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WG High alum lands a role in feature film
'Black Eyed Dog' will premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festivel
By Jessica Lyons
Pamela Wylie used to be terrified of public speaking. To cure herself, she took a couple of acting classes at UC-Berkeley. She thought it would give her the confidence to speak in front of a crowd. Instead, Wylie--a local girl who attended Booksin Elementary and Markham Junior High and graduated from Willow Glen High in '79--caught the acting bug.
Wylie's first feature film, Black Eyed Dog, will be screened on opening night of the Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 7. The movie was shot in San Francisco and produced by Irish film company Aisling Works.
Black Eyed Dog, which is about Irish immigrants living in the Bay Area, tells the story of band manager Paul Maguire (played by Paul Barnett, who is also the producer), who is trying to escape his past and his brother's ties to the Irish Mafia. Wylie plays Sian, Paul's wife.
"My character is not a very happy person," Wylie says. "[Paul and I] have been married for 10 years and we're at a crux in our marriage. He spends all his time with the band traveling, trying to get a record contract. We bought a bar together, it burned down and we lost a lot of money. We're trying to make a last stab at it to stay together and it's not successful."
Black Eyed Dog is the name of Paul's band. It's also Irish slang for depression.
Wylie's own story, however, has a happy ending. She says she fell into the role of Sian by chance.
Every day, Wylie swims at the Sheehan Hotel in downtown San Francisco. An actress with Berkeley's Subterranean Shakespeare theater group, she often gives fliers for her shows to the hotel's desk clerk Dermot Carroll, a friend of director Richard O'Connell.
"[Carroll] said he knew I was a committed actress because I was always giving him these fliers, so he invited me to come to an audition for the film," Wylie says.
The audition was all improvisation, as was the movie.
"It was a pretty intense first audition," Wylie says. "Paul Barnett told me about the situation and about our marriage, and we had to improvise a few scenes. One was about my finding out that Paul was involved with the Irish Mafia and he had to kill someone--they were all pretty intense."
Each actor had to write a biography for their character, detailing his or her personal history from childhood on through adulthood. No one had a written script until about two weeks prior to filming. And even then, the script wasn't very concrete.
The film is primarily male dominated, and Wylie has only four speaking scenes.
"It's not a huge role, but it's an important role," she says.
Wylie says she hopes to work with Aisling (Celtic for "dream") Works again in the future. But for now, it's back to the theater. She's playing Gertrude in Subterranean Shakespeare's Hamlet, set to open in November. Not bad for someone who doesn't like to speak in public.
To order tickets by phone for the Mill Valley Film Festival, call 415.380.0888 between noon and 7 p.m.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
