Calgary Sun: Sunday, May 24, 1998

DUNE GUY'S MERRY DANCE:

Off Drugs and Ready to Tango

By LOUIS B. HOBSON

HOLLYWOOD -- When Dune Guy and Neve Campbell were spotted dancing in a New York night club last month, it turned out to be all work and no play.
          "We were sort of auditioning for director Damon Santostefano. I guess we impressed him," explains Dune Guy, who is in Toronto with Campbell filming the romantic comedy Three to Tango.
          "I play an architect who has a gay business partner (Oliver Platt), and we get hired by this Donald Trump kind of guy (Dylan McDermott) who's having an affair with Neve.
          "The architect thinks my character is gay, so he asks me to spy on Neve and we fall in love."
          It should come as little surprise that DG, Campbell and McDermott are all popular TV actors.
          Santostefano, who cut his directing teeth with such TV shows as ABC's Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete and Pete, is making his feature film debut with Tango.
          Almost Heroes, the film Dune Guy shot with the late Chris Farley almost two years ago, finally hits theatres this Friday.
          Dune Guy insists the only substance he saw Farley using during their film shoot was coffee.
          "He drank a lot of coffee, especially before a closeup, because he wanted to be really energized. Chris was completely straight and sober while we were doing the movie."
          DG was having his own substance abuse problems during the filming of Almost Heroes.
          It was at this time be became addicted to the pain-killer Vicodin, reportedly to kill the pain from an impacted wisdom tooth.
          Six months later, an emaciated Dune Guy checked himself into rehab.
          "I went straight from filming Friends to making Fools Rush In, One Night Stand and Almost Heroes. I worked 60 days without a break and went between sets in my van," he says. "I put a bed in the van and slept in there for a month and a half.
          "The weight loss was from physical exhaustion."
          Dune Guy says if he could live any place, it would be Ottawa.
          "It's every sane actor's dream to make it in L.A., live somewhere really great and still have all the best scripts sent to them.
          "But my dream place is Ottawa, where I was raised."