Cinema Canada (Sep 1981)

A Potterton finishes Metalinrecordtime,happy Kent gathers cash, moves on Battlezone in Toronto TORONTO ~The Disney production of The Fox and The Hound took almost seven years from start to completion. Ivan Reitman’s production of Heavy Metal, currently in North American release through Columbia, took eighteen months from the time director Gerald Potterton began to coordinate the teams of animators who produced the episodes that make up the completed film. Potterton would at first glance be an odd choice for a film which trades heavily on sex, violence and _ fantasy, being best known for his NFB animation of Stephen Leacock’s My Financial Career, the late Buster Keaton’s last short, The Railrodder, and The Rainbow Boys. Potterton admits that he was surprised when he began to read the script. “At first I asked ‘what have I gotten myself into?’ but then I began to see certain graphic possibilities in the work.” According to Potterton, he was chosen to head up the production for three reasons —first because he was a Canadian, second because Reitman was familiar with his work on Yellow Submarine and Raggedy Ann and Andy, and third because of his background in live-action film as well as animation. The job was less one of direction than production, “more of a traffic cop’s job,” especially with Reitman off at work on his own feature, Stripes, and teams of animators at work in London, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg. Aside from the geographic sprawl of the project, the main worry for Potterton was making the stories hang together — “It's very risky to do anthologies of stories. So far, we’ve found that different people like different stories.” Another problem was the sheer amount of drawing — particularly drawings of the human figure. “We had animators working who'd never drawn the human figure before. That's one of the problems (Ralph) Bakshi has, it’s the reason he just has people paint over the rotoscopes.” (Rotoscoping is a process of animation that involves photographing your story as live action and then drawing over it.) “Most of our animators felt that they were working on something special. Animators who work on the same characters for a long time can become rather jaded — but that didn’t happen on our production.” Potterton had nothing but praise for the animators whose work he coordinated on Heavy Metal-—a group that included animators from _ seventeen countries. "We gave them a script and an idea of the design of the film — each segment has a specific design. “!’m very pleased with the way the film turned out. We could have used more time, but the quality of the animation is very high. I don’t think it's a step backward for animation. Some critics aren't going to go for it at all— but you have to expect that with the sort of film it is.” ; Exhausted after the hectic months of Heavy Metal, Potterton is considering several projects for the future, including a live-action science fiction film with an animated orientation. But at the moment, “I’m just going to have a rest, actually.” LA grosses great, Reitman scores again LOS ANGELES — Yvan Reitman’s production of Heavy Metal opened August7 to spectacular box office, pulling in $3,773,660 in four days in 621 theatres throughout North America. At the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles, Metal did $70,528 in its first four days, including $21,243 on Saturday. At New York’s Embassy I on Broadway, the movie broke the seven day house record in four days with $63,135. In Toronto, Metal opened to $31,393 : $7,275 on Friday, $9,792 on Sunday and $4,774 Monday —at the Varsity Theatre. According to Robert L. Friedman, President of Domestic . Distribution for Columbia Pic tures, Columbia is very happy with the opening weekend figures, «We've had a very good summer, first with Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams, then with Stripes, (produced for Columbia by Ivan Reitman) which has done $56 million, and now Heavy Metal.» CINESYNC INTERNATIONAL TORONTO — Arthur Kent, best known to most Canadians as a CBC news reporter and brother of ex-National anchorman Peter Kent, has moved into a new field, feature production. Kent's first theatrical feature, Battlezone : Adams High, goes before the cameras at Toronto's Central Tech High School on August 17, despite a week's delay in preproduction due to financial difficulties which caused the Director’s Guild of Canada to pull its personnel from the production. According to Kent, the problem was caused by two factors. First, the film's $4.3 million budget is being raised without the help of either banks or interim financers, but was sold to investors through private subscription in Alberta (mostly Calgary) by Westfield Securities of Canada. This dealing with individual investors led to the problems because of the mail strike. “It's hard to get a courier in Calgary at the best of times, and with the strike on, we had to contact every individual in person,” Kent told Cinema Canada. The production now has $3.3 million in hand, which will enable them to get through post-production. The other million in the budget is for financing fees, a completion bond, and to cover some of the development costs. Novice producer Kent has no doubts about the marketability of his story, which he described DOUBLAGE ET POST-SYNCHRONISATION FOREIGN LANGUAGE DUBBING MONTREAL 1025, rue de Bleury Montréal, Canada H2Z 1M7 Téléphone : (514) 866-8933 Télex : 055-61916 PARIS 69, rue de Rochechouart 75009 Paris, France Téléphone : 878-16-41 Télex: 270105 Ref. 394 PHILIPPE GARCIA, président NEW YORK 35 West, 90th Street New York 10024 N.Y., U.S.A. Telephone : (212) 873-6390 as a cross between To Sir With Love and Dirty Harry. The story, which was developped by Kent, John Saxton (whose last script was Happy Birthday to Me), and director Mark Lester, whose previous work includes Truck Stop Women, Steel Arena and Roller Boogie, tells of a high school teacher in an American inner-city high school who can no longer close his eyes to the hoodlumism, violence and crime which controls his school. ‘Y didn’t let my journalistic background go to waste,” said Kent. “While we were working on the script in L.A., the Times came one day and some kid had been murdered when he refused to pay up to the school's protection racket. We tried to keep our story as current as possible.” The package was designed, says Kent, as a movie with marketable elements — youth, music, action, and a classic conflict between the elements of order and nihilism. “Our kids aren’t misunderstood — they're bad... Let’s face it, we're not talking about petty crime— we're talking about schools installing metal protectors.” Despite the production's ability to raise most of its budget prior to production, it faced the same problems most producers face-— particularly the cost of borrowing money. “Only secondarily did we take advantage of the tax shelter — had we not been able to demonstrate that we were first and foremost a commercial venture, we wouldn’t have gotten the production off the ground.” The film will be largely crewed by Canadians. IATSE cameraman Bert Dunk will act as director of photography, Tony Lucibello is first assistant director and Ted Watkins will run the art department. Henry Richardson, whose previous work includes The Kidnapping of the President and Curtains, will cut the film, with postproduction chores taking place at Film House. The shoot is scheduled for seven weeks in Toronto. (cont. from p. 9) Series, reports that other dis tribution deals are developing, and that the CBC should have it ‘on the air by February or March. “We have good access to places and people in China, and I think we've brought home more than the other film crews who have shot there,” says Duprey. The film was made with tax shelter money, thanks toa single investor. Other executive producers on the project are John Fisher and Paul Lin. Currently, three editors are busy cutting the film. ee 14/Cinema Canada September 1981