In recent weeks, we have read ecstatic assumptions, forgetting several key fac­ headlines about the sudden success of a tors. number of Canadian films in the inter­ The first feeling you get from people national market place. Pork/s is break- like Garth Drabinsky is that movies, as ing$100 milUon, Quesf/orFire has gone culture, are not important This is not an over $25 million, and several others - // attack on Drabinsky, but one need only You Could See What I Heat; Paradise, listen to him talk about the importance Visiting Hours, The Amateur - are tof> to Canadian culture of the Toronto ping $10 million. Theatre Festival (which he serves as Of course, there is a lie in the preced­ chairman) and then look at the movies ing paragraph. It is found in the word he makes, which tend to be set in all- "Canadian." Pork/s is set in Florida, Canadian locales like New York, Seattle written and directed by an expatriate and Washington. As the American American, and produced with the help humorist Fran Lebowitz has remarked, of an American, Melvin Simon. Quest if movies were an art form, would they for Fire is a Canadian-French co-pro be shown in places that sell jujubes and duction, with a French director, screen­ notes on a Orange Crush? writer, and composer. If You Could See A failure to believe in movies as a What I Hea r is a biography of an Ameri­ cultural product is a failure to believe in can pop singer which uses Canadian movies at all, because the best movies of locations as Boston and New England. any country are an expression of that Paradise, a Canadian-Israeli co-produc­ nation's soul, be it the corrosive madness tion set in the Middle East was written tax-sheltered of Mean Streets, the gentle whimsy of and directed by a Canadian who emigrat Jules et Jim or the mad sexual-political ed to sunny Southern California many maelstrom of The Conformist. Or years ago. The Amateur is about the even the singularly unlyrical depression CIA, and its director has never made of Wedding in White or the tracthome a movie in Canada before. VisitingHours sterility of Nobody Waved Goodbye. is set in one of those classic 'unnamed cinema A disbelief in the potential of Cana­ .American cities' dian cinema led directly to a belief in This means that no Canadian movies by John Harkness the necessity of cracking the "interna­ have been hits. Furthermore, of the tional market" for which we should say, above films, only Pork/s and Quest for "the American market" There are a Fire can legitimately be described as reason that almost any film is a bit these The commercial reasons have been couple of fallacies here. First and most "hits" because, in these inflated times, days. Marketing. In these times, there is raked over the coals too many times - important no foreign-produced cinema with the cost of ad campaigns and nothing rarer than a true, word-of mouth both in this magazine and in others - has ever broken into the American mar­ prints running as high as $6 million, big hit. E. T. : The Entraterrestrial qualifies, and the idea that greedy, rapacious and ket on any sustained basis. Various grosses don't go far. The reported $15 if only because Universal's campaign unscrupulous producers set out inten­ national cinemas have had brief mo­ million gross on The Amateur for in­ wasn't that good. Arthur, which did not tionally to strangle the struggling young ments of glory- the French and Italians stance will not cover the cost of the film pick up an audience until its fourth cineastes is a touch too paranoid. It is in the early Sixties, the Czechs in the late and its campaign. week, is the only other word-of-mouth true that no one sets out to make a bad Sixties, the Germans and the Australians hit in recent memory. In an old issue of Cinema Canada, picture. After all, Alexis Kanner, despite in the Seventies. But all of them have there is an interesting account of a con­ Indeed, it is hard to think of a picture overwhelming evidence to the contrary, had the limited success that comes to ference in 1973, where one panelist in recent months that was more bril- still believes that Kings and Desperate the art cinema. The top grossing Austra­ suggested to Famous Players' president lianUy marketed than Pork/s. Its clever Men is a good picture. lian film by the end of 1981 was Breaker George Destounis that a lot of the Ameri­ graphics and mid-run shifts in advertis­ Where we can fault the scores of pro­ Morant, which had the advantage of can movies playing in Canadian theatres ing copy told adult viewers that the ducers who entered the industry with being the film that replaced the ill- were just as bad as a lot of the Canadian grossest movie ever released by a Major the coming of the tax shelter is in the films that weren't getting any screen was okay for them to see ; they might be starred Heaven's Gate at New York's area of national and aesthetic allegeance, Cinema I. It returned $5 million in time, and wouldn't it be nice if those a little embarrassed, but no deaths. By not in that of commercial acumen. Canadian films were to get that screen way of contrast Quest for Fire has to rentals to its distributors. The top time. This is exactly what has happened. rank as a marketing failure. Twentieth grossing French film of all time is La The World According to Garth Aside from Quest for Fire, none of these Century-Fox (who did so well hy Pork/s) Cage aunfolles, which had a huge built films is particularly good. Pork/s and waited too long before putting Quest The essential difference between the in subcultural audience, yet was still Paradise are relentlessly stupid expio into wide release and never varieci the old-guard defenders of the Canadian sufficiently conventional td cross-over rations of teen lust // You Could See rather crowded print graphic (United cmema (Sandra Gathercole, Kirwan to straight audiences. Next in line is Last What I Hear is so mawkishly sweet and Artists made the same mistake with Cox, Gerald Pratley, etc.) and the new Tango in Paris, which had the double yet so aggressively obnoxious that the Raging Bull). breed, bom of the tax shelter, was not advantage of being an extremely daring merely their conflicting aims. The two film in a period that was wilUng to viewer doesn' t know whether he should What has been proven by the recent groups were not even speaking the clasp the hero to his bosom or kick his successes is not that Canadian movies accept daring films, and of starring same language; the former was obsessed teeth down his throat. Visiting Hours is can hold their own on the American Marlon Brando, fresh from his Oscar for a needlessly complicated slasher-on- market but that you can market any sort (like good Canadians) with issues of The Godfather. the-loose horror movie. of crap with a pretty enough package. cultural identity and arfistic truth, and With those rare exceptions, the foreign the latter much more interested in tax So why are these movies so success­ The question one must askis how this film in America is a specialized film for shelters and breaking into the inter­ ful ? Simple. The> are hits for the same happened - how did Canadian movies specialized audiences, for the simple become "Canadian" movies, and what national market. Had the newcomers reason that Americans make the best been willing to listen to the old guard Former Cinema Canada reporter John were the factors that destroyed what American movies in the world. Why on we might have had a cinema similar to earth would they want to buy American Harkness is the film critic of Toronto's was once one of the most distinctive that of Australia today. Instead, mutual movies from someone else ? They have Now magazine and a frequent contribu­ cinemas in the world, only to replace it with a quasi-American branchplant? Ignorance prompted brokers and law- the firmest grasp of film narrative (after tor to these pages. yers to base their actions on a set of false all, they practically invented it) and the 22/Cinema Canada- August 1982 I actory system to support their needs. Boy Meets Girl in Winnipeg. that are place-specific for no apparent substantive subtexts They are ultimately Vhen Twentieth Century-Fox, for in- Who Cares? reason - Thief in Chicago, Blow Out in films about nothing. tance, began to pick up a number of While attempting to match the Ameri­ Philadelphia - gain a level of realism The destruction of the Canadian set lanadian films, the reason was not cans in the creation of entertaining, simply by being set in a specific place. tings establishes another problem, per­ esthetic but economic - by and large, critically successful box ofi'ice hits, the Can anyone identify the setting of haps even more serious. lanadian films were cheaper to buy new producers of Canadian films like nan American films were to make. Prom Night, Terror Train, Visiting Running It Seemed Like a Good Idea at Hours, Happy Birthday to Me, Gas, Cries The problem with using the Ameri- Funny, You Don't Look Canadian the Time, Gas and Prom Night were in the Night, Pinball Summer, Nothing Each country's cinema has its own ans as a model was that Canadian pro- accused of selhng out Canadian culture, Personal, High Ballin', The Last Chase, ucers attempted to mimic an industry distinctive cinematic look.