Take One (Mar-Apr 1973)

CHALMERS ADAMS: I'd like to propose that people suggest what they are about as filmmakers or filmworkers and how they, as a personal matter, felt they were going to accomplish some of their ends. TOM SHANDEL: It’s hard for me to address myself to the topic of the future. | would say we're at the end of a four year period of invisible sociological change in this country. That the film industry — those of us in it tend to make it sound like everything, but it’s only one small facet of the general movement of ideas within a culture. | think that the next little while for films is going to depend not on what we say, after all we're filmmakers and we want everything, but on what you say. We can only go blowing our horns so far. Even we have a sense of ironic detachment. We can say to government give us more money and they'll say, well you’re only lining your own pocket, which we're all trying to do desperately. There isn’t a stitched pocket here. Not one of us could go into a bank and negotiate anything of significance, (laughter) never mind a film. It’s time for the public to either support us or say it doesn't matter. I’d like to say another thing, Democratization is our invention. The government in Ottawa has no vested interest in doing anything for anybody other than what is necessary to operate its machinery. The future of Canadian films? I’m hopeful. | think the industry will persevere if the public sees any value, can face the thought that we're in a situation that can only be described as cultural survival. Otherwise, | don’t think we've got more than a couple of years before every Canadian’s gonna be a “MacDonald’s” hamburger. JACK DARCUS: My future is dependent on very particular things. I’ve just made a film, Wolf Pen Principle; it’s a rather bastard child. It neither falls into the commercial thing or into the art thing. | don’t know how to describe it. My problem now is to get another film made. My elbow room, the amount of room I’ve got to get that next piece of work going, is dependent upon how. that machine — the distributors, exhibitors, publicists and everyone else — attacks that film and handles it. It’s been flung out into the open. I’m glad it has because there are films that have been made in the past that don’t get that far. But now this raises the question, how do | go about making another film? I’ve got two choices. | can lose my temper and just go make a film or ! can submit another idea — having carefully tried to judge the idea’s worth commercially — into the machine, have it read, get it going the rounds and hope that somewhere, somehow along the line of this morass of terrible loose ends it catches fire. My immediate problem is that | find it very difficult to function other than just to pull back, retreat and say, all right I'll have to do it myself. I'll have to do it anyway, the hard way. JOHN WRIGHT: I'd like to say something about virtue. (laughter) | want to do what's important to me. If | wanted to make money, | would do something where making money was my precise aim, not a by-product and | think that | could probably do it. But | don’t want to make money. Well, I'd like to make just a little bit. (laughter) What I'm getting down to is that | would like to make films any way | can. If that means Super-8, that's fine. If | could find a way of carving it on wood (laughter) | would do it. The thing is that that may seem, in itself, a sort of virtue. It isn't, it’s just that is what | have to do and want to do. | am not willing to compromise, very far, in the direction of subject matter. But that is not a virtue, it is a simple matter that that’s all | can do. The only hope | have of creating something which is Satisfying to me is if | stick to my own material. We are no more virtuous in our own way here, than the people who want to make money by looking down people’s throats and finding cavities in their teeth. PETER PEARSON: For those of you who don’t know, foreign directors are no longer allowed to work in Canada without the permission of the Director's Guild. The borders have been effectively shut down so that much of the work that is totally invisible like the commercials and sponsored films are really starting to boom. It was always booming except the Americans did those films before. Now, because of the regulations of the Department of Immigration, that is no longer possible. In my own past year I’ve done two “Beachcombers,” a travelogue and I’m in the process of doing a very expensive centennial film for Bell Telephone. None of this is the sort of stuff you’d trot out and display at a seminar like this. However, these films keep money in the pockets and help to finance other projects. DENYS ARCAND: I'd like to answer this gentleman who had trouble financing a film for political reasons. Now maybe | have preconceived ideas, but | think you’re being naive politically. Like Tom Shandel says, any government doesn’t like you and it will never like you. GARY McKEEHAN: Okay, so why are you going to the Canadian government for more money? DENYS ARCAND: You're trying to con people. You try anything. (laughter) You understand? You sign anything. (laughter) DON SHEBIB: I gather I’m supposed to talk about what I’m going to or hope to be doing. | really don’t think that far ahead. Very few of us have had anyone come to us with a project and say, would you like to do this? Peter’s been lucky. In two instances he’s had people come to him. | haven't, so | and others have had to scrounge around finding a script and spend three or four months working on it. You can go through this two or three times and spend a year or two and never get a film made or get any money. I’ve paid my “dues” and once you’ve payed your “dues” you fuckin’ don’t want to pay them over and over for the rest of your goddamn life. Right now I’m doing a couple of documentaries. They're things | like to do. | don’t think | could get involved with a commercial thing in the sense of Bell Telephone. I'd really rather work in another business entirely than do that. 'm not trying to sound noble, | just can’t do it. | can only do things that | really, as much as | can, be committed to. So, if a feature comes along that I’m going to be able to do¥fine. If not, fuck it, Vil keep on working and surviving and making the kinds of shorter films that | like to make. DENYS ARCAND: | don’t know, | have no statement to make for anybody. | can just speak for myself. | sometimes feel like a, you know, a fish in a pond and they're dropping bread crumbs. Then | swim there. So | swam at the National Film Board for eight years (laughter) and then the CFDC came along and started dropping bread crumbs at the other end of the pond (laughter) and then | swam over there. (laughter) If they stop dropping bread crumbs at the CFDC, 1!'ll go somewhere else. Maybe somebody will start, you know, to drop a piece of cake. (laughter) That would be better. But you know energy, | have just a limited amount of. Making films takes all of it. | don’t have any energy left for anything, except maybe putting my signature on the “Winnipeg Manifesto” and even that is tiring. (laughter) | can't do anything but make films if I'm making films. | can't, you know, solve the production problem. 1 can't solve the Canadian cultural identity or the Quebec separatism or whatever. It's too much trouble. | mean it’s awful doing a film, that’s about the extent of it. It’s impossible to tell where the bread crumbs will be coming from. | just hope that the pond doesn’t go dry. (laughter) DON SHEBIB: A filmmaker is really a Svengali and a magician. If you’re a good filmmaker, you have total control over the minds of the people who are viewing your work. | don’t know of any other art form that does that. The biggest kick that I get out of films is just sorta turning people’s heads around. I’m just a little worried that the feeling of despair here is far overexaggerated. I’m not despairing. I’m happy as a pig in shit. (laughter) All | said was I'd like to do a feature but I’m not gonna stick my ass into the wind again. (laughter) I’d just get back nothing but a fart. (laughter) We’re not dealing with Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. This is the Government of Canada and they’re not quite that bad a “boogeyman.” The problems are not that insoluble. | think it’s really a question of silly and stupid management in some cases and inexperience in others and wrong directions in others. All these problems can be rectified once people get together and give it a force. (pause) | would assume that Denys Arcand is obviously, from his films, very content, because they’re marvellous. | think END basically most of us here are. 23