Cinema Canada (Aug-Sep 1974)

cinema halls. In my estimation, that is an old fashioned view. Aside from the box-office bonanza at box-offices throughout North America since Christmas, which has resulted in skyrocketing profits for exhibitors and distributors and a total yearly gross way in excess of $150 million in Canada alone, there’s nothing to replace the thrill of seeing a movie — especially if it’s Canadian — on a wide screen, in colour.... Along-side 500 or so other people. I agree with you. Unfortunately, our world is moving in such a direction, where you have to discuss its financial viability and clearly it’s very hard for new, bright, young, fresh, Canadian filmic voices to get seen through those old channels. Clearly, there’s no use bitching about Famous or Odeon, or what. Those guys are running a business operation, like the steel companies and gas stations. They’re running businesses. There’s no use berating them for being no different than any other business. It’s not incumbent upon them to lose money by running material for which they cannot draw audiences. At the same time those creative people that are making films have got to find an audience. And it’s about time the CFDC recognized that those audiences can be secured through electronic means. God bless the CFDC! The important thing is the creative voice and that there are ears listening to the creative voice. Let me be skeptical and say that this is another way of skirting the issue and refusing to come face to face with the problem, the very acute problem of foreign ownership of Canada’s motion picture theatres by the Rank Organization of Great Britain and Paramount/Gulf and Western from the States, which own the Odeon and Famous Players chains here, respectively. And they only claim that Canadian features aren’t good enough and they'll lose money on them, since they’re committed to have as the bulk of their diet foreign pictures. They’re foreign owned and consequently are subject to numerous under the table tie-in arrangements. ... Foreign owned has nothing to do with it. You’re indulging in a red herring! Do you think it’s the foreign money that’s prohibiting Canadian films from being seen? Do you mean to tell me that they wouldn’t be delighted to run a film, which will make them as much money as an American film? “Paperback Hero,” one of our more recent popular films, was launched with a promotion budget of $10,000 as compared to as high as 25 times that figure for a big American picture that comes to Canada and rakes in the money here. Then, when Paperback surprises everyone and grosses nearly $700,000 at one point, Famous Players decide to keep a full 90 per cent against their exhibitor’s and investor’s percentage, leaving very little for the distributor, producer and almost nothing for the director, Peter Pearson. Yet when the Godfather grosses over $1 million at a Famous theatre in Toronto, a full 70 per cent of the take goes to the distributor, Paramount. And most of their professed and hidden profits are going to their mother corporations, as well. That’s not the point you’re making, though. Of course it is. But I don’t think that’s what’s prohibiting better films from being made in Canada. It’s a loss of money, but all that money is not going to make better films. Do you mean to tell me that Canadian films would be better if they were an infusion of another $100 million? All you’re really saying is that they would make maybe ten times more films, and by the law of percentages there’ll be more that will be better. I’m not the most eloquent speaker in favour of this cause. I mean, God knows, there have been briefs aplenty written and submitted to various levels of government on this topic. But what I am saying is that if only some of that $150 million per annum, maybe 15 per cent, would go into the pockets of 46 Cinema Canada Canadian producers, that would mean a great upsurge of feature production ($22.5 million worth every year), and a thriving film industry with full employment for close to 8,000 people. Meaning that some of us won’t have to seek jobs elsewhere in the economy.... I don’t think it will be any more thriving. Even Hollywood only succeeds one out of every ten films they make. If now we make one excellent film a year out of twenty, if we make twice as much, then we make two good films a _ year. Well, that would be very good, I’d be very happy, but I don’t know if that really is the proper basis for an industry. What is more fundamental than American ownership, than the cinemas being foreign owned and all that jazz — and I’m not depreciating that, that’s a good argument, we need more money — is what we seem to lack in our country: an understanding — we want to run before we can walk. We will not get a viable film industry in our country until we get a viable theatre, which uses a lot of actors and writers. We will not get a film industry, until we get a viable electronic drama experience on television. The actors from the theatre, the writers from the theatre will intermingle with the actors and writers for television. It will be the spinoff from the amalgam that will produce the feature film industry. We are trying to create a film industry without a viable theatre, a viable electronic TV drama. We’re trying to run before we can walk. It won’t work! That’s the source of our naive innocence in this country.” Sounds like John Hirsch of CBC Drama was very successful in getting his ideas accepted by the inner circle of policy people. When asked whether it was enough that directors like Don Shebib, Allan King, Don Owen and Peter Pearson do one or two shows for CBC per year, Newman voiced the belief that one had to go beyond those few. He discussed his interpretation of a financially viable industry and expressed the opinion that most Canadian directors just don’t have the mass appeal necessary for it. Why do people invest in films? “They want to get their money back’’, said Newman. “Or is it all to be done based on a government handout. Nobody wants that. Who the hell wants to depend on a handout?” When it was pointed out that some of our leading filmmakers signed the Winnipeg manifesto earlier this year, asking for exactly that, he didn’t seem to have read that particular document. What about the 14,000 members of Britain’s biggest motion picture union, whose recent brief called for the total nationalisation of the film industry in that country, including a take-over of the American majors? Yes, he’s read it, some of his “best friends” are ACTT members, but he characterised it as a “fart in a hurricane”. Who took it seriously? Nobody in England,” according to Newman. Maybe in ten years? ‘““Maybe, maybe. But the nationalisation of the film industry by itself will not guarantee better films.”” The Canadian Government Film Commissioner went on to say that during his travels in the Soviet Union he wasn’t very impressed with the socialist product. What about East Europe? He said he was “too ignorant of what they’ve done. But the fact is when you talk about feature investment of half to a million, you need more magic than the sweet, sincere, blue eyes of the film director.” “The cost of art in our kind of society has to be in relation to the number of people whose imaginations it will excite,” theorized Newman, and went on to say that of the best Canadian film directors, not even Claude Jutra “‘has proven himself to be able to captivate the imagination of a mass audience on a continuing basis.” It certainly seems like the men at the top have given up on our short but noble fling with feature filmmaking, even before they allowed it to truly get off the grounde