Cinema Canada (Jun 1978)

“The chief factor hampering my policy formation was the economic reality... We can’t support an industry without access to the international market. And it’s very difficult to get the co-operation we need from foreign distributors if we’re clobbering them here. That’s the key conundrum.” Last November — before he was spooked by the Americans or the Cabinet or both — Roberts didn’t see it as a conundrum. Then he was prepared to call the Americans’ bluff. When he warmed the Cabinet of American threats of reprisal, he also advised them that “it is unlikely that the Motion Picture Association of America, or the American Government, would want to risk the loss of the extremely profitable Canadian market.” Precisely. If it comes down to a game of brinksmanship, Canada is holding all the cards. Our market is worth $60 million to the Americans but it’s doubtful we earn 1 percent of that in theirs. The $6 million gain from the proposed levy would, at any rate, more than compensate us for the losses in the American market, were it ever totally withdrawn. What Roberts appears to have forgotten, in the interim, is that his original levy proposal is a universal remedy which most countries have applied against the Americans. Because the Americans’ commercial success is achieved at the expense of everyone else’s (there is no commercially viable film industry, in an unprotected market, outside the U.S.), levy has become the norm, rather than the exception, for the world’s film industries. To it we owe Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, Bunuel and most of our non-American film experience. The countries applying this sanction have no less access to the American market than Canada. Our fear is based on a myth which other countries have discarded: the myth that somehow, if we are a good branch plant and forfeit control of our own market, the Americans will allow us into theirs where we will have a shot at the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The fact of the matter is that there is no entry to the American market — on a large scale — and there is little hope of realizing profits from films which do gain entry. America is a media imperialist. It invented the concept of the free flow of information to justify its own unilateral penetration of foreign markets. The country which controls the world’s film markets has not neglected to control its own. In fact, America is the world’s most xenophobic and protectionist media market. It shares with Red China the distinction of having less (2 percent) of its television time devoted to foreign programming than any other nation (Russia imports 5 percent). The last time UNESCO checked, the U.S. stood alone as the world’s most protected movie market: 95 percent of all movies are domestic. As for the pot of gold beyond the magic door... it doesn’t exist for independent producers be they Canadian, Timbuctuians, or even Americans. The list of independents who made a million in the American market fits on a postage stamp. The list of those who were ripped off is long and international. CFDC Director, Michael Spencer, commented in the April issue of Trade News North: “We’ve been in bed with the major companies from the very beginning... There was Fortune and Men’s Eyes; we never got any money back on that. You know, Act of the Heart, Fan’s Notes... We never got any money back on any of these pictures... We gave up on the U.S. major companies sometime around about Duddy Kravitz. Peter Guber, producer of The Deep, which made over $100 million at the box office, told the Los Angeles Filmex symposium that he had not seen a penny of profit. Al Ruddy, producer of The Longest Yard, made a similar charge at a Canadian seminar in January. Just as the world will get solar energy, in a serious way, when and if Exxon figures out how to claim ownership of the sun, Canada will get their features into the American market if and when the American majors (which are themselves owned by massive multinationals like Gulf & Western and TransAmerica), gain financial and creative control over our production. That is a possibility which suits too many of our pseudo-producers too well. Being agents for the Americans is personally profitable for them and many have made a life’s work of compradorship. It also interests Hollywood: Universal Studios have already set up a Canadian production arm. But personal profits for the American majors and a handful of Canadian businessmen is a very different thing from the potential social and cultural benefits for Canada in having a production industry of our own. A film industry designed to serve their limited commercial imperatives will be a branch plant, and branch plants have no potential to serve a nation’s larger goals in any industry, particularly not in the communications industry. Despite the recent bonanza of truly excellent, and truly Canadian, features like Why Shoot the Teacher, Outrageous, Who Has Seen the Wind, One Man, and J.A. Martin photographe, the Canadian industry is hovering on the edge of becoming such a branch plant. The majority of funds invested — and movies made — have nothing to do with this country. Films which disguise their Canadian location by replacing Canadian flags and license plates with American; films which defy the fundamental truth of all great art — that it is uncompromisingly set in its own specific physical and social milieu. Such films amount to international nonsense and receive neither the critical nor the commercial success of the best of our indigenous products. Britain, having suffered this bitter lesson of concessions to internationalism, is not attempting to recover and is dedicated to making unashamedly British films. If the Canadian industry is permitted to further drift in the American-controlled market system it was born into, its purpose will be perverted beyond redemption. Commercial logic will have triumphed over social logic once again in this “country and the government will be hard pressed to explain what its multi-million dollar investment has been all about. Unfortunately, the final film policy has encouraged, rather than retarded that drift. If we are not going to be America’s number one communications colony forever, the government is going to have to accept the world’s wisdom and intervene in its own market, as John Roberts originally proposed. That’s going to require making the essential distinction between good neighborliness and selling out. In the meantime, policies such as the Liberals have just delivered for film, are compromising the country’s needs. They mean the export of talent, jobs, and millions of dollars, which Canada has been doing since days of Mary Pickford. They put another generation of talent on hold. They postpone our development and blunt our sense of self. Ultimately, they are going to cost us our political and economic independence. They simply don’t make sense. oO June 1978/ 31