Canadian Film Digest (Jan 1973)

Page 8 JANUARY 1973 The Canadian Film Digest Feature Production in Canada Today Looking Forward Looking Back (Or We've Come a Long Way, Brother) Time: Evening of October 15, 1995 A.D. Place: Academy of Visual Arts Auditorium, Toronto Centre for Leisure Time Injoyment Occasion: The 47th Annual Canadian Film Awards The film Awards evening gets more exciting every year. This is my 23rd since 1972. I missed 1981 when I was on location in Argentina, It is always a delight to see old friends gathered once again. There's my old friend Al Waxman and his lovely wile, Sarah. I understand his son, Adam, is a leading contender for Best Screenplay this year. And Johnny Bassett... . **Hi John." I was so pleased for Johnny when he won the Academy Award for best picture back in 1977. It made us all proud. Will you look at Peter Carter! He hasn't changed since he directed my very first picture, The Rowdyman, back in 1971. My, how time flies! Since the old days I've made 17 pictures, won three Best Picture awards, and tonight I've been advised that I am to receive the Budge Crawley Award for my overall contribution over the years. And what years they've been. In retrospect, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of nostalgia for those early years that contributed so much to what has made Canada one of the leading motion picture producers in the world. If memory serves me right, it was in 1973 when we really got a grip on the stuff of which destinies are made. What were the circumstances that finally brought us together, like the musketeers of old — ‘‘All for one and one for all?’’ So many important developments took place that year, it’s really hard to say which took precedence. Together they had a long lasting effect. It was the year that we finally began to fully understand that there was an audience of paying customers out there, waiting to be entertained. We realized what packaging was all about. That year the palate of the Canadian cinema goer was delightfully satisfied by such pictures as Bassett’s Last of the Big Guns, Jutra’s Kamouraska, Maxine Samuels’ The Pyx, as well as The Neptune. Factor, Alien Thunder, and many more. We found the key to not only Canadian but international audiences as well. It was as simple as A, B, C.... anda prayer. A) We applied the rule of ‘‘The play’s the thing.’’ B) We used actors of some want-to-see-ability. C) We outlined sensible budgets with recoupability. And then we prayed a lot. We, Canada, can only be winners.”’ It was due to this increase in Class A homemade product that a_ gigantic metamorphosis took place in the minds of Canadian cinema goers. They no longer differentiated between Canadian and foreign films. Good was good. Art was art. Film was film .... whether it was made in Bangkok or Moose Jaw. No longer did the critics measure with a double standard, being overly harsh or overly complimentary just because a film was Canadian. Today our audience support is phenomenal. In. 1973 we went after a different kind of support as well. Together we initiated a strong, united lobbying campaign in Ottawa to secure healthy and progressive tax legislation for film investors. We attacked on all fronts. ‘Motion pictures are the mirror of a nation.’’ I can almost hear the member in Parliament now — may his soul rest in peace. ‘tHonourable members, what better way to show ourselves to the world at large than through the medium of motion pictures? From the theatre and television screens of the world we can say, ‘Here is the beauty of our land, these are our stories, and these our artists.’ If you look upon my tax proposals as a gamble, then know this: And win we By LAWRENCE DANE did. That was only on the federal level. The premiers of most of the provinces came up with their own varieties of legislation as well, led by none other than our present Prime Minister, Bill Davis. With strong government backing, we were able to nudge the Odeon theatre chain into following the lead set by George Destounis of Famous Players; namely, to let loose their purse strings and invest some of those millions of dollars they had been taking out of the country. Of course, who can forget the young rebels of both NABET and IATSE breaking from their American parent unions to form one strong body of Canadian craftsmen, dedicated to the principles of foresight, flexibility, and fairness. 1973 was also the year that the Canadian Film Development Corporation settled into a set of firm, unchanging guidelines, and began to enforce them. The next eight years saw the accomplishment of what they had set out to do. The Master of Ceremonies is calling out the familiar question, ‘Would you pass the envelope please? The winner of the Budge Crawley Award is Lawrence Dane.” As I make my way to the podium to accept my award, I can’t help but think that it belongs to everyone. DON SHEBIB GOES TO BATTLE AGAIN syuorocursiee Director Don Shebib As you walk along the endlessly twisting maze of the Pathé Humphries “editing place,”’ it’s hard to tell that you are in the midst of a prime front in the world of Canadian film production. And when you get to the end of the hall, it’s even harder to tell that you're visiting one of the country’s most successful directors, Don Shebib, now working on Get Back, just completed filming. Actually, he’s. quite the image of the Canadian film-maker: if the stocky build suggests a hockey player, the un-manicured beard and shoulder-length hair suggest something else. To one side his Steinbeck holds a moment, while a moviola crackles in front of him, playing out a scene to the surfin’ beat of The Beach Boys. Thirty-four-year-old Shebib is Toronto born and raised. It was here that he caught that Movie Disease seventeen years ago, leaving him a helpless buff. Eventually his interest took him to the film school at UCLA, where he studied five years, making good use of the ample facilities supplied, and a communal student atmosphere where everyone helped everyone else in their work and movie education. That was where he felt he gained most of his best training. Returning home he worked for the NFB and CBC. At the CBC he made documentaries, two of them feature length, including the highlyacclaimed Good Times, Bad Times, a stunning look at war veterans he still considers his best work. Then, with a budget most countries would consider a joke, he made Goin’ Down the Road. With that he got people to notice that there was an industry in Canada. The film was not only well-received at home, but even in the Giant to the South, where Pauline Kael gave it quite glowing reviews, Obviously ‘a man of no small courage, he decided to tackle next two of the toughest notions a film-maker might choose to handle: youth and comedy. Rip-Off never got the praise it deserved, neither for the honesty with which he handled his subject, and all the laughs he created. Get Back is the title of his present project. Like his first feature it is basically the story of a friendship, and of the girl both guys love. The: guys are surfers, one Canadian, one American. The film culminates in a robbery, but he doesn’t regard it as a caper film at all. The first two features were written with Bill Fruet, who has gone on to direct, himself. Get Back was written with Claude Harz. Shebib considers the screenplay the most important part of a film. He works on it from the start, supplying ideas and structure and writing a lot of the dialogue for this film. He has never liked a screenplay he has used and feels there has never been a decent screenplay in the country. He tries to have the script all ready whenhe | starts shooting, but it seems a lost cause, All _ through the shoot re-writing goes on and on, and all his ‘‘free’’ hours are devoted to working on it. This leaves him no time for the energies he wants to devote to planning the shooting itself, not to mention the rehearsals he can never have. His work with actors is excellent, so one can only wonder how much better it would be if he could rehearse the whole film as a play as he, would ideally like to do. His shooting (again he is working with Richard Leiterman) shows that: the shots are improvised on location. He would: like to plan them before-hand, but he never: seems to have the time. No doubt this is due to the meagre budgets he is forced to work with. Get Back is being done for $500,000, but he would have felt comfortable only with 50 per cent more. Troubled by bad weather, a limit of an eight-week shoot, constant compromise due to lack of funds and the needless expenditure of time and energies in matters that keep him from concentrating solely on directing, he feels he has barely been keeping his head above water on the films he has made. He hasn’t been able to do the preproduction he feels is necessary, nor to experiment as much as he would like. Get Back takes place mostly in Toronto. A quarter of the shooting was done in Sudbury and there was some background material shot in the home of surfing, Los Angeles. His American surfer is played by Michael Parks, whom he chose after a long search, feeling him the only actor around capable of the role. The girl in the story was to be played by Bonnie Bedelia (the pregnant dancer in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). The Canadian in the story is Chuck Shamata, whom Shebib found here in Toronto. Shebib considers himself no “ridiculous nationalist’, and has hired Americans with absolutely no qualms, because he felt they were the best people for the job. Best things are often worst things. Shebib feels the best thing about the new Canadian industry is its youth. But a young industry is limited in its facilities. He is tired of the compromise of always working on location, which leads to bad sound and innumerable added hassles. He would like the luxury of sound stages and some additions to his standard fourteen-man crew. * And too much of moviedom these days is filled with people into it as a fad, from students to professionals. And too many working people are not movie-makers, but makers of TV films and filmed plays, even if they do turn up on the screen, he feels. But the greatest lack in the industry he feels is the lack of good producers, and especially good writers, anda lack of a sufficiency of good acting talent. f y +4 bet Actors Chuck Shamata (left) and Michael Parks. >. » 4 J = ae an as f . ' ‘4 * X\ ’ K 42 a We ga a, eee mace ‘iy Henry Beckman and Bonnie Bedelia on location in Toronto’s Allan Gardens. He may seem like a guy with a lot of beefs. But he isn’t angry: he’s tired. To get out the fine films he’s given us he’s had to beat his head against the wall and still see their quality suffer because he couldn’t devote his best ideas and ‘energies to them. He’s happiest when working, but finds pauses forced on him through lack of money or a decent subject. He doesn’t,see any unique Canadian character in our industry, but I wonder if his career isn’t a sad demonstration of just what that character presently, and needlessly, is. We'll all look forward to the release of Get Back in June, because we know one of our sharpest guys is going to give us another good movie. But with our applause maybe we should offer an apology and certainly some determination that Canadian film artists shouldn’t have to work under such a damaging grind of pressure.