Cinema Canada (Sep 1981)

aa re ts me FREE EE a creative failure ? Vivienne Leebosh: That's true. The brokers are still deciding what is to be made, in fact. Ralph Thomas: They'll read the script and say yes or no. Cinema Canada: So what do you do? It seems the film industry has traditionally been plagued with the ‘two solitudes’ syndrome: the financial people and the creative people don’t communicate with each other. Should the creative people be talking to the investors directly ? Ralph Thomas: Vivienne has spent a lot of time in the past two years talking to business people. We wouldn't have made Ticket without them ; obviously, we owe them a return on their investment. , Once that investment is returned, we want those people to become part of our filmmaking for years to come. That's why we're so concerned about promotion. You have to return their investment if you want their confidence. Besides, you don’t want your film to sit on a shelf. If you review the last 15 years of Canadian filmmaking, people still talk about Goin’ Down The Road and Wedding In White as two of our best films ever. They didn’t do well at the box office because they lacked the kind of budgets that allowed Hollywood-level production values. Suddenly, we had the opportunity to put those production values on screen, but the money went elsewhere. What we need to be competitive is to develop and encourage the talent, and find the writers. Cinema Canada: Do they exist ? Vivienne Leebosh: The CFDC says it develops writers, but it only does so when the writer is affiliated with a producer. Therefore, the producer retains control, and the writer only does what he wants. Cinema Canada: So the writer is the lackey ? Vivienne Leebosh: That's right. Cinema Canada: Vivienne, you’reon the CAMPP (Canadian Association of Motion Picture Producers) executive. Ralph, you’re on the DGC (Directors Guild of Canada) board. You now havea track record. The so-called commercial filmmakers have failed... Ralph Thomas: For failing to be commercial—that’s the important thing. Cinema Canada: Okay. Sonowyou’re in a position to have some input into the decisions your respective organizations will make. Is an institute or organization that shares filmmaking knowledge possible ? Vivienne Leebosh: It’s a fight. A power struggle. I'm fighting my end of it, and the ‘Group of Nine’ (the Association of Canadian Movie Production Com| panies, or ACMPC) are fighting theirs’. They've got a lot of power and a lot of | government connections. They say the | tux shelter should only be for corpora tions that make two or three films per year: cut out the small guys. So it's a fight. Ralph Thomas: The government will never buy that, though. Vivienne Leebosh: They might not, but that’s what theyre going after. They're looking to finance the ‘minimajors.’ Cinema Canada: Would youconsider going back to television ? Ralph Thomas: I've never ruled out going back to the CBC. In some ways, I don't feel I've really left the CBC. But I’ve had nosense that they want me there. In fact, I’ve had a stronge sense they don’t want me there. (Laughs.) One of the ironies of this film is that when Vivienne first decided to do it she thought of it as a movie for CBC television. They turned it down. Vivienne Leebosh: They said it had been done, that documentaries had been done on it. Ralph Thomas: Whereas we've been running into distributors who aren't even aware that this situation with religious cults exists. And here, the CBC was telling us it was passé. It's like the word ‘commercial.’ It means nothing; it’s a lever, a way of saying no. And CBC’s reasons for saying no are God-knows-what. It’s just that they’ve managed to say no to just about every idea we've thrown at them for three years. ? Vivienne Leebosh: The first film I produced at the CBC is called Every Person is Guilty. Ralph wrote and directed it. It was nominated for seven Genie Awards. Ralph won for best screenplay and direction. It was nominated for various ACTRA awards. Afterward, one of the network's senior executives told me: ‘Vivienne, that is a very fine film, the best that has come out of this department all year. And it was done on budget. But,’ he says, ‘| have a bone to pick with you. We don't need aggressive young producers here You walked right over me. You didn’t confer with me about anything. You walked over me like I didn’t exist. You made all your own decisions.’ I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. Here was a guy saying : ‘We don’t need aggressive young producers.’ That's what working at the CBC is all about. Cinema Canada: Are you interested in working in the United States ? Ralph Thomas: We're biding our time. But we'll definitely have a Hollywood agent. Right now, we have two L.A. agents pushing this film. Our decision will depend on how well they do how successful they are will determine which one we go with. But I’m not interested in working in the States. I'd rather live and work here. More than anything, I’m interested in working. That is my first Joyalty. Cinema Canada: Are you optimistic that you will still be here next year ? Ralph Thomas: A lot will depend on whether or not we can get a film off the ground this year. If we can’t, we'll have some hard decisions to make. @ Support systems go Ticket to Heaven’s executive producer Ron Cohen describes how his company [Ronald I. Cohen Productions] was instrumental in the making of the film. His comments shed light on the delicate balance between, and the complexities of, the creative and commercial elements of filmmaking. The easiest way to understand my role would be to envisage filmmaking as a pretty extensive process. With Ticket to Heaven I provided the field in which Ralph was able to sow his seed as the screenwriter and the director. We have a background in feature filmmaking — by “we” I’m referring to our company [Ronald I. Cohen Productions) and all the people involved in it. We had a record. We had deals with the majors on the last couple of films and had been very involved in the financing of them. We were equally involved in their distribution, not only. domestically but also in the foreign area. What that meant was that we had an administration already set up to deal with all aspects of the creation of a film. It's very difficult to create a film in a Vacuum. It’s not impossible, but a track record is important when it comes to giving confidence to the bankers who provide the interim financing, and to the investors who are prepared to put up the equity dollars to make the film... Then there are the distributors, who want to have some insurance that they are going. to have a film of superior quality, that will get completed... All of these critical aspects: of the process — that kind of administrative capacity which has an obvious creative side to it — I think, are essential ; and it really works very, very well in combination. There’s no question that the idea for the film, in this case, _ was Ralph’s and Vivienne’s. It was an idea that came out of a series of articles in the Montreal Star, based on a very bizarre situation. It was really quite surprising that no one had made a film in this area before. Vivienne and Ralph had a long background in television. I didn’t actually know them, but Vivienne’s kid brother and I had gone to school together many years before. There was that little association which in the end, I guess, was meaningless — although that sort of thing always helps to bring people closer together. When they brought the project to me Thad already heard about it, and was very encouraged by Michael Prupas who was my attorney and good friend. Michael had a long association with Josh Freed, who had written the series of articles on which the book and the screenplay were based. Josh was therefore very influential in the motion picture itself. In addition to that there was a lot of encouragement from the CFDC — which has played a very important role in all of the films I have been involved in. At the time they came to me I already had a moral commitment to _ do Harry Tracy. ...1t was a very heady time for the industry at the beginning of last year, and it seemed to me that there was good sense in trying to proceed with two pictures : one was a lower budget picture, one was’ higher. The subjects were quite diverse and, I thought, quite important in their own ways. It seemed to make a very good kind of package, both from a financial and a distribution point of view. I think it really did prove to be both, although, as we know, by the end of the year the attitude of the investing community had changed substantially. At the time, I was — and still am — interested in being involved with good pictures which were good entertainment. To me, whether or not the formula looks ‘American’ to some people is not a factor. Take Middle Age Crazy, for example. The interesting irony was that it was the Krofts’s first feature film and our third at that point ; but there’s no doubt that because of their experience in doing hundreds of television shows, they had a major role to play in terms of contacts in L.A., in terms of getting Bruce Dern and AnnMargret for prices which were very good. Those kinds of things. Their contacts were very useful from that point of view. Even so, we did play a kind of leading role there. At that point, Vivienne and Ralph were arriving with their feature, and it was going to be our fourth — with another one already planned, which, of course, went ahead... We had people to deal with all the marketing, creative, legal, accounting and bookkeeping aspects ; people tq deal with the general support systems in terms of publicity, arranging for distribution, and arousing some confidence on the part of investors, who could then look and say, “Well, there is someone with a track record, someone who has done something in the past that has resulted in something feasible.” Whatever my title, I’ve always done pretty much the same thing on the films in which I’ve been involved — except, obviously, on the first one... With no experience at all, my job was limited to legal and financial questions. My involvement in the creative aspect increased thereafter to the point where, after Bob Cooper and I split, that area in our organization, as well as the responsibility for the financial, business/administrative and distribution aspects all fell basically on my shoulders. Although my credit was ‘executive producer’ on Ticket to Heaven and ‘producer’ on Harry Tracy, the functions weren't basically any different. It’s being involved, without any doubt, in all the aspects of filmmaking — more or less in some areas, in terms of the creative (cont. on p. 38)