Framingham backdrop for a movie

By Lenny Megliola
Wednesday, August 25, 2004

FRAMINGHAM — They have come here, hard by a loading dock behind a beat-up factory that’s been around since 1908, its floors scarred, the paint peeling. A row of Dumpsters off the dock makes it even less appealing.

Perfect. Just what Drew Pearlman wants. He is making a movie. It’s a grim film about the mob, about revenge, killers with no conscience. Hard stuff, woven from the mind of the 30-year-old Pearlman, who wrote the script and is directing and producing the independent film.

It’s called “Street Players,” and somebody has to get whacked. In this pre-production scene, that would be a no-account named Cowboy, played on-the-money by former Boston Bruins’ bad boy Lyndon Byers.

The cigarette-smoking Cowboy meets up with another bad dude. They’re both packin’. Somebody’s gonna die. Guns go off. Blood splatters. Cowboy falls to the floor. His cigarette’s still alive but he’s not.

It’s a riveting scene. The special effects guy warns crew and visitors that it’s going to play loud, with the gunfire, so block your ears if you think it’s going to bother you.

When they were kids in Framingham, Eric Pearlman remembers, Drew “was always walking around with a camera filming the family. He was always working with cameras. So I'm not surprised he’s doing this.”

This is Pearlman’s most ambitious project. He has made eight short films that have shown at art houses. “Street Players” is a totally different animal, a full-length film that could put Pearlman’s Road Rambler Films company on the map.

“I wrote it about a year ago,” said Pearlman. “It came from the idea of revenge. What would happen if someone (killed) everyone you loved. What would you do?”

It took him two weeks to write it. He was in L.A. at the time, but when he thought of where he’d like to shoot at least some of the film, Framingham came to mind. The gritty side of his hometown. The train tracks downtown where there are a lot of homeless camps now. The rundown Bancroft building, yesterday’s locale.

Pearlman will speed up production (he’ll shoot in Framingham and East Boston) in late October when the trees are bare, there’s a bite in the air, people are blowing on their hands and the homeless are staying warm standing by fires lit in trash cans.

“Drew’s got a good sense of film style and he’s a great writer,”said Framingham native and Hudson resident Christo Tsiaras of Dream Alley Pictures, which shares office space with Pearlman’s company in Boston’s theater district. “There’s a lot of detail (in Pearlman’s work), a lot of emotion.”

Channel 25, Boston’s Fox affiliate, is following “Street Players” around and airing monthly segments of the film’s progression. “You can’t even imagine what goes into the making of a movie,” said Natick’s Josh Schneider, a Fox production assistant. “It’s been a blast watching.”

There’s a lot of down time between takes. Actors and crew kill time. They talk, they joke, the language occasionally turning off-color. Only one woman is here.

Byers is a big hit (HITMAN?) with everyone on the set. He was a hockey goon, and proud of it. He wasn’t exactly Guy Lafleur on skates but he protected his Bruins teammates. That was his job and they appreciated it. Then the hockey was over. Now what would he do with the rest of his life?

“I had no clue,” said Byers. “I was that guy who didn’t prepare. I flew by the seat of my pants.”

He flew high. The fast lane sucked him up. “I’ve been to jail. I’ve had a battle with the bottle. I live for the day. Sometimes that gets me in trouble. I know who I am and what I do.”

But he has slowed down, doesn’t drink and drive, has a 5-year-old daughter, speaks to kids about the dark path on which booze can take you. He has a regular gig, going on eight years now, at WAAF-FM weekday mornings. He’s been on WEEI’s Big Show and Channel 7 sports programs.

Byers became a minor celebrity in Boston with big-time friends, Michael J. Fox and Denis Leary included. He’s been in a couple of Farrelly brothers movies.

He hooked up with Pearlman through a mutual friend, Eric Friedberg, another Framingham homeboy. Friedberg read the “Street Players” script. “He went, ‘Oh, my God! There’s a good part for L.B.’” said Byers.

“When he came in the first time, I didn’t know he’d already read the script,” said Pearlman. “I was impressed. He blew me away.” Byers looked the part, too.

He says he got the acting “bug” about two years ago, and it was triggered by being on location in North Carolina with Michael J. Fox on a TV film the famous actor was producing. Byers had a few lines as a hockey goon. It came naturally.

“Denis Leary gave me the best advice,” said Byers. “‘Be yourself.’” Although the film never saw the light of day, the passion and professionalism Fox showed for it stayed with Byers.

Movies are what he wants to do now (along with the radio show).

“I’m like a kid in a candy store,” he said. “I’ll do anything. I’ll jump off a building. Today I got shot. I’m a team guy. I’m addicted (to acting). To be able to do this, it’s phenomenal.”

Even though the first time he saw himself on the big screen “I thought I looked like a nitwit. I’m goofy looking.”

“Street Players” isn’t light stuff. For Byers it’s a small role but a big career step. He’s acting. “I’m hooked,” he said.
Drew Pearlman learned that about himself a long time ago. “Edgy, powerful”films, like Stanley Kubrick’s, have influenced Pearlman. Between takes, as cast and crew yuk it up, it’s hard for Pearlman to play along. He may seem amused, but only briefly. You sense that his mind is working overtime. Maybe if we do this next take. Try this. Move this over there. So when he said, later, this film is “an obsession,” you’re not surprised. He’s written (and revised it many times), he’s directing and producing it. He has to raise money, then get it in theaters.

It could be a breakout film and it’s always on his mind. “It’s your baby, you’re stuck with it,” he said. “I want to make a great film.”Some of it in Framingham. Hey, what are hometowns for?

( Lenny Megliola is the Daily News sports columnist. He can be reached at lennymegs@aol.com. )

Drew Pearlman can be contacted at drew@roadramblerfilms.com.