Cinema Canada (Mar 1982)

bly have given the license out, and we can’t presume what they will say. The problem is, we were inspired by the “All Night Show” (a late-night, Toronto program which featured comedian Chas Lawther as ‘Chuck the Security Guard, who ran weird old video until six in the morning. It is no longer on the air). Everybody is talking about Canadian culture — that program was it, right there. Prior to Bob and Doug. This was what TV could be. Now, it’s too formal and rigid. We could have fun, do something really cheap, and most of all, work with all those people out there, all those nuts who aren’t now in the Canadian film industry and are lurking around bars. You want them on TV doing something-— there’s lots of material out there. You need a minor league. The CRTC might have felt threatened by our application. The danger was that they described in their call for applications that they wanted something new and experimental — things that hadn't been on TV before. And we're standing there, saying, “Hey, that's what we're trying to do, we don’t want to be HBO.” But, you can philosophically say that’s what you want, but when you actually see it staring you in the face, the old Canadian government, seeing something that could be disorderly... That’s our main liability. I think we suffer from _ being too non-mainstream. If they did give us the license, we'd really enjoy ourselves. We would make it the channel for things that would never normally be on TV. Cinema Canada: For instance ? Paul Donovan: There have been Canadian movies that were very bad. We think it might be reasonable to show half that movie, possibly the worst parts, and then get the people involved in the making of it, and they would fill in the rest of the story and tell you what went wrong. The primary motivating factor is that it dispenses with the formalities of television, it becomes a sort of FM-TV. The high production value associated with TV is slickness; throw it away. Good technical quality, but make it very personal, a little bit loose around the edges. The camera might fall over once in a while, but still have a good image. It would be a national license. No regional rage. We're sort of raging regionalists. Canada’s a funny place. The best thing about Canada is that it’s not unified. People say Quebec wants to separate, Alberta hates Ontario, B.C. looks down its nose at the Prairies, it goes onandon. I think it’s healthy. That's people. When you look at a country like the United States, you see everybody's waving the flag, marching in bands, and building B1 bombers. That's unity. It's bette: tv have a little hysteria and people not knowing and not being so sure of the country’ values, and disagreeing. I like the Italian government, the fact that they change every few months. They say uncomfortable things and maybe it affects their international credit rating, but these are not particularly woeful problems. © of, es we ~~ — en Pes @ Getting the most for his money, Les Krizsan films the action. Photo: lan McGeagh Siege The hattle of Bay Street A man appears in a window of a Halifax waterfront tenement with a homemade bazooka on his shoulder. There is a brief flame from the rocket in the tube before it flares off into the night air. An inferno of flames explodes on the roof of a nearby office building where a sniper is perched. The Halifax police are on strike, Citizens are forced to defend themselves by their own methods. But wait— two dark figures emerge on the rooftop trying to douse the flames. Fire trucks and police cars encircle the building. a The strike is over, but the filming of Siege ison. ~ In Edge City, filmmaking is a precarious ogcupation, exception made of the dubious comfort: provided by the fat budgets of training films for the department of National Defense. Feature films are as rare here as Atlantic salmon, and if the acid memos from Toronto banks have the appropriate impact, they will destroy the species in the Maritimes as well as elsewhere, The existence of a film called Siege, now in the final editing stage, is defini tely a minor financial miracle. After walking in and out’of cynical distribution offices around the world with its first feature South Pacific — 1942, Surfacing Film Productions decided it better fit its next film to the meat market of cinema distribution. South Pacific — ’42, a black comedy about a wacky Canadian-crewed sub marine in the W.W. II Pacific Theatre, is now running opposite a feature about the W.W. II Wolf Pack subs in German theatres. But distribution was a hard battle for lawyer Michael and director brother Paul Donovan, the-pair who run the show at Surfacing. This time they decided a solid action movie had a better chance at the low-budget market. After auditioning several scripts with distribution people, they finally got a favourable reaction to Siege. The film is a tale of gang murders in Halifax during the longest police strike in history. The key event occurs when a potential victim takes refuge in a rundown apartment building on the Halifax waterfront. The tenants have to defend themselves, Straw Dogs-style, against a gang of thugs. The Donovans felt they had a viable product on their hands, and even though the movie financing market looked worse than bleak, they hit the broadloomed streets once again. They managed to garner 25% of the ‘funds they needed, but the deadline came and went for the final monies to be deposited. After some paper shuffling, they extended the deadline and ran into a broker who felt he.could capitalize on a faltering industry. He raised another 35% and guaranteed the rest. More im-. portantly, he put up 10% interim financing, which paid a lot of overdue bills. All looked rosy, but another Maritimer ‘in Ottawa, the Hon. Allan MacEachen put a damper on the scene with his budget. Suddenly the broker was not enthused over a high-risk movie investment. Michael and Paul had contracted all of the actors and 98% of the crew;; it was a week before shooting when the broker called. The game was over. Paul called up all the cast and crew — cancel, cancel, get drunk The next morning Michael shook Paul into consciousness and said, “This is what we're going to do...” They went directly to the broker's largest investor and dined him on tea and cookies for three hours while they tried to convince him of the viability of the project. They even produced a letter of guaranteed distribution from an L.A. distributor on short notice. This particular investor has been described as “solid, conservative,” but at the end of the discussion he was convinced. This was Friday morning. He said he would try to get the banks to put up the cash on his signature. The banks, however, were another stumbling block. Recent memos from head office had vetoed any film investment financing. The investor had to muscle them to get the money. After the phone conversation with the bank, the investor turned to Michael and said the bank manager had asked him why he was doing it, and he really couldn't come up with an answer. Three days later the cheque arrived at Surfacing Film Productions’ office. The Siege was on. After their hairy experiences with the financing of the film, they were ready for the worst during production. Strange as it seems, the shoot went off without any major problems. It was 17 straight shooting days averaging 14 hours per day, but the cast and the crew were extremely dedicated and averaged 45 set-ups per day. Shooting mostly at night with high speed lenses and the state-of-the-art Moviecam camera, the main problem for D.O.P. Les Krizsan was how to shoot an action movie with eight inches of depth-of-field. When I arrived on set the lighting was such that I had difficulty seeing what was happening. It reminded me of the gaffers comment on Richard Leiterman’s lighting of Goin’ Down the Road; — “They should make light meters with illuminated dials for cinematographers like Richard.” Les could probably use one of those at times. However, despite the lack of depth-of field, the minimal lighting approach — cuts crew size, lowers equipment rentals, speeds up production, and adds a touch of realism. And realism was the underlying concept during the filming of Siege. The special effects had to be good and with no money to hire an expensive L.A. effects company, the props man, John Walsh had to do some improvisation to pull it off. He started by finding a somewhat paranoid gun collector in rural Nova Scotia with one of the biggest private arsenals in the country. With a barn full of automatic weapons to choose from, the props department had a field day. But at night the machine guns went home with an R.C.M.P. gendarme. Fortunately, the cast was made up of experienced professionals who could handle the weaponry. Doug Lennox, a veteran of television action shows like The New Avengers, played the role of the villain “Cabe.” Tom Nardini, a child actor in Hollywood who moved to the N.Y. stage, plays the lead male role. Brenda Bazinet, a Saskatchewan native who moved to the Toronto stage plays the female lead. The film also features Keith Knight and Jack Blum, both of Meatballs fame. Chuck Lapp ® ee SIEGEexec. p. Michael Donovan pJohn Walsh P man W. James Bruce p asst Douglas Meggison d Paul Donovan, Maura O’Connell dop Les krizsan ist a d Cordell Wynn asst cam Roberto Elizabetsky unit man Cordell Wynn scr Paul Donovan sd Pierre Dostie boom Alan §carf elec Ian Henderson gaffer Michael Ruggles clapper N.O. Goose chef Jim Sharpe sp efx make-up Carolyn van Gurp sp efx]. William Walsh, T.J. Cove ed Keith Brower sd ed Martella Tower cast Iris Essex 1 p Doug Lennox, Keith Knight, Jack Bloom, Jeff Pustil, Branda Bazinet, Daryl! Haeny, Tom Nardini, Dug Rotstein, Alan MacGillivray, Barbara Jones, Gary Dempster, Dennis O’Connor, Fred Wadden, Rick Collins, Terry-David Despres lab Quinn Sound. p. c. Salter Productions a LLL LLL LLL LLL LLL LLL LL LL LL LL Ae, 18/Cinema Canada — March 1982