Cinema Canada (Mar 1982)

@ Alpha Boucher lets it all hang out in Scandale 24/Cinema Canada — March 1982 mt : . F | | t , by Minko Sotiron On Dec. 4, RSL producer Robert Lantos called George Mihalka, offering him a chance to direct an as-yet-unwritten film a sex comedy, to be made in French and based on “Pornobec,” Quebec’s own little political scandal. Some video technicians had been accused of using the equipment at the National Assembly to make porno films, and although the scandal soon petered out, it made good reading while it lasted. (“Quebec is the only place in the whole world where you can have this kind of scandal and have the population laugh it off as a great joke instead of bringing the government down,” comments Mihalka.) Having nothing better to do, he went down to talk about the movie, got a synopsis from Marc Carriére in three days, and a script from Robert Geoffrion in four. The film was on. Scandale was shot in 16 days this January, and RSL hopes to have it ready for release on April 23, In many ways, the film is a throwback to the early _québécois films of Denis Héroux, Pierre David and Cinépix — films which featured acknowledged québécois talent, mixed sex with humour, and were made for a song. . “They ve realized that you can always replace money with cleverness, that you can add production value to your film without having to spend great deals of money,” says Mihalka, refer ring to his producers whose more recent films were big-budget ventures. “We learned those thingsin school, but most people in the Canadian film business never went to film school...” Mihalka, having made three features in as many years, and still working on Funny Movie, is having a good time. Whether he is making the films his professors would like to see him make, and whether his B-movie apprenticeship will eventually lead elsewhere, remain to be seen, Before the recent Scandale project was even a glint in anyone’s eye, Minko but slick — Sotiron spoke to Mihalka about his filmmaking experience. Film director George Mihalka doesn’t apologize for making what can be frankly termed exploitation films. His first feature film, a teen surfn’sun farce called Pinball Summer, he describes as “Walt Disney with tits and ass.” Clearly aimed at the drive-in market, he admits the movie was silly ; in fact, in “endearing bad taste.” But he says the movie doesn’t’ need defending : “It’s meant to do nothing more than please your eyes like a 90minute Coca-Cola commercial.” His second feature film, the horror _ flick My Bloody Valentine was clearly more ambitious. Released by Paramount one year ago My Bloody Valentine is about a mad killer miner who terrorizes a mining town by murdering its people in a number of novel ways. Although a fairly typical example of the blood ‘n’ gore genre — a Newsweek critic called it “schlock shock” — Paramount Pictures gave it a big push. : “Paramount must have thought we had done something right, because they made 1180 prints which is close to the most copies of a Canadian film they've ever printed,” Mihalka notes, adding that Paramount backed it with a massive advertising campaign. This included full-page ads in The New York Times and extensive television coverage. In _ deed it was so pervasive that when Mihalka was down in Los Angeles, he was startled to hear the film’s commercial on a taxi radio. “There it was on Mecca’s airwaves, and for a brief moment, I thought, My God we've really made it!” And Mihalka and his collaborator, cinematographer Rodney Gibbons, could be forgiven for thinking they had indeed made it. Unfor tunately for them however, although Valentine opened strongly in the U.S. and Canada, it didn’t appear to develop “legs” at the box office. Part of the reason for its lack of box office staying power, according to Mi ~ Minko Sotiron is a free-lance writer and informa tion officer at Concordia University in Montreal. a: @ George Mihalka Photo: Piroska Mihalka \ halka, lay.in the advertising campaign. It emphasized the bloody nature of the film, yet the producers were forced by the Motion Picture Association of Ame rica (MPAA) to cut out the most sensa tional gory parts in order to maintain an “R” rating. This resulted in the anomalous situation of many potential filmgoers being turned off by the threat of excessive blood, while the violence aficionados were left disappointed because the expected gory mayhem wasn’t delivered. It didn’t help, Mihalka notes, that the cuts also weakened the story line. Moreover, strict deadlines exercised by the producers, who in turn were pressured by the distributors, also stifled the film’s creative potential. He gave an example of how tight this control was: “In one scene — basically consisting of an action shot which took place in the miners’ shower room — the showers are all on, and the killer has already murdered the girlfriend of a miner who has temporarily left to get some beer. When . the miner returns and he sees the girl,, we Cut away from the corpse to shoot him dropping the beer. We stay on the sixpack as it hits his feet. He doesn’t react. We keep the camera at his feet long enough to show the water that’s swirling at his feet slowly turn red with blood. “That shot wasn’t on the shooting schedule. Once the producers saw the rushes, I was questioned about spending time shooting a six-pack. Yet when we were forced to do the cuts it was the only shot left. “Although we made the film the distributors asked us to, they, however, | completely misread the MPAA, which © was stricter than they had expected. To Satisfy its standards and avoid an‘X’ rating, we were forced to make over 30 picture cuts in a week. Anyone who has ever made a film knows what that means. The result was a completely different picture.” +e Yet, Mihalka doesn’t want to appear full of sour grapes. No regrets, he says. “We all knew what we were getting into. We agreed to make a formula film in