When Cary Elwes arrived on the Louisville, Kentucky set of Dead Man’s Wire last January, he was carrying only a paper bag. It contained, more or less, everything he owned. Days earlier, the wildfires tearing through Los Angeles had destroyed his Malibu home – clothes, furniture, a lifetime of possessions, gone. His brother Cassian, producing the film, had ensured Cary’s hotel room was next door to his own. “I tried to be a support system to him,” says the 66-year-old.
Their costume designer Peggy Schnitzer – the Coen brothers’ trusted collaborator, who had volunteered for the project simply to work with its director, Gus Van Sant – had quietly gone out and bought him jeans, T-shirts, the basics. “She went out and bought a whole wardrobe for me,” Cary, 63, says. “I was very touched by that.” Being on set, he adds, “actually took my mind off of it. I saw that as a blessing.” The brothers, Cassian recalls, would go out for dinner every night. “It was just the most phenomenal bonding experience for the two of us.”
