Cinema Canada (Oct-Nov 1974)

How did the idea for ““Dreamland”’ originate? Cox: It all began because my students at Seneca College didn’t believe anything had happened in film in Canada before the National Film Board, and I said to those fuckers, I said, “Ill show you!” That must have been in 1970-1971. Then I phoned up Peter Morris and said, “Hey! I’ve got a great idea! Why not make a documentary using a lot of old footage about what happened before the National Film Board began?” And he said, ‘‘Well, that’s a great idea but do you realise the problems you’d have doing that? The films don’t exist anymore, no-one knows where they are, etc., etc.” So I said, OK, and got the Canada Council interested, which allowed the film to get off the ground because it was with the Canada Council money that the research was done. I shouldn’t say this — but the whole film was supposed to be done on Canada Council money. Don Brittain was originally called and told it was going to be an unbelievable project of selflessness. For a mere fee that he was so embarrassed about that I promised I would never admit, he was willing to do it. Of course, he could only work weekends from 6 to 10, but he was doing it for that unbelievably low fee! Do you often get involved in schemes like that? Brittain: There aren’t that many schemes, you know .. . I was just interested from an historical point of view and from a filmmaker’s point of view. I actually started on this as a sort of hobby and I wanted to work on it so that I could see all the material. It’s impossible to avoid if you want to do it, but I always thought we were going to put this stuff together and show it at universities for students of cinema to look at. Sol said I'd help. Then some time passed and Kirwan said there were money problems and then he came back some time later and had sold it to Knowlton Nash at the CBC... How did that come about? Cox: The research used up all the film production money, so I went to the National Film Board and said, “‘Boy, are you ever lucky! There’s this tremendous project which has all the research done and you don’t have to do any of it and it all stops when the National Film Board begins so there is no conflict of myth. You have your history and this is all pre-You. How can you possibly be so lucky, and why don’t you do it?” And Gerry Graham and André Lamy and, I guess, Sydney Newman said, ‘“‘Sure. Why not?” So they put in a lot of money. Very shortly thereafter I went to the CBC (much to the confusion of the National Film Board and the Canada Council) and suddenly Mr. Brittain’s fee went up to his normal commercial rate, which is unspeakably high. Then the film was sort of getting itself together when it ran out of money again and I went back to the National Film Board and said, “You don’t know how lucky you are! There’s all this fantastic footage which you helped pay for and we can’t finish it unless you come through with some more money. And they came through. Brittain: What Cox really did was keep all the balls in the air. Which is the sign of a great producer. I used to get phone calls from the Canada Council, from the CBC, from the Film Board and they were all sort of wondering.... At the point when they were wondering, I knew that Cox was doing a good job. Does the CFI get credit as well? Cox: The CFI’s credit was Peter Morris and he got a very small fee for his work. It was produced by The Great Canadian Motion Picture Company in association with the National Film Board of Canada with the cooperation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with the immense and generous help of the Canada Council and under the watchful gaze of the Canadian Film Institute and 95 other film museums... . And everybody is happy. How exactly did the finances work out? Cox: Well, O.K., I'll tell you the finances because they have an important aspect to them — which is, that you cannot make a film with this much research involved cheaply. The $16,000 from the Canada Council went for research. That took a year. Then the NFB went in for $32,000 in two steps. That was all in-house money — lab work — that wasn’t cash. And the CBC bought the film for $25,000 and they bought it as an hour. Then it was stretched to an hour and a half and they didn’t up their price, so they got a better deal finally. Everybody got a good deal because the Canada Council got a more professional film than their budget could have possibly gotten. The National Film Board spent internal costs but no money. The NFB was very selfless. Brittain: Great labour of love, anyway. Cox: Essentially that’s what it was. No-one was in it for the dough. Brittain: Except me... Cox: With the possible exception of Don Brittain. So it all ended up becoming a $75,000 hour and a half documentary with the spin-off of a book, a lot of films preserved, and a lot of records that never existed before. It was about a 2-year project. Brittain: That’s nothing — the average National Film Board hour film is over $100,000. I really think the value is incredible. Well, Don couldn’t have cost all that much, then... Cox: (outraged) Are you kidding? Of that $75,000 he got... Brittain: I got 50... Cox: Most of which he donated to an old sailor’s home for filmmakers who some day will have to be treated... So the research alone cost $16,000... Cox: It wasn’t simply poring over the books. The first job was looking through all the old film magazines, which was very tedious, and which Barbara Sears did most of. The time was coming where it would have been past retrieving. A lot of people were and are dying. A lot of material we snatched luckily from wierd places. We sent a letter to the editor of all the newspapers in the country saying, “If you’ve got anything related to Canadian film, please write back.” A lot of people wrote back and said, ‘‘Uncle Harry was crazy — he has all these old cans of film in his attic and can we make a million dollars, now that you mention it?” And we wrote back saying, “No, you can’t make a million dollars but you have the privilege of donating your can of Uncle Harry’s film . . .”” Things like that, and that was a very time-consuming process. The second job was concurrent, to try and find the film and preserve it. A lot of film never got into the final documentary but was preserved from nitrate to acetate, transferred from 35mm to 16mm and placed in the Canadian Film Institute. I think that’s as much the project as the final film — that the original material now exists in the public domain and the research is all in a filing cabinet in the CFI. The next stage was getting the copyright cleared to use the material — THAT was difficult. Partly because somebody’s sister owned the rights and she was holding out for a million dollars or no-one knew who belongs to the rights. Brittain: I think the most difficult part was Cox’ part. With any historical story, it’s an incredible hassle that most people are not prepared to go through. When we made that film on Norman Bethune years ago, it was the same thing. We got 5 people claiming they had the rights to the film shot in the Spanish Civil War. We finally had to go to the Department of Justice to make a decision as to who had the rights so we could pay them. I’m still being sued over that one — personally, Every two years I have to go to the Department of Justice and deny everything! Cox: The worst part is when the government has the rights. The Ontario Motion Picture Bureau was under a. certain Cinema Canada 55