] . The Ron Howard-directed epic told the tale of boxer Jim Braddock who, in 1935, came straight out of Palookaville to win the world heavyweight belt.

Pyrz says that working with the notoriously volatile Crowe was, all in all, rather lacklustre.

"The only thing he ever said to me that was more than five words was, 'Good morning, Gene.' (And that's only three words). "There was one time, however, when Howard directed me to do something that I didn't think Crowe knew about. As a fellow actor, I thought maybe I should let him in on it. We had some downtime -- he happened to be standing next to me -- so I turned to him and said, 'So, Russell, what I'm going to be doing in this next scene is...'

"Before I could even finish, Crowe looked at me and said (adopts thick Australian accent) 'Gene, don't even worry about it. Whatever you do will be ab-so-lute-ly per-fect...' Then he went back to what he was doing.

"I like to think he meant it, though."

Cinderella Man was filmed in Toronto. Pyrz splits his time between an apartment there and a home in Winnipeg.

"That's my passion when I'm here," he says of his East Kildonan abode. "I love working on it -- I just hung a new door today, as a matter of fact."

Pyrz's address is only a few blocks away from the home he, together with three brothers and one sister, grew up in. A home, incidentally, where his Polish-Catholic mother still lives -- and still expects him to visit every chance he gets, so she can fix him something to eat.

Nattily dressed this night in a black silk shirt and black slacks -- his purposely unkempt hair conjuring images of a latter-day Eddie Cochran -- Pyrz looks nary a day older than he did in the mid-'80s, a point in time when he and his retro-rock outfit Combo Combo routinely laid waste to the Dave Edmunds songbook night after night in one sweat-soaked beer hall or another.

Jason Allen, the lead singer for rockabilly stalwarts the Rowdymen, remembers those days all too well. In fact, Allen might be the only person on God's green Earth who Pyrz counts on for a royalty cheque. In 2003, the Rowdymen recorded the Combo Combo chestnut, I'll Apologize, for their Rubberneckin' CD.

"What happened was I always remembered the chorus of that song but I didn't remember the rest of it," recalls Allen. "I bumped into Gene one night at Times Change(d) and said, 'Y'know, I'd really like to record I'll Apologize -- what would you think of that?' 'Oh,' he said, 'I'd love it if you did.' "Now whenever we play and he's in the crowd, we get him up to come up and sing it with us."

'Round about the same time that Combo Combo was Stray Cat strutting its way around town, Pyrz was also laying the foundation for his acting career.

"I started in community theatre and it all kind of snowballed from there. My first Shakespeare role was in 1984 -- it was the first Shakespeare in the Park, as a matter of fact."

Pyrz mentions that on numerous occasions, he found himself rushing out after supper to "break a leg," before making his way to the Albert to perform three sets with his bandmates.

The multi-tasker hesitates, however, when queried whether or not he ever considered choosing one over the other.

"No, that's because I can't honestly say that there was one I enjoyed more. The acting and singing just seemed to naturally feed off each other."

Perhaps the best example of that occurred in 1991 when Pyrz wowed audiences in the Maynard Collins play Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave.

A Free Press review dated Oct. 16, 1991 spoke to the authenticity of Pyrz's Senior.

"His stunning vocalization is what really lends credibility to his performance," gushed Bohdan Gembarsky. "If you close your eyes, Pyrz's yodel-tinged lilt makes you think it really is ol' Hank himself, playing and hollering on New Year's Eve 1952." Manitoba Theatre Centre artistic director Steven Schipper vividly recalls seeing Pyrz perform the play. Schipper went on to direct Pyrz in MTC's A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-'90s.

"He played a very crucial part, Flute, who ends up being the guy who plays the girl in the play within the play," says Schipper. "He was very, very funny in that.

"He was working opposite the late Heath Lamberts, who was a master comedian. Gene managed to hold his own and more against Heath."

In addition, Pyrz also appeared in such MTC productions as The Crucible, A Streetcar Named Desire and Hamlet -- the latter in tandem with one Keanu Reeves.

"The only time we ever got together was at the end of the run," Pyrz says of his most excellent co-star, who, like himself, also moonlights as a musician. "We'd always talked about sitting down one night and trading bass licks so, finally, when the show was over, Keanu said, 'OK, this is where I'm staying; come on over and bring your bass.'

"We just sat around all night and jammed. He's pretty good, actually."

Although Pyrz isn't a classically trained actor, Schipper says he brings a unique set of attributes to the stage.

"He comes across as being particularly real -- you get the feeling that he is truly salt of the earth."

One of Schipper's dreams, in fact, has been to stage The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Gene in the title role. "I've always thought he would make a great Dr. Frank N. Furter but it's just never worked out. At least not yet," he laughs.

Nowadays, when Pyrz isn't busy auditioning for television or movie roles, he keeps himself busy putting the finishing touches on a musical he and his writing partner, Ken Pinchin, have been working on for the better part of a year.

"It's called Rocko the Bull," says Pyrz, "and it's a fable of Biblical proportions." When asked where he would eventually like to see Rocko performed, Pyrz taps his bottle against the window, pointing towards the Burton Cummings Theatre across the street.

"It's going to have a really large cast, plus a full chorus and band, so it's definitely going to need the right-sized stage."

Pyrz's intention this time out is to simply turn it over to somebody who has lots of experience with musicals and then sit back and watch.

Having said that, Pyrz admits that he's not sure what will be the bigger challenge -- getting the show off the ground or staying awake long enough to catch its ending.