Cinema Canada (Oct 1977)

I don’t imagine I have to introduce Robin Spry or his films to readers of Cinema Canada. Though it probably is true that his work is more highly critically esteemed outside of the country than in, Spry’s early feature films Prologue and Action reached large Canadian audiences through theatrical and television release. Early indications (to quote Spry, the “embarassingly positive’ reviews, largely from foreign critics, including the nod from Variety which called it “a winning tale that could easily make its way on TV and theatrical play-off’) augur well for a wider than ever audience for his new feature One Man. Spry was 29 when he made Prologue at the National Film Board of Canada. Eight years have passed. Unlike many filmmakers who direct their debut film at the Film Board and then leave for private industry, Spry stayed on. He is loyal to the NFB which trained him, gave him time to think and read and, above all, to test his ideas. But a certain weary resignation at the timely, cumbersome and finally risky business of seeing a film through the approval process at the Film Board has taken a toll of his energy. (The first script for the project which became One Man was written in 1970, and Spry is still running around pradding the Film Board into finalizing distribution deals for the film in Canada and the U.S.A.) If it is a trade-off, Spry understands what the stakes are. At the NFB he urites 36 drafts of a script and then travels across the country to find the ‘right’ actors. More importantly, he is able to make films which reflect things he cares about. Power and the politics of power, the major themes of his previous features, appear again in One Man, this time in a popularized form. The big issue of the early 70’s, everybody’s bandwagon — pollution — becomes the subject on which the film focuses. Even then Spry is not extending himself into unfamiliar, impersonal subject matter; the death of his brother Richard from “a form of cancer related to industrial pollution” brings urgency and fear in close. One Man had its North American premiere at Ottawa ree I met with Spry in Montreal where the film played in Le Festival international du film de la critique québécoise and then, the next week, was screened to enthusiastic houses at the World Film Festival of Canada. Spry’s worries these days seem to be limited to the quality of the projection and sound in the various, and seemingly improvised salles, and to what few words he will find to say to the audience when he raises his burly self out of the theatre seat to receive their applause. Cinema Canada: What are your immediate concerns now that you have finished One Man? Robin Spry: I’m_ going to write another script and try to make another film. Whether I can raise the money to do another film — whether the Film Board will make another feature, or whether I can find the money outside, I don’t know. It’s going to depend a bit on how One Man does. If it does very well then it will presumably be easier, but not easy. Is your relationship with the Film Board going to change if you find there is some restriction to your making feature films? Yes, if I can’t make them at the Film Board in some way or another — and it may or may not be possible — I’ll make them elsewhere. But I’d like to stay at the Board. My ideal existence would be to stay there and continue to make low budget socially oriented feature films. I don’t want to make massive commercial Hollywood glamour movies at all. There is a lot of activity in Canada now with big budget productions but it seems to be difficult to get low budget features under way. Do you feel the low budget feature is viable? At a commercial level, nine times out of ten, it may be true that if you have a film that doesn’t have main actors it becomes very difficult to sell it in the major market, which is the States. And, if you don’t sell a film there, the chances are you lose money. If I make a feature for private industry in Canada, the budget will probably be higher than what I’ve had and I will have to go with two or three name actors; it will be imposed by the investors. Was Len Cariou, in your eyes, a ‘“‘name’’? No. He’d never done a film before. And he’s still unknown because neither of his films have come out yet... my film and the film with Elizabeth Taylor, A Little Night Music. Maybe in the theatrical world, in a Canadian context, he is sort of a name, or will be I’m sure, but that’s not why I chose him. What was the attraction? He’s a very good actor, that was the primary thing. Did you know that he would be able to make the transition from stage to screen? I didn’t think he would have trouble with it. Len is an actor who has worked on himself very consciously. He’s not blindly intuitive, he knows how he gets somewhere and adjusted quickly to film. We spent time on it, talking and rehearsing with video, but he’d obviously thought about it before. The other thing that I really like about him — it’s down the scale but there are always arguments about Canadian identity and Canadians being the same as Americans — I think there is a difference that I personally like a lot. For me, Len is a very genuine, or as they constantly say in these festivals, quintessentially Canadian person. Len has that perfect Canadian feel. How do you define that quality? Cariou, though he now lives in New York, hasn’t in any way become Americanized in his character. This is a terrible generality, but I find that people who are infected with the American way of life spend a lot of their energy imposing their existence on the world around them. Len is confident about his qualities but he’s happy to keep it to himself. It’s somewhere in that area... there’s a quiet strength. It was one of the reasons why I chose him. It was there in him and it’s there in the film. Could you tell us something of your experience with actors. How did your work at the Film Board prepare you for this film? Well, I made Prologue and other dramatic films at the Film Board. Those films made it very clear I didn’t know how to work with actors. Then the Board supported Mort Ransen’s idea of having a directors’ and actors’ workshop, which I worked in and ran for awhile. That was the first such workshop? For actors, I think so. Until that point there hadn’t been much concern over developing that kind of expertise? October 1977 /29