Take One (Dec 2003 - Mar 2004)

TAKE ONE DECEMBE| PUBLISHER/EDITOR—IN—CHIEF Wyndham Wise ASSOCIATE EDITORS Maurie Alioff, Tom McSorley EDITORIAL BOARD HALIFAX: Ron Foley Macdonald MONTREAL: Maurie Alioff, Matthew Hays, Isa Tousignant OTTAWA: Torn McSorley TORONTO: Cynthia Amsden, Kathleen Cummins, Wyndham Wise WINNIPEG: Dave Barber VANCOUVER: Dale Drewery LONDON, ENGLAND: Henry Lewes ART DIRECTOR Shelley Ali COPY EDITOR Geri Savits—Fine ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR/ PROOFREADER Lindsay Gibb PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Steve Ashton PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Tessa Wise WEB SITE CONSULTANT Jonathan Wise EDITORIAL OFFICE Phone: 416-944-1096 Email: takeone(dinterlog.com www.takeonemagazine.ca MAILING/COURIER ADDRESS 252-128 Danforth Avenue Toronto, ON Canada M4K 1N1 PRINTER Simpson Screen Print & Lithography 865 Sawmill Road Bloomingdale, ON Canada NOB 1K0 Phone: 1-800-387-3214 DISTRIBUTOR Disticor/Doormouse 14-695 Westney Road Ajax, ON Canada L1S 6M9 Phone: 905-426-5552 SUBSCRIPTIONS Canna (incl. GST): Individual: $30 per year; Institutions: $60 per year USA. [in U.S. funds): Individual: $25 per year; Institutions: $50 per year Inrernariona, $60 per year ISSN 1192-9507 Vol. 12 No. 44 R 2003 MARCH 2004 Forget Foolproof. William Phillips's heist flick failed to find an audience despite the copious amounts of money Odeon Films spent on promoting it. Already it is being jumped on by critics and commentators as a prime example of what they “knew” all along— Canadian films (especially English-Canadian films) don’t make money at the box office. In their minds, it also brings into question the new policy at Telefilm Canada, which is emphasizing commercially popular films in an attempt to improve overall domestic box-office figures. (Currently, Canadian films command less than two per cent of box offic outside of Quebec, while the figure is closer to 10 per cent in /a belle province.) However, apart from providing the chattering class with a convenient talking point, the failure of Foolproof means very little except that Phillips has suffered a career setback after his promising debut feature, Treed Murray. The fact is 2003 has been an exceptional year in the brief 40-year history of Canadian feature filmmaking. Charles Binamé’s Séraphin topped $8 million during its 2002/03 release; both Emile Gaudreault’s Mambo Italiano ($6 million and still growing) and Jean-Francois Pouliot’s Seducing Doctor Lewis ($7.7 million in Quebec even before its release in the rest of Canada) are red hot; Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions barbares has already made more than $5 million and is set for its English-Canadian/American release as this editorial is being written; Eric Tessier’s Sur le seuil approaches $2 million; and Louis Bélanger’s Gaz Bar Blues has done a decent $1-million plus. Variety’s Top 60 listing for October 20, 2003 included seven Canadian features or co—productions—Sur /e seuil, Mambo Italiano, The Gospel of fohn, Foolproof, My Life without Me, Pere et fils, and Seducing Doctor Lewis—an all-time record. So forget about Foolproof: It was an ambitious failure in a year of sparkling successes. It’s too bad the mainstream critics are focusing on the losers instead of the winners. How Canadian! Isn’t it about time we got beyond the tired and outdated notion that our films don’t have an audience? On a sad note, this past September a key figure in Canadian film history passed away with hardly a notice except for a heartfelt piece by Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star. Paul Bradley, who played the sweet-tempered Joey in Don Shebib’s seminal road movie Goin’ down the Road, died of heart failure in Victoria, British Columbia. He was said to be in his early 60s. Bradley was never much of an actor, and Joey was pretty much him, with no artifice, but ever since his starring role in the 1970 classic, Bradley’s Joey has come to represent the archetypical English-Canadian loser in such formative essays as “Bully, Coward or Clown” by Robert Fothergill and is something of a pop-—cultural legend. Pete and Joey were indelibly impersonated by Joe Flaherty and John Candy in an unforgettable SCTV parody. When Joey first drives into ‘Toronto with his buddy (Doug McGrath), he stands up and yells exuberantly: “Lock up your daughters!” It’s a hilarious moment and testament to the indomitable spirit of a man who can face anything life has to throw at him as long as there’s a cold one in the fridge. Now, that’s Canadian. Wyndham Wise, Editor-in-Chief TAKE ONE 7