Cinema Canada (Apr-May 1974)

Darcus laughs now thinking of it. Fortunately, he had an experienced cameraman who became his teacher-on-set — Terry Hudson. ‘‘We just started, and Terry taught me the whole thing. He had shot all of Morrie’s films. He said he would teach me the ABC’s. We got it shot, and I quickly picked up on what had to be done. Then I was given the basics of editing, taught how to use a hot splicer, and left alone for 8 A. Ibranyi-Kiss months in a room.” When he came out he had his first feature, and became ““Odeon’s token filmmaker’’. It seems the people from Odeon had attended a screening and agreed to run Coups for a week — longer if it made $2,000 by Sunday night. As soon as the film opened, Vancouver got hit by a newspaper strike wiping out all publicity. Despite that serious setback, Coups was only $40 under by Sunday. What’s more — it made $3,000 by Wednesday night! Too bad. It was already decided that it would be pulled ... so it goes. But Darcus has no bitterness about that: “It was nice. Looking back on it, there are elements of naiveté that are simply amazing. But hell, I wouldn’t change much if I had to do it again, and I hope I would do it as well.” In the meantime, Darcus was staying alive by teaching painting, but he was already hooked on cinema. “‘I liked the process a lot because I like working with people. Painting is a very lonely scene, whereas film — being part of this group of maniacs — was tremendous!” His second feature, Proxyhawks, also came about in a very unorthodox way. One of his art students, hearing about his difficulties with raising money for the next film, approached him to say she had $1,000. Darcus was grateful, but refused. However, after three more futile weeks and an initial rejection from the CFDC he called her up asking, ““Did you mean it?” Proxyhawks was started with $1,000 cash and a lab’s willingness to extend credit. ‘‘Proxyhawks cost me $16,000. I didn’t pay wages but if you add $10,000 to the film so people could have been paid $1,000 each for a couple of months work — it would still have come out cheaply.” The drive to keep making films is obviously very powerful. But does he intend to keep working that way? And to what end? “There are a lot of directors with a great roster of films behind them but very few who have built a body of work reflecting their point of view. I’ve expected to do that — to grow and expand and take on form. In North America, that is expected of every other art form — why not film? Filmmakers in Vancouver were always into developing their own subject matter — Peter Bryant, Tom Braidwood, Kirk Tougas, Al Razutis, David Rimmer. ... Either they’re developing truly experimental films like Rimmer, or dramatic subject matter like myself and Peter Bryant. But people like us are considered freaks by the old pros who have been making commercials for 20 years.” A great believer in low-budget films for both artistic and economic reasons, Darcus is nonetheless sympathetic towards the CFDC — even though they’ve been pushing “commercial” very strongly. ““They’re a bank. I wouldn’t want to trade places with them. All they can talk about on their balance sheet in the yearly report is how much they invested vs. how much they got back. When the CFDC was handing out $7,500 grants they were emphasizing that it be spent towards — ee " = — On location — Terry Hudson on camera Vladimir Valenta, star of Wolf Pen Principle Cinema Canada 43