Every actor wants more screen time. But sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for. 

Just ask Brunswick native, actor and filmmaker Samuel Dunning, who is currently starring in the science fiction short film “Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox.” The film, written and directed by Stimson Snead, follows the inevitable chaos resulting from Dunning’s titular scientist mucking about with time and suddenly finding himself confronted with nine different versions of himself, plucked from various points in his own timeline. Sounds like the sort of challenge an actor dreams about – or dreads. 

“It was a bit of both, actually,” laughed Dunning, who now splits time between New York and Los Angeles when not visiting his mom in Brunswick. “At first I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s an awful lot of dialogue to learn.’ Plus a lot of it is long monologues of techno-babble. Then, once I got to set, I realized that all the memorization in the shower hadn’t factored in all the different versions of Tim Travers, and I thought, ‘Oh (expletive).’”

Dunning eventually sorted all of his character’s characters, so to speak. “The way Stimson wrote it, I was able to separate them by their minor differences: one is a little more aggressive, or trepidatious. One seems to be the dumb one.” And then, of course, there’s the one from the future who – well, all time travel stories have their twists and turns, don’t they? 

Dunning and the film have been racking up awards as it makes its way through the festival circuit. “Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox” just won best short film at the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, and both the film and Dunning won awards at North Carolina’s Nevermore Film Festival. Dunning jokes about being disappointed not to win that festival’s ensemble acting award, but you can’t have everything. 

Samuel Dunning Photo by Joseph Moran

For 2007 Brunswick High graduate Dunning, acting came later in his career, as his degree from NYU found the Maine native casting about for creative direction. Several years working a “dead end” job at Ralph Lauren led to a modeling career and, eventually, time toiling at networks like Discovery ID, playing the occasional murderer or victim in that network’s various murder re-creation series. 

“I was ultimately pretty miserable,” said Dunning, “not doing anything creative any more.” So, looking at his modeling success and his lifelong love of filmmaking, Dinning said, “I thought, ‘Well, they like my look on camera, maybe they’ll like me talking on camera, too.’” Roles followed, both big and small, with a 2020 one-episode stint on long-running cop show “Blue Bloods” providing one notable experience acting alongside TV legends Ed Asner and Tom Selleck. 

“That was pretty damn cool,” reminisced Dunning, noting that Asner, who died last year at an ever-cantankerous 91, liked to goof around on set. As a shady type menacing the wheelchair-bound Asner, Dunning says that, on one take, the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” veteran decided to let out an unscripted scream upon seeing Dunning at his door. “He’s earned his stripes,” said Dunning, appreciatively.

For Dunning, though, forging a career meant making his own opportunities, as it was his Kickstarter-funded short horror-comedy “Rick and Ruby” that eventually scored him a higher profile – and professional representation. “Doing that opened a shocking amount of doors,” Dunning said of the film, for which he wrote himself the juicy role of Rick, a mysterious, Hawaiian-shirted guy with an aversion to sunlight and some … unconventional tastes. “Managers like seeing that you’re not going to wait around,” the actor and filmmaker said, “that you’re going to make your own stuff, approval be damned.”

On that note, Dunning is currently steaming ahead with his plans for a Maine-made and -set mockumentary feature called, “Canoe Dig It?,” about the contestants of a Moosehead Lake “freestyle canoeing” competition, which is apparently a very real thing. “It’s one of the sillier things you’ll ever see,” Dunning said about the sport, which he was exposed to via some lockdown internet scrolling. “It’s funny and quaint, and – no offense to anybody into it – I was just tickled by the whole thing.”

In a teaser trailer posted on Dunning’s website, viewers get a taste of “Canoe Dig It?’s” Christopher Guest-esque vibe, with various eccentric hopefuls all comedically taking something very odd very seriously. For Dunning, Maine is just the place to host such an event, as he outlines his plans to both set and film his proposed comedy in an accommodating Maine watering spot. 

“Maine is a wonderfully unique and special place,” enthused Dunning, who calls himself “an unofficial ambassador” of the state as he networks his way through the film and TV industry. For Dunning, there’s no place like home, especially when it comes to setting a film somewhere with natural beauty – and local color. 

“If I want to be anywhere, at any time of year, it’s Maine,” said Dunning, who has secured a producer for “Canoe Dig It?” as he ramps up fundraising and pre-production. Noting that a feature requires at least “a six-figure” budget as a rule, Dunning says that, barring some extreme take-it-or-leave-it funding scenario, this Maine mockumentary will film right here in Maine.

“I really want to say I’ll stick to my guns,” he said. “I suppose if it’s a matter of getting the film made or not, I’d probably cave, but we’re going to explore every single option before we have to make that decision.” (Just another note from your cranky columnist: Maine’s lack of filmmaking tax incentives routinely costs us movie business and causes every Stephen King adaptation to be shot in the Carolinas or somesuch.)

Luckily, for natives like Samuel Dunning, Maine continues to call when it comes time for creative inspiration. “Maine is a poster child for the weird and the wonderful, especially when you go up the coast,” he said.

You can watch the bloody and funny Dunning-written “Rick and Ruby” for free on YouTube, while “Tim Travers & the Time Traveler’s Paradox” is currently making the rounds of film festivals everywhere. To learn more about Dunning, and to watch the teaser for “Canoe Dig It?,” check out his website (samuelfddunning.com) and his Instagram (@itsfusillijerry). 

Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and cat.

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