Cinema Canada (Dec 1979-Jan 1980)

In the maze of business deals and tax shelter schemes that form the Canadian film industry, the high profile positions seem to be reserved for the producers. Although the creative communities of other countries often take a ‘de facto’ back seat to the moneymen, it is nevertheless the directors, writers and cameramen who receive most of the public attention generated by their films. Canadian motion pictures are not yet a director's medium: the scramble to see a return on investments and the push to feed the international market with ‘commercial’ products has focused the spotlight squarely on the ‘packager.’ Despite their low profile, there is a small cadre of Canadian directors who lend both their skills and their qualifications as two ‘certification points’ to those same packages. One of the busiest, albeit most mysterious members of this group is Toronto-born Alvin Rakoff, who helmed one of the first features produced under the tax shelter scheme, King Solomon’s Treasure, and has since overseen City on Fire, Death Ship and Dirty Tricks. After graduating from the University of Toronto, Rakoff entered the field of journalism, then gradually shifted his focus to writing for radio and television. It was as a writer that he continued his career in England: the BBC made him a director, and he remained on staff at the Corporation for five years. He later became the first free-lance director in British television, producing a volume of work for the British independent credits. From time to time, Rakoff has returned to Canada to direct television drama, but the bulk of his recent Canadian output has been in the new motion picture industry. Cinema Canada spoke with him in the editing room of Dirty Tricks. Cinema Canada: Your television credits are extraordinary, and as you’ve worked in drama at both the BBC and the CBC, what do you feel are the differences between the two organizations ? Alvin Rakoff: They're enormous. The CBC is not geared to producing plays anymore; it hasn’t been for years. The staff and crews aren’t trained to the extent of those at the BBC, which produces about four or five plays a week of varying size. Drama, or the television play, is part of the television diet there: it is not part of the diet anywhere in North America. The experience for a director who travels back and forth can be hair-raising. I disliked almost the entire experience at the CBC. I liked being back in Toronto, liked the Canadian subject matter. But the technical nightmares were horrendous. Can you give me an idea of the work you did recently in Canada ? One play I did in Toronto three or four years ago was called Lulu Street. Good play, nice cast of people, and one of the worst sets I've ever worked with in my life. Art direction, incidentally, is a great weakness in Canada, in both film and television. It was hard to impose one’s will on the CBC. Perhaps in that big a bureaucracy, you've got to Jean Laikan is an avid film buff and free-lance writer living in Montreal. know how to make the wheels turn in your favour. For instance, I know — even after years of absence — how to make the BBC wheels turn. and | found it difficult to impossible to make it work at the CBC in Toronto. The result was that I did a very ordinary production. And there’s no need for a television play to be just ‘ordinary.’ It should be good or not screened. To move to film, it seems you were involved in one of the first pictures to be produced under the tax shelter regulations, King Solomon’s Treasure. Yes, and the less said about that the better ! Well, it’s just that no one can figure out what happened to it. Which proves that there’s still someone in heaven looking after our interests, and the interests of the public .Hopefully, that picture will never be seen by anyone. | mean, it wasn’t a bad film. It was supposed to be a kiddies’ movie, with monsters and such. The original King Solomon’s Mines was a wonderful picture, very important in the history of Hollywood films because it was one of the first that really went on location A great landmark. Ours was a landmark in another way. in that they tried to take this children’s story and turn it around. The whole production was built around these models. They needed two dinosaurs, and giant crabs. and various other monsters, and the production ran out of money. So that by the time it came to be shot, ridiculous monsters were built, and the picture just doesn’t hold together. The last reel isn’t that bad, actually. The next Canadian picture you did was City on Fire, and then Death Ship, and finally Dirty Tricks. People are always trying to determine why a director takes one kind of picture over another, and the sensationalist nature of the first two films brings that to mind. Did you specifically choose that kind of picture for any particular reason ? No. I mean, you've got a choice. You can sit back and wait for the kind of film you want to make to be offered to you. If you do, you don’t work very much. And because of the nature of what is being made in Canada today, | certainly wouldn’t have been offered very much. The only positive thing is that I’d earned a reputation for being a strong storyteller of meaty dramas, and for controlling actors. And I wanted to do some action stuff: | knew | could, because that’s whatI’d started with. But when City on Fire came along, I didn’t want to do it because | was right in the middle of Romeo and Juliet for the BBC Shakespeare series. And it was such a switch, from doing something where the word is all-important to where the action is allimportant. But it was good to make the switch, because I like doing action as much as! like heavy verbal drama, and I needed to get back to the action stuff. That's the reason I did City on Fire. Do you harbour any fears that you'll be ‘typecast’ as an ‘action director’ ? You know, I’ve been doing this job a long time, and you Cinema Canada/9