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the best film policy
this country
never had
by Sandra Gathercole
Privately, members of the industry recognize John Roberts’ Film Policy as a non-policy. It did not meet the expectations nor justify the fears which had been voiced in so many sectors. Sandra Gathercole’s
analysis puts the Policy in an historical perspective.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of a 1965 Canada-U:S. partnership agreement negotiated by America’s Livingston Merchant and Canada’s Arnold Heeney. Halfway through the numerous clauses (Heeney having conceded every one of them to the U.S.) Livingston Merchant leaned across the table and said, “You take this one for Canada, Arnold. It will look good when you get home.”
Over the years, the Canadian Government’s record of success in negotiations with American government and business interests has been a running joke. The Americans have come to know and love us as the country which, given an inch, will take half an inch and go away happy. Rather like the good old days when the Indians sold Manhattan Island for $24 in trinkets. The Indians, of course, woke up long ago.
American control of Canadian cinemas has epitomized the syndrome. Canadian movie houses we1e built to show
Se ee eee eee schmnremetnomceanpsnecniannsngtinieentensesronnetannis Sandra Gathercole was chairperson of the Council of Canadian Filmmakers for several years, Recently, she has worked for the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission editing the Grierson tapes.
28/Cinema Canada
American movies and have remained a territorial monopoly for American distributors. Canada is Hollywood’s number one foreign market, paying 93 percent of all theatrical film rentals to the likes of Paramount and Warner Bros. Approximately 1-1/2 percent of the massive $240 million annual Canadian box office goes to Canadian film production which
is thus limited and chronically under-financed. For 50 years, the Canadian government has been bemoan
ing the situation: “For years I have been convinced that the film situation is one of very great danger to this Dominion...” Prime Minister R.B. Bennett September 16, 1931
For 30 years, the government has been threatening to do something about it. In 1948 there was the Canadian Cooperation Project: Hollywood’s response to pressure from MacKenzie King, C.D. Howe and Louis St.. Laurent (later a member of the Board of Famous Players) to leave behind some of the millions they were extracting from the Canadian box office. This was the first “voluntary agreement” and Pierre Berton enshrined it in Hollywood’s Canada as “what