fame. A few facts about the movie:
• The title came from a meeting between Gross and Alliance Atlantis head Robert Lantos. When Gross told him he wanted to make a truly Canadian movie and use curling as the central theme, Lantos said: “You mean that sport that has men with brooms?”
• The movie about curling drew some unusual reactions. In November 1999, Gross told the Toronto Sun: “When I was in Los Angeles recently, I told people I was doing this thing about curling. It was as though I had farted. They didn’t know where to look.”
• A number of top curlers were given cameos in the movie, including two-time Canadian champion Jeff Stoughton as well as 1983 world champion Paul Savage, who played the role of the television announcer.
• Paul Gross didn’t know how to curl prior to his on-screen debut and said he used the book Curling For Dummies as his bible during the filming.
• Members of the rock group The Tragically Hip appeared as a curling team, representing Kingston, Ontario, their hometown.
• James Alodi, who played Neil Bucyk, one of the members of the team at the centre of the movie, fell and injured both elbows during the movie’s filming. His injury, bone chips, hurt so much he wasn’t able to rest his elbows on a table for weeks.
• The film opened on March 8, 2002, and set a Canadian record for opening weekend sales, with more than $1.1 million brought in at the box office. The movie opened on 213 screens. In the United States, however, it opened in September 2002 on a grand total of just 27 screens and brought in $14,765.
• A number of curling errors show up in the movie. For one, the scoreboard rarely reflects the scoring as shown on the ice.
• The budget for the movie was estimated at $7.5 million, quite small for a feature film.