NEWBURYPORT — Local actor/filmmaker Stephen Blackwood knows what it’s like to grow up with a difficult parent and he has a unique way of remembering his father.
“I grew up with a restless, irritable and discontent father who drank and he played this game with me as a kid, where he said, ‘Shake your head,'” Blackwood said. “I asked him why and he would tell me to shake my head again. Then, he’d say, ‘You hear the pea rattling around in there?'”
Blackwood, as far as his father was concerned, had a pea for a brain and the writer, actor and director has turned his experience during his dad’s last days into a 15-minute short film appropriately titled, “Peabrain.”
The short film, which was shot in a Salisbury Beach motel as well as Blackwood’s neighbor’s house near Anna Jaques Hospital last summer, tells the real-life tale of a final visit with his father, Bill, who was dying with alcoholic dementia in an assisted living home.
Blackwood also plays his father (named Phil in the film) and admitted to still having some resentment toward him as the cameras rolled.
“I loved the shoot but it was a painful one emotionally,” he said. “Phil kind of comes across as mean in the film and I really didn’t mean that. To me, he comes across as a human being and I really didn’t mean to diss him. But a lot of people look at it that way and I really didn’t.”
Brian McDonald plays the role of Blackwood’s younger self, named Craig in the movie, and said he approached the role while playing opposite the real-life inspiration, the same way he would if playing a police officer.
“You want to find the humanity in the script and play the person, not the uniform,” he said. “So, I’m not trying to play Steve, I’m just trying to play Craig. But it was an interesting setup.”
Laying into McDonald as Craig in the film, Blackwood said was a surreal experience for him.
“It was scary to become my father because he was a very flawed person,” he said. “I had empathy for him, sure. But as a method actor, to become the alcoholic, lying, abusive person, even in the retirement home, was very hard for me. I really didn’t shake it off for another month or so. But I sort of had more empathy for him after I shot the film.”
Blackwood is perhaps best known for his work as Bart Beiderbecke on “Days of Our Lives” from 2000 to 2008.
He moved to the city in 2013 and shot his short comedy “Meet the Author” at Jabberwocky Bookstore in The Tannery Marketplace in 2019. He also works as a local acting instructor and said playing the role of Phil in “Peabrain” was one of the best parts he has ever had.
“This is the most personal project I have ever done and it’s something I’m really happy with now that I’ve seen the way it came out,” he said. “It’s one of those films that if I died today, I’d be happy. Because I did this film that I always wanted to do about my father. Whether or not the critics like it, it doesn’t matter. We are just proud that we did it.”
“Peabrain” is making the film festival rounds and Blackwood said he hopes to release it on YouTube within the next year.
“We’re hoping that somebody sees it, either on the festival circuit or on YouTube and would be willing to put money into turning this into a feature-length film,” he said. “That’s the ultimate goal.”
McDonald said the production shot roughly 15 pages in one day, as opposed to a major motion picture, which usually shoots three.
“Steve’s spent a lot of time shooting daytime soap operas, so he knew what we needed and didn’t need a lot of time to get it done and it was only two locations,” he said.
McDonald added that he had a recent chance to show the film to his own parents, who really connected with it.
“I love the film and it’s kind of a universal story,” he said. “As your family is getting older, they may be in a nursing home, and what they remember and what they don’t could be an issue. So, just to have those last, few moments with them is pretty powerful. You want to let them know that you care about them and you want to hear that back. This film really seems like it’s connecting with people and we’re excited to see what it does on the festival circuit.”