CBS Taking the world by storm in 'Category 7: End of World'

With Hurricane Katrina occurring during filming, it was a bit like art imitating life.
ZAP2IT.COM
Last November, after a series of hurricanes had battered Florida, CBS premiered "Category 6: Day of Destruction," a successful miniseries about a destructive superstorm threatening to flatten Chicago.
This year, after a hurricane season to exceed any in recorded history, CBS has upped the ante with a sequel miniseries, "Category 7: The End of the World." Airing on consecutive Sundays beginning tonight, it follows even greater storms that threaten world capitals from Paris to Cairo then combine into the ultimate superstorm, which unleashes its fury on Washington, D.C.
Ironically, production for "Category 7" was under way in, of all places, Winnipeg, Canada, while the real Hurricane Katrina was battering the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
In the aftermath of Katrina, questions were raised about the response of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), leading to the resignation of its head, Michael D. Brown. A fictional version of FEMA also features prominently in the miniseries.
Movie's stars
"We were two or three weeks into shooting when New Orleans happened," says Sebastian Spence ("First Wave"), who plays Gavin, a security expert whose sister, Judith Carr (Gina Gershon), is the improbably lovely head of FEMA. "There were scenes of blaming FEMA in the movie. It was like, 'Wow."'
Also starring in the film are Randy Quaid (reprising his "Category 6" role of Tommy Tornado), Shannen Doherty, Tom Skerritt, Swoosie Kurtz, James Brolin, Robert Wagner and Adam Rodriguez.
Odd as it seems to shoot a hurricane movie in the geographic center of Canada, Spence -- a native of Newfoundland -- says the city was quite accommodating.
"The city pulled out all the stops," he says. "We'd block off the whole downtown and turn over 85 cars, set up wind fans and blow stuff around. It was ridiculous. It was like walking through a war zone."
But while the fake storm would be shut down at the end of each day, the real one was still going on.
"It was pretty weird," Spence says. "I have to say, for the most part, people just tried not to think about it, because you felt like it was art imitating life. It got kind of creepy. At the same time, it felt like there was a storm happening, except you could go home at the end of the day, and the storm was over.
"We'd be in it all day, have stuff blowing in your eyes, be running around and screaming over air fans, and then go home. Everything was quiet, and you could watch the other hurricane on the news. It was really weird."
'Out of perspective'
As horrific as the real storms were, Spence says, "We blow it a little bit out of perspective in this movie. One of the pyramids gets blown away. We're dealing with large landmarks that get picked up and tossed around.
"It's three storms converging on Paris and Egypt, and slowly but surely, it finds its way over to the Eastern United States."
Asked if he'll feel a bit guilty if "Category 7" is a big hit, Spence says, "I think I would, yeah. That was the question that we'd sit around over a drink at the hotel bar, discussing, 'How do we feel about this?' For the most part, it just felt surreal. As much as they were parodying it, it wasn't that funny, because it was happening, too.