Local teacher opposite Stormare, Plimpton

Alan Penner loved the experience of acting in a feature film.....It was also great that some of the people he was acting with were fairly well-known Hollywood names – like Martha Plimpton (TV’s Weeds and Entourage), Peter Stormare (Armageddon, The Big Lebowski) and Jill Hennessy (TV’s Las Vegas and Law & Order)......The Leamington teacher and musician also got to see his face in close-up on the big screen at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival when the movie Small Town Murder Songs had three screenings. (picture) .....The movie by Toronto’s Ed Gass-Donnelly of Three Legged Dog Films (This Beautiful City) was shot in Listowel, Ont.....Penner was asked to act in the film as a result of a family connection. His brother Andrew Penner, also a musician,  helped with the film’s music. He had also done scoring on the director’s last film. Andrew’s wife Erin was a personal assistant and scout locator. Wanting someone who knew of rural life she “just called us because we grew up in a farm in Leamington”.....Variety describes the murder mystery as “vaguely suggesting a Canadian Insomnia...wedded to its provincial setting, Mennonite ambience and Germanic accents...(a) modestly made but cosmically profound drama”.....Gass-Donnelly is shopping the films at festivals but no word on a distribution deal yet. Penner says it will be available on the DVD rental market.