The joint was jumping late Saturday night. Neve Campbell, her brother Christian and several of their closest friends unveiled their new romantic comedy called Hair Shirt at the Uptown cinema in the Toronto film festival.

Yesterday, they all admitted how nervous they were for their world premiere.

"At the end, I didn't know anything," Christian Campbell admitted in a group interview along with his sister and filmmaking pals Dean Paras and Katie Wright. The four young Canadians all co-produced and co-starred in the movie. Paras wrote and directed.

"I couldn't be excited, I couldn't be upset," Christian continued. "I didn't know what to feel. I was numb."

"We just put so much into it," said Wright. "We poured our hearts into it. Saturday night was the peak of all our hard work and 1,100 people were there witnessing it with us."

Hair Shirt, made on an extremely low budget (which they all refuse to divulge) and totally independent of the Hollywood studio system, is up for sale now. Buyers packed the Uptown. Bids are being made at the Toronto festival. Lawyers and sales agents are handling the business end now, Paras said. "We're doing the publicity end."

Neve Campbell, whose Hollywood star name helped get Hair Shirt off the ground, is enthusiastic about the film, both as a learning experience and as entertainment. She plays a support role as a mean-spirited bitch who dogs Paras and Wright and tries to ruin their chaotic romance.

"She's hilarious," Neve said of her role. "She's so evil and so catty. I'm so glad that I'm not that person in the film. But it's fun to play up your dark side. She's the kind of girl you just want to slap and wake up.

"I just really love the movie," the Guelph-born actress continued. "I makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it because I love the characters so much."

While she has attended many premieres, such as for her mega-popular Scream, Hair Shirt is an exception. "It felt different because we did it."

Not that this gaggle of twentysomethings knew what they were getting into originally. "It was definitely a lot more work than we had imagined," said Neve, "and it offered a huge amount of challenges. But, on the other hand, it was an amazing experience. I think because we were all new at it there was a great amount of enthusiasm.

"For me it was like going to film school for four years. We had a lot of creative control and we were able to help each other out. We were all very humbled by the experience and realized that we were all learning. It was a team effort."

"It was a lot of fun," said Paras. "I think we all feel pretty blessed to have made it."

"We never had any egos around," added Wright.

There is that weird title, however. It refers to an uncomfortable article of clothing worn to administer self-torture in medieval times. A scene explaining it "was left on the cutting room floor," Neve said. She takes the blame for leaving her colleagues stuck with the title.

"Unfortunately, I talked about the movie before in interviews under the working title of Hair Shirt. But I was excited. So now we had to keep it. It's the name people identify the movie with. It's become our hair shirt, our little torture."


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