…But in a chat the other day at an Old Montreal hotel, Winnipeg writer-director Shawn Linden and Las Vegas-born, Los Angeles-based actor Thomas Dekker seemed 100-per-cent genuine when talking about their passion for Montreal. They were here in the summer of 2011 shooting the Montreal-produced indie flick The Good Lie, a smart, twist-laden thriller that opens on Friday. It’s produced by Kim Berlin and Susan Schneir, the duo behind writer-director Deborah Chow’s acclaimed The High Cost of Living.

… “It’s my favourite city,” echoed Dekker, putting even more emphasis on “favourite.”

“I love being surrounded by French,” said Dekker, who is best known for playing John Connor in the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Linden and Dekker, like most everyone else who visits our fine city, also really dug the town’s eateries.

Dekker says Matt Craven, who plays his father in the movie, went to Garde Manger in Old Montreal nearly every night.

“And I love the architecture here. And it’s rare when you make a film that you end up making friends with people who have nothing to do with the film,” said Dekker. “I don’t know how it happened, but I met a lot of local young people. And I really liked the music here.”

“It has this core story that’s very sober and very honest, and then it’s surrounded by these vignettes that are ridiculous and fantastical and funny,” said Dekker. “I felt it was very precisely constructed. But it allowed you to go on a very dark journey while still having a film that’s very entertaining.”

Dekker has starred in major studio productions like the Terminator TV series, but says he had no hesitation about agreeing to act in a low-budget Canadian independent picture.

“I really just look at what is good and what interests me,” said Dekker. “It’s actually the reverse for me. I’ll say, ‘OK. I’ll have to take something I’m not excited about because it pays well.’ The projects I get excited about, it doesn’t matter what country they’re made in or what I’m getting paid. My favourite work of mine is almost all small movies that didn’t pay the rent and I didn’t care. That’s the life of an actor — the job you have to take versus the job you want to take.”

Dekker just shot a high-profile pilot for CBS, Backstrom, produced by the creators of Bones and based on a series of Swedish crime novels.

“It’s very smart,” said Dekker. “’That would be a job that pays the bills and is enjoyable.”

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