Canadian Film Digest (Jan 1973)

The Canadian Film Digest JANUARY 1973 A Mari Usque Ad Mare... Page 11 David Acomba and another musical ride Actress Patti Oatman Once the bastion of short films and documentaries, the Canadian film industry is branching out into wider and wider diversification. One of the most unique entries we can expect is a musical exercise in style called Slipstream. It's no surprise that the basis of the film will be musical since it is being done by David Acomba. This twenty-eight year old Montrealer studied film at Northwestern University in Chicago and USC in the heart of downtown L.A. before he went into TV. And in TV he did some of the best rock shows that have been on. He worked for Chicago TV for a while before coming here. Then he did a show on Mariposa, but that was on film and he felt tape was better for music in performance. He did the old Sunday Morning show with~ music segments that always seemed too good for noon on Sunday TV, and then went on to his bigger shows, Rock I and II, Fillmore (for NET), and the Anne Murray special, the only Canadian music special to be simul-cast on FM (it has been done a few times in New York and on the coast). This detail of his TV music career should be noted in order to understand what kind of film to expect from this energy-filled young director. His interests are to be found in areas sadly neglected in many Canadian films. Slipstream is a musical. Not a performance musical like a rock show or a song-and-dance story, but a musical of textures and moods. There is a story. It is Acomba’s story and he got clearance from the CFDC two years ago to write it. They also introduced him to Bill Fruet, with whom he wrote the screenplay. They would meet together and hash things out and Fruet would write the formal screenplay on his own, During filming, Fruet was making his own Wedding in White, so he couldn’t be with Acomba. Still, the changes on location were slight, just the usual working out when a screenplay is tossed in front of the camera. Still, the story is just the basis, Acomba has “put the meat of the film into the images and the musical movement of the film. It is highly stylized, almost surreal. To get the look he wanted they went on location on the prairies of Alberta, in a town called Spring Coolie, near Lethbridge. He wanted the never-ending flatness of the prairies, and in fact the only vertical lines in the film are those of the farmhouse where the action takes place. If the film has a European flavor for you, it is just what he wanted. His cameraman is Marc Champion, from Paris, who has been in Canada some years. To get a sensuous texture to the look of the film Acomba asked a lot of his cameraman. At the time he made his requests casually and was nicely satisfied to see them realized on film. Only later did he realize the amount of work Champion had to do to get those effects, and how hard and well he worked. Acomba never looked through the lens, happily giving Champion a great deal of responsibility he feels he made the best use of. Almost important is the music itself. There are two well-known songs, Eric Clapton’s Layla and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, but the rest is original and was written after filming to go with the film. Brian Aherne, with whom Acomba worked on the Rock shows, is in charge of the music and Alan Ray is arranging and writing the electronic segments. All the music is contemporary. The film was shot in Todd AO, making it the rare exception (I can remember no other), a widescreen Canadian movie. Acomba has chosen lots of camera movement and judicious cutting to best handle the huge frame which imposes as many limitations as it offers possibilities. There are only about ten people in the film, the leads being Luke Askew, Patti Oatman and Eli Rill. There was about a week’s prerehearsal before filming. The shots are planned on the location. At night, Acomba likes to get together with some of the people, put some music on the record player that he feels has the mood he is after (although he won’t use that piece in the film) and talk over the mood and feel of what they will be after in the next day’s shooting. For him, movies are creating magic and the ony, way to judge how it is coming is if it feels good. In'a way he feels that young people have more energy than film-making requires. Shooting is intense, but editing is far more leisurely than what he is used to in TV. TV is more theatrical, everything must be done NOW, and the editing stage of film is too relaxed for the energy he likes to bring to his work. But film is more subtle and offers more possibilities in the amount of information he can communicate. During editing, he transfers segments to video tape. This way he can go over it at home, and also give it to his musicians to go over at their home or studio in relaxed comfort. The subject of the film he feels is typically Canadian in character. For if one sees the basic American story as a story of conquest and the basic English story as one of social behavior, By LLOYD CHESLEY then the basic Canadian story is about the victim. He feels the fact that Canada is an enormous country filled with huge tracts of wild land is the key to the basic Canadian character. The story of the Canadian film is of a man coping with his environment, an individual rising above or dealing with his surroundings. The enormity of the land allows for much larger themes than he feels he has seen in Canadian films to date, so he went to the huge, flat prairies to express this idea. Canada’s history of documentary also affects our film consciousness, so one ends up with an epic film filled with the honesty of a documentary film. Acomba seems very happy with the aid the CFDC and especially Michael Spencer have given him. But he does not believe there is really a “‘Canadian Film Industry.’’ He sees it as a private club where you may or may not get a chance to make your film. But it lacks the group feeling and inter-action and sharing of a real industry. But really his only complaint was that after his crew went so far out on so many limbs for him and were so good and worked so hard, IATSE in Hollywood called and said ‘no deals for nobody.’ This type of American intervention has angered him at all American activity here, and with good reason, for who is a voice in Hollywood that it can tell Canadian film makers at any level of the production that they can’t do what they want to do? His centre of activity is Toronto. He sees that here is where the fight for Canadian identity is happening, not in Quebec where culture is defined, but in Toronto where it is undefined and more subtle. But he only handles one project at a time, and then it is time for travel and discovery. Now he will complete Slipstream and help Cinepix handle advertising and distribution, for he feels a film can only be sold properly by someone who understands the soul of that film. Then we can expect him to disappear for a while until we see his name on some more Rock TV shows and more movies. In the meantime, Slipstream, an interesting and unique film to watch out for, will hopefully be out in early March. SAIHOUV NAVINLIGS JHL You know, ever since I got to fooling around with these funny glass bubbles with curly little wires inside them, it’s come over me that there’s little voices down in there just waiting to be heard. Just crying out! I got this scheme, see, where | put them on this wheel, flat like, that’s going around maybe 78 revolutions Hi, there! 'm Tom Edison, the friendly but eccentric inventor. Id like to talk to you for a few minutes about the magical qualities of SOUND. per minute, and this little bamboo needle WHOOPEE, we got noises! If the goldarn things would just stop burning out on me! rubs against them and But just stick with me. After all, who brought you electric light on those little wax cylinders? If old Tom dropped in on Quinn Labs, he’d find we have one floor for sound and three floors for light and motion. That way, there’s no confusion. Absolutely no confusion. QUINN LABS 380 Adelaide Street West/ Toronto 2/368-301 1 —_—_ i