FOUR LOST GUYS:

Andy (Kenneth Welsh), a successful Seattle grocery executive, plans the trip. He invites Robin (Hrothgar Mathews) from his men’s group, and Randall (Lochlyn Munro), his corporate lawyer, to join him. As their guide to the Canadian wilderness, he appoints Stewart (Jackson Davies), his store manager in Lone Pine, B.C. Each member of the group has his own expectations for the outing but none of them anticipated getting lost and sharing the woods with a grizzly bear and two well-armed poachers.

“These new millennium men are not just lost in the woods, they are lost in deeper ways, too,” says producer Robert Frederick of MVP Entertainment. “There is some real poignancy in the metaphor. It is also hysterically funny”

The film’s humour arises from the sincerity of this group of middle-aged men who are confused by where life has taken them. Although they are trapped together in a totally unfamiliar environment, each character approaches the situation from a very different perspective. At first, the only thing they really have in common is — they are lost.

Hrothgar Mathews (Robin) explains that the trip gets off to a shaky start: “Four guys go off in the woods. They don’t know each other and, in spite of themselves, they bond. It’s a comedy, but it goes in a deeper direction.”

Jackson Davies agrees: “I (Stewart) thought this is a weekend where we’ll go to the cabin, drink some beer, fish a little, play some cards… but I was wrong.”

Andy, the CEO who planned the expedition, tends to play the part of the adult in the group, analyzing everyone’s reactions, while the fourth member, Robin, maintains an almost childlike optimism. He has a new-age solution for every problem they face.
“Robin has been trying a lot of stuff, spiritually,” says Mathews, “but he hasn’t listened very clearly to what’s going on. On this trip, he gets jolted into looking around him.”
Much of the film’s comedy arises from Robin’s sincere, if over-zealous, attempts to share an enriching, life-affirming experience with the others. He meets definite opposition from Randall.

“Randall wasn’t quite expecting it to be about ‘the men’s movement,’” says Munro. “He thought it was just about going out to the cabin with a client. He wasn’t expecting the whole ‘chi thing’ or that his fear of heights had something to do with his father.”
Robin quotes from one “life-skills” seminar after another, baffling Stewart and irritating Randall. Eventually, even patient, reasonable Andy begins to suspect that Robin spends too much of his time studying life and too little of it actually living.

As the weekend progresses, the four are forced into one unexpected situation after another. Stewart tries to guide them to a lakeside cabin but he is no outdoorsman. Stewart can’t even stay on his feet in his own grocery store. With bright-eyed optimism, he leads them deeper and deeper into the forest, always insisting that the cabin is “just over there.” It isn’t. As a frustrated Randall observes, there is no way they could be more thoroughly or precisely lost.

Being lost is just the first of their problems. Stewart, the cheerful bumbler, leads them up a cliff, and then promptly falls off it. Faced with a genuine emergency, the three modern men fall prey to a kind of modern paralysis. They can talk about what to do but they don’t know how to just do something. Luckily, Stewart is not without resources of his own. Indeed, Stewart may have got them all lost in the woods, but he is the one least lost in himself.
The foursome finds the woods full of the usual natural dangers, says Jackson Davies, but there is more to The Wild Guys than wilderness hazards: “There’s a lot of action in it. There are stunts, there are cliffs, there’s a bear and a river but people actually say interesting things. It’s a treat to do something that has intelligence.”

While trying to find their way out of the woods, the men are also finding their way into their own hearts and minds.

Randall begins the journey reluctantly and with two simple motives. He wants to please Andy, who is a good client. He also wants to avoid joining his athletic young girlfriend in a weekend triathlon. When he meets the rest of his weekend companions, Randall is not impressed.

“As they go along,” says Munro, “you can see that he feels his IQ is just at a higher level than the rest. As an actor, the trick is to make him likable even though he is a lawyer.”
Randall has spent his whole adult life “keeping up” — with his job, his friends, and his girlfriend. He sees introspection as a waste of time and a very uncomfortable one. He knows he has “a thing” about heights but he’d sooner not name it as fear or consider why he has it. Randall finds the whole “men’s sensitivity thing” a bit hard to take and, for much of the film, he takes his frustration out on Robin. Yet, in the end, it is Robin who reaches him.

Robin is as open as Randall is closed. He has wholeheartedly embraced the “men’s movement” in all its aspects. He drives a Westphalia van, wears karmic symbols, is a strict vegetarian and, by his own confession, attends feminist film festivals.
“Robin is a seeker,” says Mathews. “He’s looking for the answers… he’s into a lot of stuff, crystals and things, to try to find out what’s going on.”

But, underlying his forced cheerfulness about being the ultimate SNAG “Sensitive New Age Guy,” Robin is insecure and tortured by guilt.

“I feel guilty about. . . everything,” says Robin, “the latest violence against women statistics… sexism on MTV… unresolved Native Land Claims. . . .”

Robin begins his trip through the wilderness like an eager child, hoping that it will somehow meld all the philosophies that bounce around his head into one cohesive answer. The answer he eventually finds is not about thinking, it’s about doing.

Andy is the most obscure character initially. He is a successful executive. He is well organized and takes a calm, analytical approach to everything. When there is conflict, Andy plays the role of facilitator. Although Stewart was to be their guide, Andy soon takes charge.

“Andy is an executive who has organized this thing,” says Kenneth Welsh. “Once they get lost, Andy assumes a kind of leadership that he didn’t know he had.”

Andy guides the conversation and, to some extent, manipulates the rest of the group. He sets the agenda around the campfire each evening, too.

“Things come up which are pretty basic,” says Welsh. “Men’s relationships with their fathers, their wives or girlfriends and what is really going on in those relationships.
Eventually, it becomes impossible for Andy to remain within his shell. Having forced the others into a position where they confront their issues, he cannot deny his own. What he faces about his role as husband and father shakes him and leads to the film’s surprising, and life-affirming, conclusion.

“Everything goes wrong but right,” says Welsh.

 

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