• p R o D u c E R 5 • The apprenticeship of Robert Lantos RSL's Robert Lantos, together with partner Stephen Roth, and ICC's John Kemeny and Denis Heroux have just jOinedforces as equal partners in a new separate venture, Alliance Entertainment Corp: Thefoursome ofLantos, Roth, Kemeny and Heroux represent the closest Canada comes to having movie moguls of its own, and, as'Lantos explains below, Alliance is a last stand attempt to establish a US-modelled approach to volume film and television production in Canada. For Lantos, the achievement ofCanadian producers like himself is that they have realized what he terms "the dream" ofevery foreign producer alive, namely to penetrate the American system from within. Lantos very candidly revealed in three lengthy interviews with Cinema Canada's Tom Perlmutter what that process has meant for one Canadian film producer. The interviews have been editedfrom a 100-page transcript. From a film and communications student at McGill University in the early '70's, the Hungarian-born, Latin-American-raised Lantos has become, with thisfall's Canadian premiere ofJoshua Then and Now, the co-producer, with Roth, ofthe largest budgetfeature in Canadian film history. Thefollowing interview is Robert Lantos' view ofthe road he has travelled. A Cinema Canada interview with RSL's president by Tom Perlmutter October 1985 - Cinema Canadal25 • p R o D u c E R 5 • Cinema Canada: Why don't we start it. Their interest was that they had heard at the beginning. You've had a long of the New York Erotic Film Festival career in filmmaking and it's taken through the press and they really you down some curious roads. How couldn't do any worse than they were did you get your start? doing then. Just before that they had Robert Lantos: I was looking to get rented the theatre out to the Russian into filmmaking. I was in graduate EmbasSY to show Russian movies. So we school at McGill studying film and com­ made a ~ery unusual deal. Normally in munications under a new program, and the distribution, the theatre splits the I was one of the fi rst baptized under that box-office with a distributor and the program. I wanted to write and direct terms are on a sliding scale where the and produce probably in that order. distributor gets a minimum of 25% and This was between the late '60s and the sometimes as much as a maximum of early '70s. And I guess the best way to 60% or 65% of the box-offi ce, if the tell it is with a couple of anecdotes. box-offi ce is very high. In this case, they One of my professors was John Grier­ proposed something that, had I known son, probably the one that I learned the anything about the mm business, I most from. He gave a course to about would not have accepted. The deal was eight or nine people in his hotel-room that they keep the first X dollars, the in a hotel on Crescent Street. At the end house-expense of the theatre - I forget of the year, he asked everybody what the numbers - and the rest would their plans were. When it was my turn, I belong to me. They were really told him I wanted to write, direct and interested in covering their expenses produce. He said, "How are you going to because they were losing money. And do that?" At the time if there was any so I agreed. We had to guarantee the independent production in Canada in first week's rent which we didn't have, English, no one was aware of it. So I told but the film opened on a Friday and the him I was going to go make the rounds . and Susan Strasberg in In Praise Of money for the rent was only payable on • A film that took a long time coming: Tom Berenger of the CBC and the NFB with his help. I Monday. told him he had to write me a very Older Women So I thought at the time, either the warm reference letter and set up a fo r CBC- radio as a writer and as a ship and tried to raise additional money film would make money, in which case couple of meetings for me at the NFB. researcher. I heard of something in New to pay for the rights. the rent would be paid, or, if it didn't, He said, "I'll do that for you but I'll tell York called the New York Erotic Film I found myself making the rounds of then my entry into the world of film dis­ you that if you really want to get a job at Festival, an event that grew out of '60s' Famous Players and the theatre chains tribution would be very short-lived and the NFB, then don't go with your cur­ experimental and underground mm­ with a can of 16mm film under my arm I would take up a job which had just riculum vitae and reference letters and making have merged with very strong which consisted of a dozen shorts. And been offered to me as restaurant critic student mms. It will go much faster and explorations going on in erotic cinema there I discovered a whole slew of fas­ of The Montreal Star. As it turned out, be much more efficient if you apply at at this time. It was the beginning of the cinating things. First of all, I discovered this New York Erotic Film Festival was a the front desk and fill out a form as a lifting of censorship and the beginning that movie theatres were programmed huge success. It played at that theatre driver. And then once you're inside, it's of the respectability, so to speak, of by central offices that controlled an for some 20 weeks, grossed something a different world." porn. It was a big event in New York entire circuit and that they in turn were like half-a-million dollars in one theatre I did not have, and have never had where all sorts of experimental just about totally inaccessible to some­ and went on to play across Canada. It since, the patience or the humility to be mmmakers sent in their five- and W ­ body off the street. In order to show a broke the censorship barriers of the a driver, so I disregarded that advice. I and 20-minute shorts in a competition movie, you would have to have a distri­ time. It became the first time that the asked him to set up appointments and judged by Andy Warhol, Milos Forman bution company that had ongoing Quebec Censorship Board allowed went with my reference letters, student and Gore Vidal. All sorts of very prestigi­ relationships with the theatre circuits, something like that to get through scripts and films, and was politely ous names were involved - a feminist which I didn't have. I also discovered because of the names associated with it. received. I had tea with one person and called Betty Dobson as well as Ger­ that they didn't play 16mm film in Because of this ridiculous deal that we vodka martinis with somebody else and maine Greer. movie theatres and I also discovered had made, which turned out to be made the rounds, and it became quite So I got myself sent down to New that they play shorts spliced together. It totally in our favour, we made a lot of clear that this was going to be a very York to cover the New York Erotic Film became completely impossible to get a money. slow, agonizing process. There were Festival and it made for some very movie theatre for what was called the easily 1,000 people for every possible unusual stuff for CBe-radio. It also gave Best of the New York Erotic Film Festi­ Cinema Canada: What year was that? opening. On top of which my own con­ me the idea that maybe I could buy the val. Robert Lantos: 1973. stitution and genetic make-up was not Canadian rights of the prize-winners My best friend at the time was the necessarily designed for working with and somehow bring them to Canada and president of McGill Student Council. Cinema Canada: That must have government institutions., That's putting get them through censorship. It would We had this idea that we would show been an education, a very rapid educa­ it very mildly. It was not a very en­ have been the first time that material the Best of the New York Erotic Film tion in the film business. couraging first round. that explicit would be shown in Canada. Festival as part of the McGill Winter Robert Lantos: Aside from my desire Those mms were so new and so fresh; a Carnival, charge admission and let to make mms and my fascination with Cinema Canada: So you turned your very strong artistic cachet and veneer McGill keep all the profit. This would movies which goes back to when I was attention to distribution. came with them. They would probably act as a test to see if there was an audi­ a kid and saw two mms every day of my Robert Lantos: I began in mm distri­ find an audience - a young sophisti­ ence for the mm. So we put up posters li(e, I have a very strong entrepreneurial bution by a complete accident. It was cated audience such as I was very famil­ all over the campus.