Cinema Canada (Apr-May 1974)

specific incident. The Lady of the Meadow, written by Bill Boyle and Don Ward, is a project in the pre-production stage to be shot in Saskatchewan. Intermediary, a group headed by Irving Abrams and Norman Levine, is presently seeking financing for it, initially in the Prairie provinces. Casting has been done and a crew has been assembled by talented energetic Boyle, who’s shepherding the film to its hopeful completion. Graham Parker is to direct, Jock Brandeis should be director of photography with Aerlyn Weissman recording sound. Brian McKinnon and Pat Close to assist. The Lady of the Meadow is the story of a young girl growing up in a northern lumber town, who witnesses the destruction of the forests by the profiteering woodcutting concerns. This parallels her own awakening on all levels, moving to the city, then later searching in vain for her home and finding only ‘progress.” Lynne Griffin, Trudy Young, Chris Wiggins and Ken Gordon are cast in the leading roles. G. Chalmers Adams, producer of Don Shebib’s Between Friends, is trying to get financing for a film based on W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind, with Allan King directing. Adams is also busy expounding his philosophy about Canadian feature film production in such forums as the Winnipeg Symposium and the pages of That’s Showbusiness and Canadian Film Digest. He seems to be against the “narrow chauvinistic path’? when it comes to putting together feature packages and to favour a better, more ambitious marketing system as well as a star system for this country. “The industry should develop a business acumen and gumption to pull itself up by its own bootstraps,” is how one article summarized his feelings, and he is actively trying to find workable alternatives to the subsidy game. Adams is an active representative of the Canadian Association of Motion Picture Producers (CAMPP), a group formed last year composed of a dozen feature film producers to further their own ends. Between Friends might be retitled once again for “better marketing,’ we presume. John F. Bassett is back in film production news, as well as still appearing regularly on the sports pages. Only silence about the Louis Riel project, though, which was announced with so much fanfare a year ago. Instead, Bassett is trying to get investors interested in a film called Martin’s Day, with Donald Sutherland and James Coburn as possible co-stars. He’s also planning a $1 million feature based on Orlo Miller’s book on the murder of the Black Donnelly’s. Two other motion pictures are planned on the same topic, a $3 million production by a U.S. studio, and Sam Roy of Saroy Film Productions in Toronto has acquired both the movie and publishing rights to the Thomas P. Kelley books on the subject. Bassett’s film would have a new twist, however. He would have a baseball game written into the script, since Lucan, Ontario supposedly had a great team at the time of the Donnelly’s. Other possible features this year include Werner Aellen’s production of Boon Collins’ Sally Fieldgood & Co., a supposedly hilarious script to be done out of Vancouver. Aellen is the producer of Wolf Pen Principle, Jack Darcus’ gem of a film, which Faroun Films of Montréal is taking to Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, and which will definitely be at the Cannes Film Festival in May; Boon Collins directed a CFDC short called Kettle of Fish last year. Julius Kohanyi’s longdelayed feature project, Phenorite, might be finally shot this year. As might a film based on Earle Birney’s narrative poem, David, to be produced and directed by Ralph Willsey, who wrote the screenplay for submission as a CFDC low-budget project. Shooting is planned for Banff National Park in August. Knowlton Nash, head of the CBC’s Public Affairs Department, has a six-month option on Richard Rohmer’s best-seller, Ultimatum. If Nash can pull off two features in a single year, it might be a teal coup! Speaking of property rights, Margaret Atwood might have sold Surfacing to a New York producer, but Cliff Jones’ musical version of Hamlet was picked up by Montréal’s Champlain productions, possibly for a feature movie. Bronfman money is behind that com Director André Brassard pany. If it ever happens, it will be the second Canadian version of Hamlet, the other being Crawley Films’ release of René Bonniére’s capturing of a Toronto experimental stage production, with more than a little help from the superb camerawork of Richard Leiterman. And while we’re at ghosts and such things, not only is David Cronenberg making a horror film in Montréal this year, but up in Sudbury, Ontario, a previously announced flick of that genre is going ahead as scheduled. Produced by drive-in manager Larry Zazalenchuk, directed and photographed by Klaus Vetter, and to be edited by John Gaisford, The Feast of the Cannibal Ghouls is finally being made! Starring local radio commentator Mike Hopkins as an undertaker, the production will involve Quinn Labs and Janet Good’s Canadian Motion Picture Equipment Rental Company. They might even change the title before it’s finished ... to The Corpse Eaters! And D. Fredericks, from an outfit called Frog Productions in North Vancouver, sent us a notice about a “very commercial horror spoof complete with a dark and dingy dungeon, monsters and pretty girls. It even has a good old chase sequence.” The promised complete story breakdown and photographs never came, but he claims they have the film in the can, featuring all Canadian talent. And another long awaited epic is rumoured to be on the horizon: local “mighty mole’? mogul Jock Brandeis, who is a very talented cinematographer and ingenious lighting man, might actually make his mark with The Vampire Nuns, slated to be shot (with a silver bullet?) in the fall (starring the fatal Sister Suck, maybe?). Previously Mr. Brandeis’ projects have included Gay Bikers and Gay Gaffers. Cinema Canada 9