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. This is dictat­ of betraying the Canadian cinema. It is ad infinitum, ad nauseum ? By believing ed by the light, by the training of its lat had been in existence for seventy easy to accuse the makers of pseudo- that no one could possibly be interestetl ears, yet they had neither the know- cinematographers, the types of cameras entertaining films like this of being anti- in specifically Canadian stories, the and film-stock used, and the background ow nor the production infrastructure Canadian, but again, this is too simple. producers managed to rob the Canadian 1 place. It was like trying to compete and intent of its directors. What has really happened here is that cinema of its most distinctive aspect However consciously illiterate a film- ifith Ford by building cars in your base- the average young Canadian lawyer which is its extremely dense sense of lent goer may be, subconsciously he is pre­ who drives a Mercedes, wears Cardin place. pared to recognize and accept that which Another aspect of the American cine- suits and a Rolex watch while vacation­ The Quebec cinema has maintained la that the new producers failed to take is alien. Or, as is more often the case, to ing in Bermuda probably does not per­ it, of course, as have rare tax shelter reject it One of the reasons that foreign ito consideration was that the American ceive any difference between himself productions like Gilles Carle's Les Plouf- Im industry is virtually alone in its films have become hits among the ttempt to combine critical success American intelligentsia since the Fifties /ith a box office hit In France, no one is that- they provide an insight into 'pplies the same standards to a new issues, problems and aspects of human *lm hy Frangois Jruffaut and the latest relationships that the American cinema '~om Philippe de Broca. The same dis- was not dealing with. ,-\nother, is that inction is observed in Italy between an they looked different from the Holly­ fUberto Lattuada on the commercial wood style that has become all too 'evel and a Bernardo Bertolucci on the familiar. If one looks at movie reviews rtistic. A Warren Beatty, who consis- from the Fifties, one finds critics who 'antly tries for both the big box office wouldn' t know a pan from a dolly waxing uccess and the big commercial smash, rhapsodically over the starkness of Berg­ s an almost purely American phenom- man's image, or the lyric camera of the -non. early Truffaut However, the run-of-the-mill film ' The third problem with imitating the watcher, trained in his early years to iollywood model was that Hollywood accept the all-American gloss of MGM or tself is an industry in turmoil, chaos the gritty realism of Warner Brothers, ind collapse. The studio system, where tends to sniff suspiciously at the sight of he producer was king and randomly something that looks different. Indeed, issigned writers, directors, and actors one of the most commercially dangerous to projects, is long dead. What is left is a trends in the American cinema is the welter of confiicting interests, where a use of foreign cinematographers and/or director with one hit can demand $36 art directors by directors like Paul million for his projected epic on the lint Schrader (Ferdinando Scarfiotto), War­ in his own navel, stars battle openly ren Beatty (Vittorio Storaro), Coppola with directors, and the agent has reduced (Storaro), Terence Malick (Nestor Al- ihe art of filmmaking into the art of the mendros) and the absorption of Euro­ deal. While numerous fascinating and pean styles by directors like Walter Hill ^ven great films have been produced by {The Driver) and Michael Mann (Thief, his system (if indeed it is a system), the because the American viewer will tend greatest American films of tfie past few to reject it One could almost claim that >'ears-Ta;Ki Driver, Raging Bull Apocal­ Reds failed commercially because it ypse Now, Thief, Pennies from Heaven, looked like a foreign movie, whereas Cutter's Way - are darkly corrosive Coppola, a director much more con­ works that are at war with the very scious of visual style than Beattv, could mythology that produced them. Watch- get away with Apocalypse Now using taJng the spectacle of Hollywood's interne- Storaro because he was in control of gi .:;ine war with itself is akin to watching a those elements. jiliwounded animal gnawing at its own en- Thus, what has seldom been recog­ y^rails. nized by the Canadian producers is that [jij: Fourth and finally, Hollywood has there is a distinctive cinematographic jijmaintained its commercial and artistic style in Canada. Ontario light tends to be (^hegemony over the world cinema be- somewhat drab. Our cinematographers, ll-:ause it is one of the most voracious and trained largely in documentary, tend to jjpulturally imperialistic industries in the a slightly darker palette. Also, as we do ^jfvorld. It absorbs talent the way a black not have a feature tradition, our light­ j^ole absorbs light In the Twenties they and his young American counterpart on fe, Robin Spr/s Suzanne, Don Owen's ing style tends to blend people into the jjSnapped up Lubitsch and Mumau. In Wall Street Their belief in an "inter­ Partners, Allan King's Who Has Seen scenery. The high-key star lighting that ^ithe Thirties, the massive wave of German national" (i.e. American) style of cinema the Wind and The Silence of the North, lifts and gives dimension to the Ameri­ ^emigrants fled Hitler and gave birth to was no doubt legitimate. Silvio Narrizano's Why Shoot the Teach­ can hero (or heroine) is not a traditional jthe film noir. In more recent times, By way of comparison, bad Barry er, Zale Dalen's The Hounds of Notre element of a cinema whose most master­ Roger Gorman's New World Pictures Levinson taken the script for Diner to a Dame, and Allen Eastman's A Sweeter ful films- those of Shebib, Spry, Arcand, pgned Werner Herzog to make Fitz- group of investors in Baltimore, the res­ Song. eariy Fruet Allan King, Andrfe Forcier, carraldo, Milos Forman and Ivan Passer ponse doubtless would have been, "Are Most of the films created under the Jean-Pierre Lefebvre - tend towards a .pame from Czechoslovakia, and the big you kidding ? Who wants to see a movie shelter, however, seem like movies from non-heroic, perhaps even an anti-heroic •jhree of the Australian cinema - Peter about a bunch of guys hanging out in nowhere. One need only think of George stance. '^IVeir, Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi Baltimore ?" Mendeluk's Stone Cold Dead, which As a colonized nation, where much of J^- have all made their first American The internationalism of the new pro­ intercuts the Yonge Street strip with l^plms. Thus, if the Canadian producers the Western settlement was government ducers was actually the narrowest sort New Vorks Times Square Tenderloin, ^developed commercially successful sponsored, and whose heix)s tend to be of parochialism, a belief that no one creating a sense of spatial disorientation directors, the odds are that after a hit or part of a collective and often to be losers would actually want to see a movie set eerier than the oddest science fiction. (the Jesuit Martyrs, the Metis under Kiel wo, Hollywood would beckon, leaving Or even of a lovely film like Don Shebib's he producers with the job of creating in Toronto (or Vancouver, or Montreal and Dumont the Cameron Highlanders or Halifax). What they failed to recognize Heartaches; though the director uses at Dieppe!, there is a distrust of an "new directors from scratch. his Toronto setting very intelligently, he is that so many of the best American individualistic star system. It is signific­ ^, Finally, Canada was not in the posi- feels compelled to have his characters movies are place-specific. Martin Scor- ant that the two most successful movies yion of France or Germany, which could handle .American money. • j^ske dumb movies for home consump­ cese's films are resolutely set in New e\ er made in this countPi; Pork/s and Finally, b> making films that ar.^ set in tion and class for the world export York, as are Woody Allen's. The Dirty Meatballs, feature collective heros rather no place in particular, they are also no onarket because our dumb movies come Harry films and Bullitt are pure San than individual. Thus, our cinematog­ place in general. And by being in no 'rom south of the border. Francisco. Could Death Wish happen raphers do not tend to Ught stars out anywhere but New York? Even films place in general, the films lack any from the group. This relates to the sense

August 1982 - Cinema Canada/23 ^

gather the best talents available todoi W^' of place in the best Canadian films, and particular story and let them maketuli"* one of the most striking things about movie. Why hire the talent if you do Z#* isSi Don Shebib's Coin'Down the Road, Paul believe it can do the job? Control fcfc # liiif"i' Lynch's The Hard Part Begins, Ted Kot cheff s The Apprenticeship of Duddy purse strings, offer suggestions, eJlt Kravitz, or William Fruets Wedding in tainly. But exactly what does a ToroMo^ White is the way in which characters fit lawyer know about writing dialogue on into their environments. the set of a comedy (that tidbit comei from an A.D. who saw it happen) ? If tuUj (ijions The corollary of this is that to be suc­ script needed revkriting, why wnkS'*'" cessful in the American market the being shot ? films cannot look Canadian. It is signif­ icant that many of the most commer­ The tax shelter producers fended ||L gf"^ cially successful Canadian films have make mistakes on every level imagin!!*!««'"' used either foreign born directors (Bob able, as far as talent was concerned **''' Clark, Paul Lynch, Ivan ReitmanI or They hired directors totally unsuitedfttlS«*' foreign born cinematographers iJohn the material they were supposed;_ Coquillon, Anthony Richmond, Billy shape. What was Les Rose, who has a, loll"" Williams, Reg Morris). Garth Drabinsky fine hand with gritty downtown realismJ5In"'°° has never used a Canadian cinematog- in films like Three Card Monte and Tilli a Ktm"'- rapber Bob Clark almost never Shot, doing on dumb, food-flgh( cotn-,,«iaill>'' edies like Gas and Hog Wild ? Why was So our producers have attempted to Paul Almond, whose specialty it infii sidestep the problem of an intrinsically iiiilii*'''' cate, Bergmanesque psychodrama, doing Canadian cinema not merely by using an international spy thriller? Alvln foreign settings, but by employing foreign born creative personnel. But this is the Rakoff proved himself, in quit* suo point at which two further problems cession, incapable of handling disaster arise. movies (Cify on Fire), horror IDeatA Istl oi Paul Lynch's country entertainers in The Hard Part Begins Ship) and comedy (Dirty Tricikil. George Mihalka, suddenly a hot young director Whose Movie Is It, Anyway? Hat rt because of the Quebec success of Scan- Kim ill Our big-name producers do not see a dale, directed Pinball Summer and%, ,ji((iiBiiliii great deal of difference between them­ Bloody Valentine, two of the won^^pirtn selves and the Americans. Their films movies ever made. consistently prove two things. First that they believe they are American. Second, The fact that Mihalka and Rakoff have (ililionsi that they are wrong. A classic example each made more films under the tax Uii SI of this is the Bob Cooper/Ron Cohen shelter than major talents like Ailani iijiililnisi production of Running, directed and King, Robin Spry, Don Owen, Peter Peai^ written by Steven Stern. A thirty-ish son, Claude Jutra, and Zale Dalen is a, gilttliD{l ' Michael Douglas decides to concentrate sure indicator that producers essentially mil-dass on his running and make it as an Olympic don't want troublesome directors who iimli maratboner, proving to bis estranged are likely to attempt to impose a pep •mlinilc wife that he is not a total failure. He sonal vision on the film at hand. ' IJilnssesi heads off, makes the Olympic team and "But we can't hire those guys," scream runs the marathon in Montreal. In mid- the producers. "They don't make any rilmrli race, however, he falls over and is in­ money!" This seems valid, until you JUinlVlii jured. If you are an American producer, look at the grosses for Dirty Tricks, n|ilofi the rest is simple. He rises from his pain, Final Assignment, City On Fire and Gas. JttllBjt. grits his teeth, and charges back out, For a moment put yourself in the posi­ kscripll manfully passing bis hated rival and tion of that mythical orthodontist from finishing fourth, not winning but prov­ Blossom,. Saskatchewaa You've just ing his spirit. Rockyesque. A real crowd sunk $5 grand into a picture that you are ikwiii pleaser. going to write off on your taxes. You'd IVitai In the actual movie, he gets up, grits like to have the next Star Wan, but |l«tGl|l«ll his teeth, and staggers into the stadium you're pretty sure you don't Would you laiiCii dead last, as wife Susan Anspach stands rather lose that money on City On Fire or Goin' Down the Road ? Gas orAlllptor there, smiling through the tears. This liwbi • A harrowing view of small town Ontano: Wedding in White Shoes, Welcome to Blood City or The writer saw the picture at the Bay Cinema 'n(ti Silence of the North ? in New York, and at the end the audience aiikii walked out looking puzzled, as if to say Duddy lusting after cash as he serves his apprenticeship One gets the feeling that investors "What the hell... ? Last! We sat there for seldom got to see either a copy of the ^ilHtlUii two hours to see this turkey finish last ?" script or a screening of the director* mkk When the producers took control, the previous films. Would you have put "«*iil attempts at American movies were not cash into an Alvin Rakoff film if you'd "tairji Xeroxes of American bits [Middle Age seen City on Fire ? Not very likely. »iCliiii|i Crazy of 10, Paradise of Blue Lagoon, Because the producers refused to hire *iUtt Prom Night of Halloween, Running of strong directors, and misassigned those *iiifni Rocky), but carbon copies, fainter, slight that they did, very few careers had a Iv smudged, lacking the clarity of the chance to develop, and not a single originals and the motivating artistic force major director has emerged from the behind them. Mil tax shelter. Every major director, '4»« This can be attributed to three factors. whether judged by his stature commef The absence of strong directorial per- cially or aesthetically, was making film* sonalit)' behind the camera, the fact that before the tax shelter. David Croneth u e are attempting to reproduce foreign berg, Gilles Carle, Robin Spry, Claude genres in the belief that they will sell, Jutra, Denys Arcand, Francis MaMifr and the fact that the genres that we do wicj, Don Shebib, Allan King, Paul , -™ do well are not the trashy American mond, Bob Clark, Harvey Hart, DaryK^u genres that others have perfected over Duke, John Trent Eric Till William the \ ears Fruet Paul Lynch, Jean-Claude La So much of filmmaking is about brecque, Don Owen, Peter Pearson, An- u,,^, power. Who has the biggest percentage, dre Forcier and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre- oj^p^ ubo has rtnal cut, and who makes the which virtually constitutes a definmon «»^ best deal all have seemed more impor­ of the worthwhile Canadian feature m tant than the script dustry - all made films prior to the tu In the tax shelter cinema, the producer, shelter. having gotten the money together, feels Even more intriguing is that when that he should be in control Yes but. producer has a really good film to ti« His control should be financial What credit, he has a strong, intelUgent direo the best producer does is to bring to- tor somewhere on the scene. Gartt

24/Cinema Canada- August 1982 ""•abinsky's best film is The Silent Part- no real trash tradition in this country. ~'.r (Daryi Duke). Lantos and Roth's best Much of this comes from our stodgy, ~~3ture is Suzanne (Robin Spry). Film- Presbyterian heritage. ,Much of it comes an International has two good ones, from a bankerly distrust of things that ~e Brood and Scanners (David Cro- were fun. It is perfectly all right to _nberg). The most successful films promote a Margaret .Atwood a Sinclair _-botb Astral and Dal Productions are Ross, or a Margaret Laurence, because fine literature does so improve the mind. B product God help us, of single direc- But movies ? Trashy things The lower _rial visions - Pork/s (Bob Clarkl and classes like them, you know. This is the —'.atballs (Ivan Reitman). It is not at all historical attitude that leads to reactions rprising that the most consistently like Robert Fulford's offended-maiden- —lid pictures in this country come from aunt shrieks at the bloody beauty of —C, because their directorial roster - David Cronenberg's Shivers, and the —lies Carle, Louis Malle, and Jean- disgust at the Ontario Censor Board —cques Annaud - could hold its own with the kinky sexuality of Don Owen's —lywhere. It is also no accident that Partners I with Hollis MacLaren in period —)th John Kemeny and Denis Hferoux drag telling her bovfriend, also in period —)tb have long backgrounds in produc- drag that he's going to find out what its —jn ; Kemeny produced for over twenty like to really get fucked by the Estat>- ~~:ars at the NFB, in Hollywood (White lishmentl. ~ne Fever) and here at home I Duddy ~ravitz), while Heroux was the director By imitating American trash, we turn ~ terrible director, admittedly, but still away from what we do w ell and attempt "director) of over a dozen features. By to follow trends in what other people do ~eir experience, they are among the well. ~w producers who can even approach John Grierson and a Nation le level of expertise required of a of Realists The problem with Canada is that we _ollywood or French producer. • Vintage Shebib as Paul Bradley and Jane Eastwood reconcile _More irritating than misassigning are a nation of realists. We love portray­ ing our own landscape, whether its irectors, is the tax shelter producers Susannah Moodie setting down her _ay of stunting or destroying directorial diary, Margaret Atwood reinterpreting ireers Partners is one of the strangest it, or all those paintings of pine trees and ^id most interesting films ever made on rocks. le relationship between Canada and Given the overwhelming reality of _ie United States. Don Owen has not Canada, it is not surprising that our —lade a film since. Paul Lynch made two films do not look like the productions of —Ims which captured with precision Disneyland by the sea. California, home —nd feeling the sense of the itinerant, of the movie industry since 1913, is —3Cond-class entertainer. Both The conducive to fantasy, and the American —'ard Part Begins and Blood and Guts film industry might have been a very —ndersland cheap hotels and comfort- different beast bad it remained under —ble busses and the travelling players the lowering skies of Fort Lee, New —/ho occupy them. Lynch now directs Jersey. It is also not surprising that the —ad horror films. William Fruets Wed- genesis figure is that cold Scots docu- ~'ing in White is simply the best por- mentarist, John Grierson. On the one —-ayal of life in a small Ontario town hand, be created the structure that ~~ver made. This is the man who wrote enabled an off-the-wall genius like le script for Goin' Down the Road. Is Norman MacLaren to do his stuff'. At the "nybody really looking forward to same time, he created a massive bureau­ ~>eath Bite, or another screening of cracy whose duty it was to reveal the ~'ries in the Night? soul of a nation. As Pat Ferns of Primedia ~ The absence of script sense on the once noted, what happened then was "art of producers compounds the prob- like what that happened in France after 3ins. Bill Gray, who wrote the scripts for the Gaullists took power. They made _"he Changeling and Prom Afight, may be sure that the news and informational _tie bestknown non-directing screen- services were controlled by the govern­ _mfer in Canada. Yet, as Andrew Dowler ment, and let the leftists have the entei^ _iofed in bis Cinema Canada review of tainment portion of the national televi­ _:rom Night, both films have an interest sion system, on the theory that entei^ _-ig structural flaw. In neither film is the tainment is unimportant Unfortunately, _entral character ever threatened by the it is the entertainments of a people that —nalevolent killer who haunts each pic- reveal the nation, and in Canada, that —ure. George C. Scott is not the target of job was forfeited to the Americans and — he Changelings murderous ghost and the British. —amie Lee Curtis is the sister of the mad —iller in Prom Night. Curtis' boyfriend is Thus, when we came to creating —hreatened, but that is hardly the same entertainment it was necessary to seek —hing. models from what we knew - which meant the realist tradition created by — This off-center quality is exactly what the National Film Board. With two —appens when we try to imitate the exceptions, David Cronenberg and Gilles —imerican genre film. It has been sug­ Carle, almost all our filmakers tend gested that it is okay for us to make toward the realist. There is even a group ""rash, because in the past, hotbeds of of filmmakers from the late Sixties that ""rash have given birth to fine artists, could be labelled "the Ontario realists" ""'his is true. Out of Black Mask magazine - Don Owen, Peter Pearson, Don Shebib, ~ame Dashiell Hammett and Raymond the early William Fruet, and, in the early _;handler. From the Hollywood assembly Seventies, Paul Lynch. Add to that group _ines came fine directors like Raoul (Quebec anglophones like Frank V'itale, _k'alsh and Michael Curtiz. Out of Coi^ .Alan Movie (A/on trea/.\fain. The Rubber _ians schlock machines at New World Gun) Robin Spry (who studied under _nd AIP we got Francis Coppola, Martin Owen at the NFBi and a latter day —corsese and Jonathan Demme. version like Clay Borris, and you have — However, all of those people came the makings of a school —-om an entirely different mode of pro- —uction. If 30 directors are making a The realists in Quebec tended more picture or two a year, the cream will rise toward the political (Denys ,\rcand, —) the top, and our Scorsese will emerge. especially, but also Claude Jutra, .Andre —ut if 10 directors are making a picture Forcier, Jean-Pierre Lefebvrel and, in a ""very two or three years, it will not sense, metaphysical-psychological (Paul Almond, Francis Mankiewicz, Gilles ~ Perhaps more importantly, we have

August 1982 - Cmema Canada/25 Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Barbra year old. We're talking about peoni, Groulx, Michel Brauh). Yet there is that and a TV trailer that made it look less Streisand - that mythical twelve-to- who can't remember what they hadf palpable sense of being in a real place like a warm-hearted comedy than a twenty-four year^old audience doesn't breakfast let alone what movie th! with real people. One is reminded of female version of Pork/s. care about stars. (Where are the stars of saw last week. They like what evervon. Michel Tremblay who, after his first Once again, we return to marketing. Star Wars, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, they know likes- hence the success j great success with Les beiles soeurs, You can sell people anything You may Poltergeist and Halloween ?) None of Pork/s; its about their idealized s2 was asked if he had attempted to say not make a $100 million selhng them the stars of these monster hits have image far more than it is about tl. things that were universal. His response something like Ticket to Heaven, but proven able to carry a film commercially Fifties. " • was that he was simply writing about you should be able to make $20 million. the people that he knew. The Canadian films are a different on bis own. Harrison Ford's efforts away Finally, there are no trends. Pork/iii from the Spielberg-Lucas extravaganzas Writing about people you know - or product, and marketing must be de­ may wind up bombing as badly as (||( signed to handle that product. Pay-TV have not made money, Carrie Fisher did that other adolescent sequel. Grease j making films about them- is the easiest not add a dollar to the grosses of the thing to do, on the surface, for all you will not do the trick, because a film Four big budget musicals are hem needs theatrical release (and will get a execrable Under the Rainbow, and just released in a summer when eveiyoj need do is pray for interesting friends. what does Mark Hammill do when he Yet it is much harder to shape the forms better price from pay-TV) simply to get was ready to pronounce the mualcJ isn't playing Luke Skywalker? that surround you than to jam together attention. What do Canadian television dead. " the forms and functions of old movie watchers think when all those un- The fact that Pork/s and Meatballs Nothing can be predicted, nothij myths and to attempt something original released tax shelter turkeys turn up on have none of those proven box office can be calculated. It is an era of post] with shopworn genres of old movies. television? "Hey, Madge, here's some­ names that producers like to bring in industrial filmmaking, wherethestudij The young movie producer, who has thing called/t/Jained AH ATighff hie Day/ (They sure do line up in the old neigh­ have turned largely into distribution just booked bis latest horroi^slasber Left (the reader may substitute Sum­ bourhood for Ava Gardner and George arms for independantly created pi^ picture onto the Marche at Cannes after mer's Children, Stone Cold Dead, I Miss Kennedy) might have proven something duct. All you can do is makeyourpicture finding no buyers at the American film You Hugs and Kisses, City On Fire or to the local producers. Bill Murray, the and hope. market, sneers. But that stuff doesn't Search and Destroy at his or her own then unproven refugee from Saturday The answer for the Canadian cinemi sell. No, it doesn't sell as well as Star discretion) on Channel Nine." "Never Night Live, has had a career resembling is simply to stop imitiating the Ameri" Wars, and you don't get all the automatic heard of it Harry. Lets watch Headline a yoyo - down with Where the Buffalo cans. Not because it is intrinsically evil buys from bloodthirsty markets like Hong Hunters instead." Roam and Caddyshack, up when re­ to spend tax money on quasi-American Kong, but it is impossible to tell if that The marketing problem creates a united with Reitman for Stripes. Though projects, or even because we must stop stuff sells because no Canadian film (for catch-22 situation. The Americans know Murray is a star, you cannot bank on so as to alloyv the flourishing of the the moment we shall ignore Meatballs how to market these films, so thats the him. indigenous product. It is simply that we and the new group of Canadian "hits") kind of films we'll make. The problem is The names above the titles promise do not do it very well. has ever had the sort of national launch­ that between the time a film hits and the nothing. Had we continued, in 1975, to make ing that is habitually accorded third- time a Canadian producer can mount The classical genres have become the sort of product that our directors rate American films. Les Plouffe was an imitator, shoot it, cut and get it into meaningless. In January of 1981, would had proven they could do well, those marketed in English Canada with a the theatres, a minimum of one, maybe anyone have predicted that there would films would have benefited from the cartoonish sketch and that kiss of death two years has passed, leaving the pro­ not be a single horror movie blockbuster increased budgetsmade possible by the phrase "A Canadian classic" on the ducer with a product which is no longer in 1982 - particularly with The Thing tax shelter and ttom the growing ex­ poster. That makes it sound like the sort in vogue, because there are... and Cat People slated for the summer ? pertise of our crews. Eventually we of movie for which they drag innocent A short three summers ago, Newsweek could have "cracked" the international children out of classrooms to lock them No More Genres, No More Trends, was shouting that "Horror is hot!" Will market with Canadian films Now thai in the theatre. Ticket to Heaven was And No More Stars Stephen Spielberg sE. T. inspire a dozen the energy of the tax shelter boom-yeai^ stuck with that awful poster which was Once upon a time, people went to see or so movies about cute aliens who seems to have dissipated, perhaps we a wonderful graphic but gave you no Westerns, or horror movies, or Joan befriend small children? No, because can return our talents to what they do idea of what the film was about. Heart­ Crawford movies. Once upon a time producers have finally come to the best and stop making films for market aches, Don Shebib's best film since there \vas a thing called a star. They had awareness - a realization reached by ing strategies, aimed at markets that are Goin' Down the Road, has yet to see faces then, as one of them once said. people in the music world many years so unpredictable that even their domef American release, but in Ontario it But there is not a single major star ago - that their target audience is more tic producers can not understand thew suffered from an unfortunate colour who has not had a major and spectacular fickle than Marguerite Gautier and has or predict them. '» scheme on the poster (pink and purple) flop in the past year or two - Jane Fonda, the attention span of a hyperactive three

26/Cinenia Canada - August 1982