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The opening scene of the movie Spaceman is a real beauty for Expos fans and those who love actor Josh Duhamel.

Duhamel, who plays former Expos pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee, is cooking pancakes for breakfast and sprinkling marijuana on top of them while listening to opera and wearing nothing but an apron with his bare butt showing.

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“My only issue was I think they could have cut away from it a little earlier, but I couldn’t talk the director out of it,” Duhamel said with a chuckle during a phone interview Wednesday while en route to the ESPN studios in downtown Los Angeles to promote the movie, which will have a première in Montreal at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Cinéma Cineplex Forum and opens elsewhere Friday.

While cooking the pancakes, Lee (Duhamel) says in the voice-over: “It started out as just another day of living the dream. In Montreal, I had become a fan favourite. They would shower me with tiny foil balls of hash in the bullpen, lower down little bottles of tequila. A record take of 67 bottles in two months one season — and the good stuff, too. I loved the life of getting paid to play the greatest game on Earth. Sometimes I thought to myself that maybe I’d even do it for free.”