Cinema Canada (Mar 1982)

But there’s a certain ambiance you like to have, which tends to happen because actors are not local. The acting community is not of sufficient size in Halifax to supply a complete cast for any film. We sort of have an affirmative action toward local actors, but we want to cast everywhere. Cinema Canada: How loyal are you to Nova Scotia ? Paul Donovan: Oh, there’s no loyalty. We don’t have any loyalties. Especially me. It’s a matter of pure like or dislike. I like living in Nova Scotia. I-like to think that in two months I could have a completely different opinion. I could have a bad experience, it couldrain75 daysina row, I don’t know. Los Angeles has never had any particular attraction for me. It’s a hard question to answer. I think it would be bullshit if I said I hate Hollywood. We have a lot of freedom : producing our own films, choosing our.own scripts. We have our own nice little close-knit family. I don’t think that there’s a lot of pretension or a lot of self-delusion that we're Hollywood Northeast. We just want to make better films and films that we sort of believe in and that, at the same time, keep us going. That doesn’t seem possible in Hollywood. Ifyou want to be a big boy, order 2,000 people around, work on a huge set and read about yourself in the National Enquirer, this may be an advantage, but those aren’t our ambitions. Being free and being lost in a system are two different things. Cinema Canada: You submitted a brief to the Canadian Cultural Policy Review Committee that said, in part, that in order fora film to qualify for the Capital Cost Allowance, it should be. budgetted at under §2 million. What was the rationale for this ? Paul Donovan: My rationale on that is very, very simple. You can sell a lowbudget film to limited markets, so it doesn’t have to be Star Wars to make its money back. Or, you can make a bigbudget film that has a Major involved from the beginning. And I don’t mean ‘involved’ because of a little piece of paper or a 100-page contract that says, ‘we're interested in this film, blah, blah, blah, with one little escape clause. The Majors have to sink money into it. If they've sunk money into it, theyre going } ’ 7 . : i Wa i Ai ; to have to carry it all the way. But if they’re just agreeing to use the film with an eye toward distribution, that’s nonsense — only the CFDC and a broker in 1979 would swallow that. Cinema Canada: Soinasenseit’san argument for revenue guarantees. Paul Donovan: If you're going to. make a big-budget film, you better have me vomit. Personally, I think it’s driving staple guns into the heads of the film industry. It’s all well intended; but basically, as the tax shelter evolved from real estate, film was treated as a piece of real estate. But it’s not, it’s film, it’s a creative medium, it’s an illusion, so you have to deal with it on that basis. In the end, by all these little rules of checks and balances, you’re supposed to come up with a good film. The securities rules prevent gigantic exploitation by the producers, but that was never the prob lem. If the securities commission, from the beginning, required that every person investing in a film had to be provided with a copy of the script, I think some of the films would never have been made, The average orthodontist has gone to university. He. can pinpoint a turkey. I've read big-budget scripts that were completely incompetent. The format is even incorrect. That sort of thing is pathetic. We can never make a film with a public issue because of the security commission rules, No way. We will never buy a completion bond. These are parts of the budget that don’t goonscreen. We stand revenue guarantees, or else anyone in-~ behind our films. If it’s us or the broker vesting in it is nuts. If you make a small film, you can go by the script, by the enthusiasm and dedication of the people. Even if they err, the limited markets — pay-TV, foreign sales — will bring the money back. What we argue is that $2 million is supposed to be the amount of money needed to make a fairly professional film. At a $2 million price most of the money has to be spent on what you see. But when it gets up to five, well, John Guillermin is suddenly getting $785,000... that sort of thing. The CCA is supposed to help the film industry. I see that as money going into the pockets of actors and technical people and art directors, not huge salaries. Two million just doesn’t leave room for those huge salaries, so if there’s $100 million available in tax shelter money, it might go into 50 films instead of 20, and out of those 50, 15 might be good. More people working is whatit’s allabout, but now We've seen a new vision. Cinema Canada: Ah! A new vision. Paul Donovan: Anew vision of what should have been done. The new rules from the securities commissions make who put in the money, we'd better finish it and sell it. Its our.money. We take virtually no production fees up front, so we have to do it through private placements all the time. I think that the securities commissions have catered to the tiniest proportion of filmmakers who make a certain type of film to a certain budget, and dealt death to the others because the cost of doing a publi issue is still prohibitive. ; Cinema Canada: So your position is less one of nationalism that realism ? Paul Donovan: I’m extremely antinationalist. I hate nationalism. This cultural thing you read about, it just makes my knees give out, it makes me go into dead faints. It’s like this committee with aKon culture. What's culture ? You take two steps back and this is the funniest thing you've ever seen. I don’t know what culture is, but when I was walking in the streets of London years ago and saw the punks come out with Mohican haircuts, I suddenly realized that probably in 100 years scholars will consider this part of the culture of the’80s. But it didn’t come from a committee. A British committee defining culture is talking about something completely different which will be forgotten in a few years. I think that good films can come out of a completely free-wheeling system provided people with ideas and creative — spark can get in. Also, and this is an emotional part for us, they have to change the policies of the Canadian Film Development Corporation. Cinema Canada: What’s wrong with the CFDC? p Paul Donovan: TheCFDC should only be giving money to new people. It would be nice if they could never give money to the same person or organization twice. If the CFDC put up half the money for a $500,000-$800,000 film, and the only requirement was that the person had to put up the other half (and it couldn’t come from themselves or their cousin, or uncle), that means they'd have to go out to the private market and somehow raise that money, ideally from an or ganization like a distributor or a television company. Then you would have somebody who has had to face the realities of the market. Each time, it will be a new person who will make a new film and four out of five times it’s going to be bad, or two out of five. But some of the time it's going to be good and everytime it's good, they have a new person. If the film industry's larger, wellestablished organizations, which the CFDC is oriented to support, can’t survive, they shouldn’t survive. If a film company’s going to drop, let it drop. It’s got to be survival of the fittest. Cinema Canada: You're talking about the weak dropping away. Has South Pacific 1942 made its money back ? Paul Donovan: No. Cinema Canada: Is it close? Paul Donovan: No. Cinema Canada: Ah hah! Paul Donovan: Were talking philosophical arguments. We could be one of the weak that drop away. Well, that’s too bad. It’s painful to think this way, but that’s our opinion on the film industry. What would make us most happy, for instance, would be if the CFDC policies were written to give huge amounts of money to someone in exactly our position. Cinema Canada: People who are essentially regional, small budget ? Paul Donovan: Yes. The regional thing is great! Sometimes that can be used : you're in an underprivileged area and that area has been raped for 100 years. We want something back. Me personally, especially. It’s almost a fair argument. We don’t want it that way. We don’t want the regional arts committees to have anything to do with what we do. We want us to make our money back. Maybe .that’s in our heritage, the Scottish fear of debt. We’ want to be independents who make films people want to see. Cinema Canada: You and your brether also made an application for a payTV license. Was that an expression of raging regionalism ? Paul Donovan: Well, there’s nothing to talk about, because by the time this article comes out, the CRTC will proba er een Sin _ : 4 peas ae Cinema Canada — March 1982/17