The Brendan Fraser comeback tour officially culminated in the Canadian actor winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his work on The Whale.
Though Fraser has been long adored for years, Dave Rand, who worked as an FX lead on Journey to the Center of the Earth for the Montreal-based Meteor Studios, recounted a story of how Fraser went to bat for them following the studio’s bankruptcy that would have lost him and his employees over one million dollars in salary.
#BrendanFraser is a righteous dude. In November 2007 our paychecks stopped. I was the FX lead on #JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth for Meteor Studios in Montreal and was asked to convince my crew to stay and finish the picture with a guarantee we'd all get paid with overtime. We had…
In 2007, Rand and his team had completed the final shot for Journey to the Center of the Earth, which had cast Fraser as its lead. Shortly after, Meteor Studios informed Rand that it was declaring bankruptcy. The studio owed Rand and his team 1.3 million dollars at the time.
Variety had begun to report on the studio’s bankruptcy but then informed Rand that the story was not newsworthy.
“I kept trying to get help from the Hollywood press,” Rand tweeted. “I realized it wasn’t just Variety’s decision, no one wanted to touch the story. My guess was the studio had put pressure on them to bury it.”
After an initial attempt to get Fraser to become aware of the situation, Rand alleges that Variety had sent him a threatening email. The Normes du Travail, which maintains labour standards in Quebec, suggested that Rand not go to the press as it would hurt his case.
Not long after, Rand became in contact with someone at Page Six, who wrote a piece back in 2008 detailing what had happened to Rand and the employees at Meteor Studios.
“Meteor Studios was declared bankrupt shortly after filming,” Rand explained to Page Six 15 years ago. “It has since reopened as a new company, Lumiere VFX, at the same location. Discovery is attempting to get away with this. Some of the employees worked over 100-hour weeks. Over $1 million is owed.”
After Page Six published the story, a man with an area code identical to his contact at Page Six called him and asked for Rand.
“This is Brendan Fraser, what the fuck is going on?”
“He had no idea that artists were not paid on his movie,” Rand continued in his tweet. “He listened intently, asked a lot of questions and promised he would call me regularly until this was solved.”
Fraser then called Page Six to explain his side of the story.
“Fraser’s rep says he has been making calls to help them get paid,” the article reads. “‘Brendan just heard about this for the first time. He’s on it. He thinks what happened is awful, and he’s extremely upset,’ said the representative.”
In July 2008, Playback Magazine told the entire story, which hadn’t been picked up by any other publication at the time, Rand explained in a second tweet adding details.
#BrendanFraser is a righteous dude. Part 2 Our studio partner at the time was worth 8 billion. The hardest part to swallow in this ordeal was when the studio reopened under a new name just weeks later and hired back the personel they needed to turn the …
“A vfx wave began to form,” Rand added back on his first tweet. “Branden [sic] kept his promise, he publically campaigned for us. The media, especially Variety, even started to cover our story. Thank you David Cohen. We finally got 80% of our money almost 2 yrs later.”
“We’d had none, but Mr Fraser gave us wings,” Rand concluded. “He’s a righteous dude.”
