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A PUBLICATION OF BRUNICO COMMUNICATIONS LTD.
®
FALL 2011
TAKE THIS WALTZ:
BEHIND THE SCENES FROM
TIFF TO SCREEN
PLAYBACK’S 2011 FILM & TV HALL OF FAME • 10 TO WATCH • ASTRAL TURNS 50 • GEMINIS
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TORONTO INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL
table of contents
2011
Director David Cronenberg on set during the filming of A Dangerous Method
9
12
Opening credits
The Hot or Not list, #altgeminis and
Microsoft’s crazy new ad tech
31
52
Special awards
Allan Hawco and Adam Barken are
honoured for their standout
accomplishments and George
Stroumboulopoulos gets the inaugural
humanitarian nod
56
10 to Watch
From all corners in the industry, a crop
of fresh up-and-coming talent to keep
an eye out for in the year ahead
62
The Back Page
Sad (and funny) tales of shows that
never were
Crafting nominations: The Kennedys
and Stargate Universe crews talk Chanel
and alien workshops
TIFF 2011
Show diaries: Producers, creators,
writers and directors share the stories
of how Republic of Doyle, Todd and the
Book of Pure Evil and Call Me Fitz came
to life
Film diary
Behind the scenes with Sarah Polley’s
Take This Waltz cast and crew
The evolution of indie marketing
From finger puppets to press
kits, Canadian filmmakers and
distributors talk marketing indies
22
Geminis
Astral turns 50
A tribute to one of Canada’s most
successful media companies
40
Hall of Fame
Playback welcomes Pierre Juneau,
Denis Héroux, Frédéric Back, Roger
Abbott, Gilbert Rozon and Tantoo
Cardinal into the Canadian Film &
Television Hall of Fame
Cover photo illustration by Tara Hardy, www.tarahardyillustration.com
3
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29/08/11 3:30 PM
PUBLISHER
Mary Maddever • [email protected]
EDITOR
Katie Bailey • [email protected]
DERANGEMENT,
DEPRAVITY AND
DEBAUCHERY,
EH?
STAFF WRITER
Emily Claire Afan • [email protected]
CONTRIBUTORS
Rose Behar, Siofan Davies, Mark Dillon,
Lindsay Gibb, Marc Glassman, Kevin Ritchie,
Etan Vlessing, Emily Wexler
COPY CHIEF
Melinda Mattos
BRUNICO CREATIVE
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
As we were in the midst of creating the Fall 2011 issue of Playback this summer, Hollywood
seemed to suffer a brief bout with senility, only able to reference decades past, its short-term
memory in retreat.
Lionsgate is bringing Dirty Dancing back for a remake, Ridley Scott confirmed a follow-up to
Blade Runner and even cult comic-book classic The Crow caught headlines with casting shuffles
for its update.
What happened? Did I morph into Jennifer Garner in 13 Going On 30? Am I in its remake right now?
What gave me great comfort as all of these headlines rolled in from the U.S. were the ones we
were writing here in Canada ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival and the 26th Annual
Gemini Awards.
The second-most-nominated show of the Geminis, HBO Canada’s Call Me Fitz, is an homage to
bachelorhood in its most primitive form. Also highly nominated? Todd and the Book of Pure Evil,
a Space channel show in which weed, gore and textbooks form a primetime cocktail of fantastic
teenage hedonism.
On the film side, two of the highest profile Canadian films at TIFF, Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz
and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, chronicle, respectively, the secret desires and
hidden betrayals of an average marriage and what TIFF programmers called “a brooding tale of
dark desire and the dread that lurks behind genius” in Cronenberg’s portrayal of psychologists Carl
Jung and Sigmund Freud.
No one would argue that getting money to make anything in Canada is easy, nor is finding a
place for it to go once it’s made. But thanks to our quirky independent filmmaking scene, with its
complex web of government and private funding and unduplicated wealth of industry talent, we
have a strange sort of freedom. As Todd director Craig David Wallace notes on page 36, “[Todd is]
Canadian in that what we can get away with separates us from international markets.”
In many ways, this issue is in homage to the forces that have made Canadian film and television
what it is today. Shaped by industry icons like Pierre Juneau (page 41), who during his time at the
CRTC enforced new rules limiting foreign ownership of Canadian media companies to 20% and
raising the minimum amount of Canadian content on TV to 60%, to Harold Greenberg (page 22),
the patriarch of Astral Media and namesake of the Harold Greenberg Fund, which takes a chance
and invests in brave, uncompromising films that might not otherwise get made.
We hope you take the time to enjoy a TIFF film or two and if not, at least gawk at the celebs
on the TIFF and Gemini red carpets via an episode of eTalk. Out of anyone in Canada, Playback
readers know how long a road it is to that red carpet moment.
Katie Bailey
Editor, Playback
Stephen Stanley • [email protected]
ART DIRECTOR
Mark Lacoursiere • [email protected]
PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION CO-ORDINATOR
Robert Lines • [email protected]
ADVERTISING SALES
(416) 408-2300
FAX (416) 408-0870
1-888-278-6426
ADVERTISING EXEC
Jessamyn Nunez • [email protected]
MARKETING CO-ORDINATOR
Vakis Boutsalis • [email protected]
BRUNICO AUDIENCE SERVICES
ASSISTANT MANAGER
Christine McNalley • [email protected]
ADMINISTRATION
PRESIDENT AND CEO
Russell Goldstein • [email protected]
VP AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
Omri Tintpulver • [email protected]
VP AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Mary Maddever • [email protected]
VP ADMINISTRATION & FINANCE
Linda Lovegrove • [email protected]
VP & PUBLISHER, REALSCREEN
Claire Macdonald • [email protected]
VP & PUBLISHER, KIDSCREEN
Jocelyn Christie • [email protected]
Playback is published by Brunico Communications Ltd.,
366 Adelaide Street West, Suite 100,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 1R9
(416) 408-2300; FAX: (416) 408-0870
Internet address: www.playbackonline.ca
Editorial e-mail: [email protected]
Sales e-mail: [email protected]
Sales FAX: (416) 408-0870
© 2011 Brunico Communications Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Canada.
Postmaster Notification
Canadian Postmaster, send undeliverables and address changes to:
Playback PO BOX 369 Beeton ON, L0G 1A0
U.S. Postmaster, send undeliverables and address changes to:
Playback PO BOX 1103, Niagara Falls NY, 14304
[email protected]
Canada Post Agreement No. 40050265. ISSN: 0836-2114
Printed in Canada.
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f a l l 2 0 1 1 | p l a y b a cko n l i n e. c a
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GALA INDUCTION CEREMONY • SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
In partnership with
Playback congratulates the 2011 Honourees:
Industry builder Gilbert Rozon
Creative Frédéric Back
Television Pierre Juneau
Talent Tantoo Cardinal
Feature Film Denis Héroux
Pioneer Roger Abbott
Playback Outstanding Achievement Award Allan Hawco
Panavision Award Adam Barken
Swarovski Humanitarian Award George Stroumboulopoulos
Thanks to all our sponsors
Celebrating Playback’s 10 to Watch in partnership with
Supporting Sponsors
PB.19695.HOF.ad.indd 1
Media Partners
Awards Partner
26/08/11 10:43 AM
To red carpets
and green futures
My first experience with TIFF was decades ago, covering entertainment for a local paper as a student reporter. The
interview was with screenwriter/director Lionel Chetwynd, who was talking passionately about the struggle to make his
film — Two Solitudes — and was eloquently frustrated by the irony of having to turn to the U.S. to complete financing on
this quintessential Cancon story. Since he’d already won awards for co-writing the script for The Apprenticeship of Duddy
Kravitz with the novel’s author and fellow Montrealer, Mordecai Richler, he figured tackling another Canadian book, this time
by Hugh MacLennan, dealing with Canada’s French/English divide, there’d be a warmer reception in Canada. Not so much.
Little did I know it at the time, but this would be a story I would hear over and over again.
But little by little, over the years, the film scene improved as government funders grew stronger and infrastructure
grew to the point where there were more windows and support in Canada. While foreign films still have the vast majority
of screens in our cinemas, there are more options for getting films seen — certainly since Two Solitudes debuted, the
TV market for film exploded with new channels galore. The story of one such film champion, Harold Greenberg, who had
faith in a pay TV platform for films and left a legacy of staunch funding for features that kickstarted many an illustrious
career, is retold on page 22.
With the cost and time of filmmaking down dramatically, and the internet giving everyone their 15 minutes of DIY fame,
there’s a ton more films vying for attention. Yet, despite new platforms to reach audiences, to truly make a mark — and
money — it still comes down to a theatrical launch. In a pre-festival interview with Playback, TIFF head, Piers Handling
said, “as a country, we can only afford to market, release, get behind and pay for maybe 50 films.”
So it’s still strangely status quo when it comes to building a serious film career and business. The marketing budget
Catch-22 — the nonsensical ROI of competing with U.S. blockbuster spends that begat the screen time two solitudes (tiny
minority of homegrown versus Big Studio screen domination) — remains a stumbling block in any new audience-reaching
equation.
That’s where social media and digital marketing come in. Films are the perfect content-rich category for viral campaigns
and community-based outreach. Of course, some hot-topic films and filmmakers, like The Yes Men, will be able to generate
buzz better than others. And without big backing — an offline campaign to drive to online — success is not a given, but at
least it’s potentially evened the media-spend playing field.
Canada has had a rich coproduction history. When ambitions are bigger than budget and market allow, we’ve been adept
at pooling funding, talent and tax credits. Maybe there’s opportunity to take that attitude into the marketing arena and more
aggressively pursue partners.
Canada’s TV industry has been more actively embracing the role brands can play in adding a new revenue stream and
promoting content. Maybe that avenue could be explored by film more vigorously, because even in the digital marketing
space, you can be up against costly efforts like the massive Dark Knight alternate reality game. The U.S. company that
did that promotion, 42 Entertainment, won Cannes Lions and earned a ton of free PR for its role. I bet there’s lots of ad
agencies here who would be interested in lending a hand to helm a campaign that would mutually help brand-building.
Playback congratulates all the Canadians whose films made it into TIFF this year, and also all the Gemini nominees and
winners for breaking through the considerable clutter. We are delighted to share some of those success stories this issue.
And on behalf of the entire industry, we thank our 2011 Playback Hall of Fame inductees for their immense lifelong
contribution to the business and culture of Canadian film and TV. Through their vision, talent and perseverance, they’ve
elevated Canada on the world stage, and created opportunities for the next generation, such as our more junior inductees,
who are also impressive.
So please read on, and see why the 10 to Watch on page 56 warrant watching, and take pride in the exceptional
accomplishments of all our Hall of Fame inductees, starting on page 40. On Sept. 15, they’re being honoured at a red
carpet gala at the Glenn Gould Theatre, in partnership with CBC, which shares our desire to celebrate Canadian talent.
Everyone here would like to thank all of our Hall of Fame sponsors and the great team at CBC for their support and
enthusiasm, and for making this year’s Playback Film & TV Hall of Fame the best ever. Speaking of honouring a rich cultural
legacy, Canada’s national public broadcaster turns 75 this year, and Playback’s end of year issue will feature a look back at
the highlights, and look ahead, exploring the vision behind the reinvigorated CBC.
There’s an amazing amount of talent here. Let’s get the word out wider for Canada’s red carpet-worthy achievements.
Cheers, mm
6
PB.Publisher.2011.indd 6
Keep tabs on
all the wins,
deals and
greenlights
Find them at
The definitive
news source for
the Canadian
entertainment
industry.
Register today
for your FREE
14 day trial!
Visit:
PlaybackOnline.ca/Free
Subscribe to Playback at
www.playbackonline.ca/free
or call 416.408.2448 and become
an expert on the Canadian
entertainment scene.
26/08/11 2:20 PM
Investing in Ontario’s
most exciting filmmakers!
388 ARLETTA AVENUE
A DANGEROUS METHOD
EDWIN BOYD
TIFF® Contemporary World Cinema
TIFF® Gala Presentations
TIFF® Special Presentations
I’M YOURS
TAKE THIS WALTZ
TIFF® Contemporary World Cinema
TIFF® Gala Presentations
OMDC’s film fund
is proud to support these
Ontario features
screening at TIFF®
Congratulations to all Ontario filmmakers and films at TIFF® including these feature titles:
AMY GEORGE
BREAKAWAY
Canada First!
Special Presentations
I AM A GOOD PERSON/
I AM A BAD PERSON
LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR
Canada First!
Vanguard
OMDC’s programs and initiatives are helping to create a thriving, multi-billion-dollar industry and a wealth of opportunity.
Be part of it. OMDC.on.ca
We’ve got it going
TIFF is a registered trademark of Toronto International Film Festival Inc.
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25/08/11 2:26 PM
DON’T MISS
’S
END OF
THE YEAR
WRAP...
Streeting in early December, Playback’s winter issue
delivers the definitive wrap up on the year that was,
looking back on the news and newsmakers of 2011.
The End of Year Wrap will also include a special feature
on the 75th anniversary of the CBC, highlighting the
public broadcaster and its three-quarter-century run.
All eyes will be on this issue, so take advantage of
the opportunity to get your message in front of Canada’s
production and broadcast decision makers.
Booking deadline: November 4
To reserve space in the issue, please contact Playback account executive Jessamyn Nunez:
[email protected]
THE BIG
QUESTION
Are we headed for a double dip?
BY ETAN VLESSING
A rebounding Canadian TV industry suddenly has a dark
cloud overhead.
The question is how TV revenues and production
expenditures will be affected if the Canadian economy
slips into a double-dip recession and broadcasters gear
down to weather the storm.
Rogers Media president of broadcasting Scott Moore
is confident that if another downturn occurs, its impact
on revenue (and therefore programming spend) will be
short-term.
“Let’s hope that we don’t go into a double-dip
recession,” he says. “If we do, it will affect profitability,
but only in the short term.”
While it could just be big talk, Moore’s confident
outlook was recently supported by global media agency
ZenithOptimedia’s July 2011 ad spend forecast.
The report pegged Canada in the top 10 global ad
markets, predicting that domestic ad spend would rise
from $9.9 million in 2010 to $11.5 million in 2013.
Noting that although high energy costs and the Eurozone
woes are a concern, it only downgraded its April North
American ad spend forecast by .3%.
“More robust growth is forecast to resume in 2012
and 2013,” the report stated.
However, indie producers do worry.
Proper TV president and executive producer Guy
O’Sullivan recalls the 2008 economic downturn that led
besieged broadcasters to turn off the tap for over a year.
But TV ad revenues rebounded and broadcasters are
back to acquiring TV series to meet pent-up demand.
And Proper TV is prospering with sharply higher
production levels after broadcasters got back their mojo.
O’Sullivan and his team are producing reality series
that feature battling brides in Four Weddings for Shaw’s
Slice channel and business-minded ex-offenders in
Redemption Inc. for the CBC.
What worries O’Sullivan about potential pullback in
Canadian ad-spend growth is retaining the creative and
management team he’s built up to launch Proper’s new
shows this fall and beyond.
“Any downturn can look terrifying. So much of
the work done to get the right people and the right
management team is put at risk,” he said.
O’Sullivan is also spreading his production slate
across a range of Canadian channels, and pursuing a
mix of format shows and original productions like Prank
Science for Discovery and Red Hot History for the History
Channel.
“The lesson learned from the last dip is diversify. We
are working for more channels, that’s for sure,” he says.
One way both both media agencies and independent
producers are diversifying is by working together.
Recently, ZenithOptimedia announced it would be
bringing its global content division, Newcast, to Canada.
The division is dedicated to working with producers,
networks, advertisers and media companies on original
content. And recently, Toronto-based ad shop Capital
C and its parent company, MDC Partners, announced
a formal partnership with Toronto’s Temple Street
Productions in July, with the goal of creating original,
brand-supported content as well.
Should a double-dip occur, shoring up these types of
relationships can provide additional revenue streams
when times get tougher.
Prank Science hosts Morgan Waters (left) and Brendan Callaghan (right) execute a breakaway glass experiment (Photo: Proper TV)
THE #ALTGEMINIS
BY EMILY CLAIRE AFAN AND KATIE BAILEY
With 112 categories on tap, the Gemini
Awards have most facets of the TV industry
covered. But, we wondered, is there room
for a few more? We asked our Twitter
followers to weigh in at hashtag #altgeminis
on the categories they would like to see
added if they had a chance to program the
annual awards gala. And the nominees are...
@WGCtweet: Maybe an International Treaty Award to give the
Canadian-by-technicality shows a proper place
@klashton27: Best Original Program or Series for Digital
Media - Fiction (Note: @klashton27 also nominated: Best
International Program)
@SarahEtherden: Best attempt at making Toronto look like
New York in a dramatic series...(hide those streetcars and
mailboxes!)
@jwPencilAndPad: The Gord Downie Award for facial
expressions in a leading role
@barbhaynes: For youth writing, separate animation and live
action [categories]. For youth performance, separate genders
@DebChantson: Best double entendre line used in a kids TV
show “Dragon looked down at his carrot. It was so small.”
@UntoldEnt: Highest Budget Special Effect Since That Boat
Exploded on Danger Bay That One Time
@davidsgallant: Best Use Of Canadian Location As A Stand-In
For Somewhere Other Than Canada
@DorkShelfWill: The Derek “Wheels” Wheeler Memorial Award
for most awkward and endearing portrayal of a teenager in a
teen series
@megashaun: Best TV show starring Hugh Dillon as a tough
bald guy
@matthewcreid: Best Dramatic Writing in a Comedy or Variety
Program or Series
@tv_eh: I support @BillBriouxTV’s “Best Whatever We Left Out
in All the Other Categories” category
9
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29/08/11 3:28 PM
OR
NOT?
THE NU
WORLD OF TV
ADVERTISING
Fall TV edition
BY EMILY WEXLER
BIG DRAMAS, BIG RATINGS
Who took on Big Brother for ratings this summer? Yes, you
Canadian dramas. You shined like major sports property stars,
s,
er.
racking up weekly ratings wins, places and shows all summer.
Take that, Julie Chen.
THE PLAYBOY CLUB AND CHARLIE’S ANGELS
We know you thought you were making Mad Men
With Bunny Ears, and we like Dean Cain too, but
cheese Louise, NBC, this show looks like a sorority house
Halloween party. That goes for you too, ABC: Charlie’s
Angels ? Really?
CAMELOT
This Canadian minority coproduction raised the
ire of many for its minimal inclusion of Canadian
talent, dimming its Fall TV hotness. But Canadian
cast member Peter Mooney is super dreamy, upping
this show’s wattage considerably.
BATTLE OF THE BLADES
After two seasons of sticking with traditional
gender roles, CBC’s Battle of the Blades
goes rogue and casts female hockey player
Tessa Bonhomme with pairs figure skating
champion David Pelletier.
CANADIAN DRAMAS IN FALL PRIMETIME
With Cancon regulated largely to
Saturday nights on the big three nets
this fall, there’s room for improvement on
the Cancon programming front.
REALITY CHECK: THE SING OFF
AND COVER ME CANADA
Can we warble with the best of them?
We’ll know by the end of this fall.
10
PB.FOB.2011.indd 10
Imagine you’re watching a reality TV competition, and when your
favourite singer performs, instead of reaching for your phone to
text in your vote, you simply wave your hand and your vote is
cast. Or perhaps you’re watching a commercial and you’d like to
know more about a product.
prod ct You
Y tell
t ll your TV to
t sendd more info,
and it arrives in your email inbox. Just like that.
Gesture and voice-recognition technology have been creeping
into our lives for a while now. Boston-based advertising agency
SapientNitro in 2010 developed an ice cream vending machine
for Unilever that recognizes smiles and Toronto-based media
agency Starcom last year created a game for Corn Pops that
used webcams to allow tweens to virtually fling cereal into bowls.
So when Microsoft unveiled something this summer that they
claimed would “change television as we know it — forever,” the
world paid attention. And after talking to Mark Kroese, general
manager of advertising at Microsoft, it’s hard not to drink the
Kool-Aid, so to speak. If all goes according to Microsoft’s
plan, television will indeed never be the same.
It’s called NUads, and if you have yet to catch
up on the considerable amount of buzz since its
announcement, here it is in a nutshell: viewers
at home will connect to their televisions
through the Kinect sensor for Xbox 360.
Through its voice and gesture-control
technology, they will be able to
interact with TV in a variety of ways
— prompts along the bottom
of the screen will alert them to
share information with friends
via Twitter (by saying “Xbox
Tweet”); request info by email (“Xbox
more”); locate retailers near them (“Xbox
near me”); schedule an event, like a TV
show reminder (“Xbox schedule”); and
as previously mentioned, vote with the
wave of a hand — on anything from
reality competitions to surveys about,
well, anything.
Of course, the mass adoption of this
technology is contingent on several
factors. For consumers, it requires an
Xbox, a Kinect sensor and an Xbox Live
account, and for Microsoft it requires
linear video content to be fed through
the system.
“That strategy is at various phases of
development throughout different parts
of the world,” says Kroese, “but suffice to
say, it’s an explicit, fundamental part of
our strategy to partner with the world of
cable companies and content providers.”
Kroese is confident that all necessary
partnerships will be in place by the
anticipated launch in spring 2012.
Left: Canadian hockey player
Tessa Bonhomme takes the ice
on CBC’s Blades. Right: Xbox’s
Kinect anchors a new breed of
TV advertising
26/08/11 3:56 PM
Without funding, there would be more heartbreak,
frustration, tears and tragedy off the screen
than on it.
That’s why Astral is Canada’s largest private investor in Canadian feature films.
Proud sponsor of the
Toronto International Film Festival®
®Toronto International Film Festival is a registered trademark of Toronto International Film Festival Inc.
used under license by Astral Media inc.
TIFF 2011
Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen
star as a couple in crisis in director
Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz
BY KEVIN RITCHIE
TAKE THIS WALTZ
“What Margot is
experiencing is
something everyone
knows — essentially
wanting more
from life, feeling
like you’re lacking
something, and then
finding out it was
there all along.”
–Luke Kirby, actor
12
PB.TIFF.2011.indd 12
Having braved the wintry southern Ontario
weather for her directorial debut Away From
Her in 2005, Sarah Polley has shifted the
focus closer to home (and warmer climes) for
her sophomore feature, the sultry relationship
drama Take This Waltz.
Based on an original screenplay by Polley
and set during a particularly hot summer
in her own Toronto neighbourhood of
Little Portugal, the film is about a married
twentysomething named Margot (Michelle
Williams) who contracts a case of emotional
wanderlust after meeting with a charming
artist who moonlights as a rickshaw puller
(Luke Kirby).
Well before pre-production began last
summer, the 32-year-old filmmaker began
seeking creative input on the screenplay
from DP Luc Montpellier, producer Susan
Cavan, production designer Matthew Davies,
costume designer Lea Carlson and editor
Christopher Donaldson, many of whom also
live blocks from the film’s primary locations
in Toronto’s west end.
These meetings would eventually inform
the sumptuous visual approach and highly
collaborative process Polley would undertake
during the production in summer 2010.
Ahead of Take This Waltz’s world premiere
at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival,
Playback spoke with six of Polley’s key
collaborators to chart the film’s journey from
buzzed-about screenplay to gala premiere.
THE SCRIPT
Polley completed the screenplay for Take This
Waltz in 2009. That same year it made the
“Black List,” Hollywood’s annual publication of
the best un-produced scripts.
Susan Cavan (producer): I’ve known Sarah
professionally since the early ’90s. I produced
a feature in ’96 she starred in called Joe’s So
Mean to Josephine and we connected and
became quite close on that. A funny tidbit is
that our production company is called Joe’s
Daughter because of that film.
Sarah showed me the script in 2009 and I
completely fell in love with it. It was something
I really wanted to work on and we talked
about a production philosophy and about
the things she felt she needed in order to
realize the movie on her terms. It was a very
beautiful, emotionally nuanced script.
Luc Montpellier (DP): She told me she
wrote very fast. It just flowed out of her and
when I read it, I could tell.
Luke Kirby (actor, ‘Daniel’): There was
something about the script that was very
different from anything I’ve read and [it was]
very much hers. What Margot is experiencing
is something that everyone knows —
essentially wanting more from life, feeling like
you’re lacking something and then finding out
that it was there all along.
Chris Donaldson (editor): There was a lot
of room within the screenplay to see your
own approach to life in the material, both as
a viewer and as a key creative. What I was
truly excited about was that there would be
this stillness in the film. We’d be attempting
to capture that certain space that comes from
intimacy between two people: something
that’s not rushed, something that is lived. The
accumulation of all these moments would
create dramatic momentum.
CASTING & FINANCING
Cavan and Polley secured financing by late
spring the following year. Take This Waltz was
financed by Telefilm, the OMDC and the Harold
Greenberg Fund in partnership with TF1, the
film’s international sales agent. Concurrently,
Polley worked with casting director John
Buchan from fall 2009 to cast Seth Rogan,
Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman and Luke
Kirby in the principal roles.
SC: Sarah was very clear from the beginning
that she wanted Seth Rogan to play the role of
[Margot’s husband] Lou and Sarah Silverman
[to play Geraldine].
26/08/11 4:19 PM
Sarah Polley on set while shooting
Take This Waltz
She approached Seth on the set of The
Green Hornet in Vancouver to ask whether he
might be interested in doing something with
her and he, of course, was quite captivated.
She considered many, many actors both
stars and unknowns for [Margot and Daniel]
and came to a very considered decision that
Michelle Williams was her absolute first pick
for the role of Margot.
LK: Six months before we started working
on [the film], I met Sarah for breakfast on
College Street, having just been given the
script from my agent. We worked together
on a film almost 10 years ago called Luck
and we’ve been in touch off and on since.
So it was a breakfast of catching up more
than anything else.
A couple days later I went to Sarah’s
house and we read some scenes. Again,
after that I walked away thinking, “That was
nice. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.”
Then I went on a road trip with my girlfriend
down to Florida and across to New Orleans.
I got a call at Graceland saying that Sarah
wanted to cast me. I was just thrilled and
surprised and a little bit shocked, gleefully.
SC: The material and Sarah and the
importance and achievement of her first film
all contributed to financing as much as the
stars. It’s really great to be able to say the
cast was cast to be pitch perfect without
constraints or demands of financiers.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Before pre-production began, Polley convened her
department heads to brainstorm ideas for the film’s visual
aesthetic. Official pre-pro lasted from May to July, 2010.
SC: A few things were essential in making this
happen. [Sarah] really wanted to shoot in the heat of
the Toronto summer and that was one of the things
we worried about because the previous summers in
Toronto had been rainy. [But] it turned out to be a
beautifully brilliant summer.
Another thing was to have fairly substantial rehearsal
time. Although it was not substantial by everyone’s
standards, it certainly was in terms of most Canadian
movies: three weeks of formal rehearsal including as
much time as possible on dressed locations, which is a
tricky thing to do.
LM: We kept exchanging ideas visually. She’d send me
still photographs and I’d send her some as well. While
she was financing the film, she created these layouts
to show people visually what the film was all about.
Through this exchange of photographs, we created
“It’s really great to
be able to say the
cast was cast to be
pitch perfect without
the constraints
or demands of
financiers”
–Susan Cavan,
producer
plates and laid out some lines from the script.
Matthew Davies (production designer):
When I read the script and I called her up and
said “let’s go for a walk.” I grabbed my dog and
walked straight to Lisgar Street. It was literally
the first or the second street we looked at, and
it was the first house interior that we saw. We
walked right in and it was perfect.
LM: Sarah had full sessions with her lead actors
for at least a couple of weeks. In our production
office she taped up the sets and dimensions she
got from Matthew and rehearsed scenes with
them. She was able to pre-block certain scenes.
MD: The DOP and I had worked out a studio
scenario that would create a very easy and
comfortable shoot, but Sarah really wanted to
take it into a reality that she could relate to, to
really show the actors where they would live. For
Margot’s house, we wanted to create something
that was full of texture and colour and had
beautiful saturated tones. We brought a lot of
metallics in to the set and created a very warm
but varied palette. That said, all of the visual cues
were already there in the environment.
Lea Carlson (costume designer): I did more
fittings with Michelle than I’ve ever done with
any other actor. She’s the kind of person who
needs to digest things. It was really important for
her, Sarah and I to make Margot a real person
interesting but not too contrived. There was a lot
of discussion over every choice.
SC: Sarah always needs to be fully informed but
she doesn’t micromanage. She wants to hear
everyone’s point of view and everyone’s creative
input and will have her own opinion. She delegates
exactly as she should.
Take This Waltz producer Susan Cavan calls
scoring the Trinity-Bellwoods pool in Toronto
a “major coup.”
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TIFF 2011
Waltz’s director of photography
Luc Montpellier
LM: The rehearsal time really informed the camera and lenses
we used. We shot with the Panavision Genesis camera. The
visual style Sarah wanted to experiment with, which we ended
up doing in prep, was [used] 99% of the time. Whether we were
moving or not, the camera was on a Steadicam. A lot of times we
even had the Steadicam attached to a dolly because Sarah really
wanted to create a sense of immediacy with the camera.
SC: We went digital with the view that it would allow her to do
fairly long takes without reloading. That was a big part of her
shooting style.
LM: She kept saying, “I want the camera to breathe.” She
had used Steadicam on Away From Her but not in the same
way. To me, it was like this new hybrid of immediacy with
the camera…In almost every frame, when it made sense
dramatically, we generally were on the Steadicam, but
sometimes we weren’t even moving.
PRODUCTION
The 35-day shoot began on July 12, 2010 in Toronto. Key
locations in the film included a house on Mackenzie Crescent
in Little Portugal, Trinity-Bellwoods Park and Centre Island and
the Louisbourg Fortress in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
MD: When Sarah came to me originally she said she wanted
the film to feel like a bowl of fruit that would be full of colour
and taste — a very sensual experience of the city.
LM: There were hardly any lights on the set. A lot of it was
through windows and practical sources. Digital gives you the
ability to create a natural environment with very little light.
SC: We were able to secure Trinity-Bellwoods swimming pool,
which was a fantastic coup. The pool is beautiful and rarely used.
MD: When we tech-scouted Trinity-Bellwoods Park, there
was a broken painted bench and Sarah said, “I love it, it’s
completely real.” So I took a picture. But when we came back
a couple of days later to do the film, it was gone. They had
trashed it! I didn’t want to tell Sarah that her bench had been
trashed, so we built an exact replica of it and aged and painted
it. I don’t think she ever noticed.
SC: When working on emotional material like this I always
advocate that it be a very small set. There were not a lot of
producers on this film. The goal with that was to try to keep
the actors in as protective a space as possible so that when
they’re looking up they’re not seeing a sea of faces watching
from behind a monitor.
LM: A lot of the film’s moments happened when she knew the
scene was over and she didn’t yell cut. The actors just kept going.
LK: The benefit of a long take is you’re able to be with
whomever you’re playing with for a period, to find dips and lulls
and highs and not feel that you’re being micromanaged. When
you’re doing a scene and you only have 20 seconds to get that
one moment, the experience can go to your brain quite quickly.
When you’re doing a long take it becomes more of a mind-body
experience. Something’s actually happening.
LM: We also shot with the Canon 5D. There were moments in
the film where we went with both of our actors to College Street
and shot them as they followed each other to have a secret
encounter. So the film went from this very organized crew of 60
people to a crew of five that were just “run and gunning.”
DANCING THE WALTZ
The most technical scene in the film was a single-take,
360-degree shot choreographed to the film’s titular Leonard
Cohen track. The shot required three months of planning,
spans a year in the story and was filmed in a loft on Spadina
Avenue with actors Michelle Williams and Luke Kirby.
LM: Sarah obsessed over this scene ever since we started
talking about it…Basically, the camera proceeds to go around
the room and slowly it fills with the couple’s stuff as the
seasons change outside the window. The amount of planning
required was unbelievable.
CD: It’s playful, it’s very sexual, it’s emotional and it’s a little
14
INTRODUCING THE STARS OF TOMORROW
Left to right: Matthew Brown, Kristin Adams, Melissa Hood, Trevor Hayes, Kimberly-Sue Murray, Charlie Carrrick, Amber Goldfarb and Johnathan Sousa. Photo by David Leyes.
CFC welcomes the residents of the 2011 CFC Actors Conservatory
Presented by:
Supported by:
cfccreates.com/actors
MEDIA
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sad, which is exactly what the movie is like.
LM: Matthew built a little model just for that one scene. Sarah
timed it specifically to the second to the song. We ended up
going to the set at least a dozen times to plan where everything
was going to go. We actually ended up shooting on the 5D.
CD: We shot a video in which Sarah mimed Michelle’s part
and Dan Murphy, our first AD, mimed Luke Kirby’s part and we
ran through the entire sequence in the actual location. I cut it
together and it was sent out and on the day everybody knew
exactly what to do.
MD: The shoot was rushed. It was very hot and we had built
false walls into the space so the entire crew was behind these
false walls and we were pretty much piled to the rafters with
dressing. We had to fly in and out as quickly as was humanly
possible. We had a swing crew of individuals that were bathed
in sweat and trying to maintain a creative approach under hot
and humid conditions.
LK: We really had to adhere to specifics in terms of
choreography. That scene was a bit dreamy because the music
was playing so you had that in the background. If I was feeling
lost, I would just look to Michelle and I would feel better.
LM: The whole location was on a second floor so it was
extremely challenging to light from outside. We were losing
light at one point. So it’s not like you were in a studio in a
controlled environment; you actually were on a location that
has its own challenges. It was exhilarating though.
POST-PRODUCTION
Donaldson cut throughout production and then edited with
Polley through November 2010 at the Royal Cinema in Toronto.
The film was completed in May 2011.
CD: Our first assembly was three hours and six minutes and so
we had to lose almost half the movie. There were a few scenes
that were very long dialogue scenes with great performances and
we stripped them out and they became visual moments.
When we [cut down] some of these big scenes the movie
came alive and it really pointed us in the right direction. What
we were trying to capture wasn’t necessarily always relatable
in a line of dialogue — it was a feeling and people together
silently and that became our new path.
LM: On Away From Her Sarah was extremely confident,
but I think she has grown and learned so much about
photographing a film with a specific intent that she was really
excited to exploit that with this film. Directors all get more
confident as they do it more and I witnessed that. She’s really
acquired a huge respect for what goes into it.
Take This Waltz has its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 10
as a gala presentation and is being distributed in Canada
by Mongrel Media. The film is slated for a 2012 theatrical
release.
Polley told production designer
Matthew Davies she wanted the
film “to feel like a bowl of fruit...
full of colour and taste”
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TIFF 2011
How today’s
Canadian
independent
filmmakers
are seizing the
opportunity to
transform a
festival screening
into bona fide
brand equity
BY MARC GLASSMAN
THE EVOLUTION OF
INDIE MARKETING
Veterans in the film industry know the drill. Fresh-faced kids come to the
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) or the Vancouver International Film
Festival (VIFF) or any of the growing number of Canadian autumnal festivals
every year with a brand new film and high-in-the-sky hopes. When the
fall is over, so are their dreams of glory — dashed, they always claim, by
misunderstanding publicists and venal distributors.
That attitude is refreshingly absent in the current crop of filmmakers.
Empowered by social marketing tools and eager to try out streetwise
approaches to lure audiences into cinemas, these new directors and
producers are taking responsibility for getting the word out on their films.
It’s a healthy approach, which should make the lives of distributors and
publicists easier while filling festival seats for indie Canadian cinema producers.
“There’s an opportunity now to find your audience rather than sitting back
and waiting for the audience to come to you,” says Aaron Houston, the
debutant feature director of Sunflower Hour, a mockumentary about four
puppeteers pursuing very low-end status as potential cast members on a
kids cable TV series.
“You can make your own success through social media — it’s a lot of
work but we’re doing it. We have Twitter, Facebook and a website,” continues
Houston. His film won the Independent Camera Award at the prestigious
Karlovy Vary Festival this summer and is positioned for festival breakouts this fall.
“We’re thinking of creating videos where the puppets try to mount a
campaign to boycott the film because they were unfairly treated by us — the
filmmakers,” adds the B.C.-based director.
His films garnered Karlovy audiences in a strange but old-fashioned way.
“Jenny Cassidy, our puppet coach, had ring puppets,” recounts Houston.
“They’re like rings you put on your finger and the tops of the rings have a set
16
of eyes; they were a training tool for the actors. With low-budget independent
stuff you have to think outside the box a bit because a one-page ad in the
program guide was 2,000. It would be our entire marketing budget for that
one page ad.
“So we decided to make finger puppets — about 1,000 of them —
and attached little cards that had the title of the film on one side and the
screenings at the festival on the other side. They’re fun — especially when
you’ve been drinking,” he jokes.
Houston’s successful ploy at Karlovy Vary resembles the strategies used by
DIY filmmaker Ingrid Veninger.
Back at TIFF with another quirky romantic drama starring her family, the
ever-youthful Veninger has become the Diva of the Indie Impresarios.
“I did a session at the TIFF bootcamp the day after the Canadian press
conference,” says Veninger. “I talked to the [first-time] filmmakers for 45
minutes about celebrating having their films at TIFF. We have a platform to
show our films and to get big audiences to see them. We should shout it
from the rooftops. There is no shame in this game.
“I told them about the printer I use for my postcards. It’s inexpensive and
the turn-around time is one week. My press kit is up and my web page,
Punkfilms.ca, is already updated. I have stills and a poster on the site. There
are links to IMDB, the TIFF site and my Facebook page.
Her new film I am a Good Person/I am a Bad Person features Veninger as
a filmmaker who has to confront who she is ethically while on tour in Europe
with her daughter (played by her real-life daughter Hallie Switzer). With both
Hallie and her son Jacob in the cast, Veninger was able to enlist familial
support in marketing the film.
“In the film, my character wears a sign with the words ‘I’m a good
Indie director Ingrid Veninger’s I’m
a Good Person/I’m a Bad Person,
is premiering at TIFF this fall. Ahead
of the film’s screening, Veninger
is planning a guerrilla marketing
campaign to fill the theatre’s seats
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TIFF 2011
To promote his debut film Sunflower Hour
at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
in the Czech Republic, filmmaker Aaron
Houston gave away finger “puppets” (right)
to festivalgoers
person/I’m a bad person’ painted on pink bristol board. We’ve
just finished making 10 of those signs and I’m paying Jacob
to go out every afternoon during TIFF with nine of his friends,
wearing the signs. Jacob is 15 and his pals are in Grade 9.
They’ll be handing out postcards to everyone they see along
the way.”
“I’m [also] bringing in Mathieu Chesneau from Paris,” she
adds. “Mathieu is a magician — he played one in MODRA
and I cast him in a similar role in I am a Good Person/I am
a Bad Person — and he’s bringing a bag of tricks with him.
Wherever we go, he’ll be making magic in the streets.
“My goal is to sell out my three screenings. I have 700 seats
to fill and I want someone in every seat.”
Robin Smith, president of indie distribution company
Kinosmith, enjoys the innovative approaches of Houston
and Veninger but, overall, believes in a more nuts and bolts
attitude towards marketing films.
“If your film gets into TIFF,” says the tall, affable Smith, “you
should get all of your marketing materials together ASAP.
You should be ready for the Canadian press conference. You
should have stills, clips, press kits and a publicist on board.
“I think it’s massively important to have a press screening
before the festival,” he adds, explaining that local media can
then see the film in advance of the festival’s busy atmosphere.
Smith also suggests that DVD screeners should be made
available as a backup for key media.
“If the critics like it, your little film could become ‘one to
watch’ at the festival. If you go into the festival with no press
on you at all, you’re already 10 steps behind as far as I’m
concerned. A small Canadian film with no advance press will
get lost at TIFF.”
Smith has one Canadian indie at TIFF, The Odds, by B.C.
filmmaker Simon Davidson.
He’s flying in Davidson and the film’s star Tyler Johnston;
he won’t bring in the whole crew because “it dilutes the
interview.”
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“If the critics like
it, your little film
could become
‘one to watch’
at the festival. If
you go in with no
press at all, you’re
already 10 steps
behind, as far as
I’m concerned.”
–Robin Smith,
president,
Kinosmith
“You want to create a consistent message,” he says. “With The Odds, we’ve decided to talk
about the film as a murder mystery that has scenes of teenagers gambling. If you call it a
‘teenaged gambling movie,’ it would feel like one of those TV problem-of-the-week movies.
We want to position it as a great genre film.”
Kinosmith is working with Davidson to create a website for the film, as well as a trailer and
Twitter strategy. He’s also in talks with Canadian film website First Weekend Club, which will
help with extra promo on the film’s commercial release.
Robin Smith has one final word of advice to aspiring filmmakers: “Get a killer photo. It will
really help your campaign.”
Leonard Farlinger agrees with Smith. “In All Hat [Farlinger’s 2007 TIFF feature premiere] we
had a really strong image of Keith Carradine pointing a gun at Noam Jenkins’ head. It’s wacky
and menacing at the same time. The guys in New York [Screen Media Ventures] saw the
picture in a program book and decided they wanted to buy it right away.”
A true hyphenate, Farlinger is the director-writer-coproducer of I’m Yours, an erotic road
movie, which will premiere at TIFF. Along with his partner Jennifer Jonas, Farlinger operates
New Real Films, which has produced such previous TIFF hits as Bruce McDonald’s Trigger
and Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare.
“Marketing is conceptual,” says Farlinger. “It’s not just about [who does what]. As a
producer-director, you go back and forth with your distributor about what the central image
should be that could sell the film. What shot most clearly expresses how unique the film is
and why people should want to see it?”
Alliance Films jumped the gun early with one of its TIFF entries, Breakaway. The film’s trailer
was on YouTube in August, as well as bonus content featuring South Asian-Canadian comic
and Breakaway actor Russell Peters and British-South Asian bhangra singing star Jassi Sidhu.
Breakaway may be the ultimate hyphenate film: a romantic comedy and intergenerational
drama about a Sikh hockey team whose star, played by Vinay Virmani, may be falling in love
26/08/11
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TIFF 2011
with a Caucasian Canadian girl. Throw in
guest appearances by hip hop stars Drake
and Ludacris and — one must admit — the
marketing opportunities seem endless.
“We’re working very closely with the
producers, the filmmakers [director Robert
Lieberman, coproducers Akshay Kumar, Don
Carmody and Frank Siracusa] on developing
our marketing strategy,” says Alliance VP
Margaret Burnside. “We started meeting with
them and planning for the release, which will
be on Sept. 30, as soon as the film went into
production.
“We’ve got a very robust campaign both
for mainstream and for the South Asian
community,” she explains. “That’s why we’re
doing an above-average [media] spend on
the film.”
“You’ll see [the film’s marketing] outdoors
by way of digital boards and posters in transit
shelters. We’ll be at Masala! Mendhi! Masti!
20
[the massive South Asian festival at Toronto’s
Harbourfront Centre in August]. Our focus is on
[the GTA] and Vancouver where there’s a solid
concentration of population from the South
Asian community. But we will have a national
campaign that will target both selective
conventional TV and the specialty channels as
well. We have newspaper plans for both the
mainstream papers and also a large number
of newspapers that target the South Asian
community.”
Whether a film is being marketed by major
distributors like Alliance, eOne or Kinosmith, or
self-distributed by filmmakers, the message is
clear: the game has changed in the past two
years. This year’s crop of Canadian festival
hits, whose predecessors often generated
disappointing numbers in the marketplace,
have a much bigger opportunity to find local or
even national success in today’s fragmented
— and more welcoming — media landscape.
Alliance Films’ Breakaway will benefit from an “above average” media campaign targeting South Asian communities
in Canada to support its release, Margaret Burnside, VP, Alliance Films, says
SASKFILM IS PROUD OF ITS SUPPORTING ROLE IN BRUCE MCDONALD’S HARD CORE LOGO II,
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ASTRAL AT 50
As Astral Media celebrates
its 50th year in business,
Playback pays tribute
to one of Canada’s
most successful media
companies with
with a look back at
its humble roots in
photofinishing, its
transformation into
a modern-day media
powerhouse and how
it begat one
of Canada’s most
important sources of
feature film funding
BY ETAN VLESSING
From left to right: Sidney Greenberg, Harvey
Greenberg, Ian Greenberg and
Harold Greenberg (seated) (Photo: Astral)
MEDIA STAR:
ASTRAL CELEBRATES 50 YEARS
With 23 TV channels, 83 radio stations, 9,500 advertising faces, 100
websites and revenues approaching $1 billion in 2010, Astral easily
holds its own as one of Canada’s largest and most diversified media
companies. But it wasn’t always so. When Astral was born 50 years
ago as a photofinishing kiosk, it was a small business with a simple
goal — keep the Greenberg family together.
In his 50-year hunt to make Astral Media one of Canada’s most
successful media companies, CEO Ian Greenberg hasn’t forgotten one
important thing: family.
The Montreal-based media empire has its roots in 1961, as a young
Ian and his three older brothers, Harold, Harvey and Sidney, mourned
their mother Annie Greenberg’s death.
“She was the glue in the family,” he remembers. “We were sitting
around and asking ourselves ‘what are we going to do to keep the
family together and honour our mother?’”
They decided to start a company together, from scratch, finding
inspiration in a simple and convenient small business: photofinishing.
Working the contacts Sidney had at the Steinberg grocery chain — which
had just launched its new Miracle Mart department stores — the brothers
secured a concession to operate photography booths at two of the retailer’s
locations. The service was named Angreen after their mother.
It didn’t take long for the four Greenberg brothers to expand by
purchasing Bellevue Photo labs in Montreal. Their big break came in
1967 when they secured the concession for the sale of photo products
at Expo ’67 in Montreal, providing photo and movie film processing and
other related services for visiting world media and national delegations.
Two years later, the brothers expanded into film production by
acquiring separate motion picture laboratory and sound studios in
Toronto and Montreal, with the latter renamed Bellevue Pathé.
Astral Media as we know it today started to emerge in 1973 when
22
PB.Astral.2011.indd 22
Bellevue Pathé became Astral Bellevue Pathé following the Greenbergs’
reverse takeover of Astral Communications, a publicly traded company
in film and TV distribution.
Eldest brother Harold Greenberg became president and CEO, with
he and his brothers as majority investors controlling Astral Bellevue
Pathé, later to become Astral Communications and Astral Media.
Edward and Peter Bronfman came on board as minority investors,
allowing the Greenbergs to run the company on their own.
“It was their company,” David Novek, a long-time friend of Harold
Greenberg and former vice president of communications at Astral,
recalls. “It was Harold as the CEO, and Harvey and Ian running the
photo stores, which were profitable, and Sidney running the film labs.”
With financing and room to grow, Harold began to indulge his love of
Canadian film, producing Porky’s, a giant worldwide box office earner,
in 1981, and expanding into film videocassette reproduction with the
launch of Pathé Video in Toronto.
PAYING TO PLAY
In 1983, the Greenberg brothers bet the farm when they acquired
control of First Choice and Premier Choix (today known as The Movie
Network and Super Écran), Ian Greenberg recalls.
It was, unquestionably, a risky move.
Although the Astral we know today is defined by its money-making
TMN service, pay TV had a rough start in Canada.
The CRTC in 1981 said it would license the country’s first pay TV channel,
prompting Astral to apply, unsuccessfully, for the first round of pay TV
services, and then watching from the sidelines as the greenlit licensed pay
channels quickly floundered.
“In six months, four of the six players were going bankrupt,” he says.
But the Greenbergs believed in pay TV. It was, after all, operating a
premium film channel, a business Astral knew well.
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ASTRAL AT 50
Astral president and CEO Ian Greenberg announces the launch of Playhouse
Disney in 2007, part of the growing stable of Astral specialty channels.
(Photo: Astral)
“[Harold Greenberg] always believed in the model
of HBO in Canada and when his chance came, he
took it,” Paul Bronfman, chairman of William F. White
International, recalls.
“He understood the market. He understood
consumer demand for entertainment, and he thought
the licensed pay TV people were off the mark,” he adds.
In 1983, Astral bet big, acquiring 100% control of
only two pay TV networks left standing, First Choice
and Premier Choix TVEC. Both were heavily indebted.
“Harold had followed the business in the U.S., so
when we came in, we brought contacts with cable
companies and made sure that we had product with
all the studios and HBO,” Ian Greenberg explains.
He’s quick to add that acquiring control of debt-laden
pay TV operators was a heart-stopper for his family.
“Everything the Greenbergs had worked for until
1983 was on the line. If we didn’t turn pay TV
around, we would have been out of business.”
Even today, you can hear the relief in his voice: the
24
PB.19804.MIJO.Ad.indd 1
First Choice bet paid off.
The channel was restructured, but in all, First
Choice sustained around $52 million in losses before
it was back on its feet.
“In 1985, when we hit 400,000 subscribers, we
really felt we made it,” Bronfman remembers.
THE SPECIALTY ERA
In 1988, the Greenbergs got busy growing their position
in specialty, partnering with Allarcom to launch Family
Channel as a 50/50 partnership.
But once again, nothing was a given for Astral early on.
In today’s digital TV world, the CRTC freely hands
out broadcast licences and wishes broadcasters
good luck in the marketplace. But back in the 1990s,
analog channel scarcity meant specialty channel
licences were harder to come by.
“You did a significant amount of research, you
produced promotional videos, you raised support
from all the players in the industry, and you
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PB.19846.
Lisa Ray stars in Bollywood/Hollywood, which
received funding from the Harold Greenberg
Fund (Photo: Astral)
tried to get public support,” John Riley, president of Astral
Television Networks, recalls.
Astral did the work, launching Canal D in 1995
and securing a minority stake in French language
pay-per-view channel Canal Indigo. Astral’s next frontier was
Teletoon, the specialty cartoon channel launched in 1997 with
Astral as a 20% stakeholder.
The launch of Teletoon made sense on paper — the
company was already in the family TV business with Family
Channel and knew its value — but it turned out to be no picnic.
The mid-’90s consumer revolt over negative option billing
meant the channel had to have a long free preview period and
there were concerns about advertiser interest in the content.
“I was very concerned. I remember a very prominent media
buyer quoted in Playback saying they couldn’t see the demand
or the room for a cartoon channel,” Riley recalls.
A PURE-PLAY POWERHOUSE
The mid-’90s saw Astral redefine itself from a diversified
Quebec media powerhouse to a nationwide pure-play broadcaster.
The impetus in part was the death in 1996 of long-time CEO
Harold Greenberg, and younger brother Ian Greenberg taking
his place as Astral president and CEO.
Greenberg set out to redefine the vision for Astral, finding
inspiration in his business hero, GE’s Jack Welch, whom he
met briefly during his time at Harvard: “He said you have to be
number one or number two and focus on businesses in which
you can be a leader.”
Shedding non-core assets — the photo division, videocassette
reproduction and distribution, film distribution, production
financing and technical services — Astral began to focus on pay
and specialty TV, and expand into radio and outdoor advertising.
And Ian Greenberg, the hard-headed business strategist in
Jack Welch’s mould, put his stamp on the company.
“Harold was the visionary behind Astral becoming a major
Canadian company; Ian was the businessman, the numbers
guy,” David Novek recalls. “[Ian] narrowed the thrust of Astral’s
activity and it has proven very profitable.”
WFW’s Bronfman echoes a common theme among executives
that have worked at Ian Greenberg’s side: he does his homework
before doing deals, and doesn’t like to overpay for assets.
“[Ian Greenberg] is disciplined and focused. He will spend
where he feels it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t spend
money stupidly. He spends where it makes financial sense to
do so,” he argues.
THE MEDIA EMPIRE EXPANDS
Among those strategic decisions that paid off was Astral in
1999 acquiring Radiomutuel, which included eight FM and
three AM radio stations, 50% of the Radiomédia network,
Canal Vie, Canal Z, and 50% of MusiquePlus and MusiMax.
Charles Benoit, executive vice president of Astral Radio,
which today runs 83 radio stations in 50 markets countrywide,
insists Astral brought credibility and focus to Canadian radio
when it acquired Radiomutuel.
“At the time, there were a lot of small operators, and they
had an image of being wheeler-dealers. The credibility of the
radio business wasn’t that great,” he says.
Differentiating itself by investing in marketing, talent and
audience research, Astral acquired Télémédia radio stations in
eastern Canada and acquired Standard Radio for $1.1 billion in
2007 to become the largest radio station operator in Canada.
Benoit recalls the Standard deal, while expensive, underlined
a natural fit between radio and specialty TV, while rivals
CTVglobemedia, Rogers Media and then-Canwest had seen a
greater convergence fit between TV and print assets.
The Standard deal also followed a cautious Ian Greenberg
not pulling the trigger on earlier broadcast assets up for grabs,
including CHUM Ltd. group, which went to CTVglobemedia.
“It’s just a matter of being well-disciplined. We bet the
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ASTRAL AT 50
company in 1983 — we won’t bet the company again,”
Greenberg affirms. “We were in the bidding for CHUM and at
the end, I said we will not go above a certain price.”
Astral’s new strategic approach also included out-of-home
advertising, pitting Astral against industry giants like CBS and
Pattison Outdoor. The company met the challenge by investing
in next-generation products and non-traditional inventory.
“Now with street furniture and digital [billboards], we are the
leaders,” Luc Sabbatini, president of Astral Out-of-Home, boasts.
Although the broadcaster took a hit during the 2008-09
advertising industry downturn, it used its more assured
subscriber-based revenues to maintain stability while rivals like
Canwest and CTVglobemedia proved far less resilient.
Astral’s pay TV service also pulled through the economic
downturn in part due to the launch of HBO Canada in late
2008, after lengthy negotiations with HBO stateside.
“It was the first time HBO was going to allow their name
to be used for a channel where they didn’t have an equity
interest,” says Greenberg. “That came with their trust in the
Greenberg family. We’d already been in business with them
since 1983, and we had been excellent partners.”
Those kinds of relationships, and Astral’s role as a Canadian
media leader, make Ian Greenberg proud.
But the dutiful son who couldn’t have had a clue 50 years
ago what a couple of retail photo kiosks would eventually mean
for the Greenbergs, can’t help but remember his mother and
how proud she’d likely be of her four enterprising sons.
“Our mother would have been proud because we started
out as four equal partners, and we’re still four equal partners,”
Greenberg concludes.
The cast of 1983 film Maria Chapdelaine. Fourth from left: Quebec politician Francis Fox stands beside actor Carole Laure and Harold Greenberg
Harold Greenberg celebrates Astral Bellevue Pathé’s 1982 blockbuster,
Porky’s.
From left to right: John Riley, president, Astral Television Networks; Robert
Lantos, producer; and Ian Greenberg. (All photos courtesy of Astral)
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ASTRAL AT 50
“[Harold] didn’t want to
be beholden to the studios
or the exhibitors or the
distributors. He wanted
to control product from
production through to the
big screen,” William F.
White International CEO
Paul Bronfman says.
Harold Greenberg being
interviewed on set, 1970
(Photo: Astral)
A LIFE’S WORK IN FILM
Astral Media is certainly a broadcast
powerhouse nowadays, but its roots are
buried deep in Canadian film.
The Harold Greenberg Fund, which helps
develop and license Canadian movies through
The Movie Network (TMN) and Super Écran, is
a tribute to the late Harold Greenberg, a longtime Astral CEO and Canadian film mogul until
his death in 1996.
Greenberg spearheaded the launch of the
Foundation to Underwrite New Drama for
Pay-television (Fund) in 1986 — later renamed
the Harold Greenberg Fund — just as Astral
launched pay TV channel First Choice.
Much as the Fund was about TV, it was
really about investing in well-written film
scripts for movies, the foundation of early
Canadian pay TV.
And long before major producers like Alliance
Communications, Malofilm and Imax took up
the Canadian film baton, Harold Greenberg was
producing and distributing homegrown movies,
and running facilities for technical film services.
28
Famously, Greenberg executive-produced
the classic 1982 Canadian comedy Porky’s
and the 1974 Richard Dreyfuss-starrer The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by director
Ted Kotcheff — not bad for someone who
started work at 13 in a Montreal camera shop.
“Harold was a film producer and also
someone who was very helpful to others
starting out in their careers, giving them lots
of free lab time. Now that legacy continues in
the fund,” says John Galway, president of the
Harold Greenberg Fund.
Old friends and long-time employees recall
Greenberg thinking Canadian film too fun
during the ’70s and ’80s to get hung up over
its obvious financial risk.
“Harold was one of the pioneers. He really
believed we could have our own film industry
and our own stars and our own technicians.
He really believed in Canadians and wanted
to build the film business here,” retired Astral
communications exec David Novek recalls.
Paul Bronfman, chairman and CEO of William
F. White International, who was mentored by
Harold Greenberg early in his own career,
insists the Astral topper always looked to
control his company’s destiny.
“[Harold] didn’t want to be beholden to the
studios or the exhibitors or the distributors.
He wanted to control product from production
through to the big screen,” Bronfman says.
Since 1986, around $76.5 million has been
invested in over 3,450 projects by the industry
fund, which has supported recent films such
as Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz and Michael
McGowan’s Score: A Hockey Musical.
This summer, the Fund introduced a new
marketing program to support Canadian films
with potential in overseas markets. The goal of
the initiative is to help filmmakers fully exploit
their presence at international film festivals,
even if they are without representatives to
help promote or sell their project.
“Often, we hear great stories about
filmmakers who make it into major film
festivals and, with little time and money, find
BY ETAN VLESSING
incredibly creative ways to generate a lot of
hype for their projects with filmgoers and
distributors alike,” explains the Fund’s Galway.
“That is the kind of innovative spirit we
want to support, and we want to share these
stories which prove that, with creativity and
resourcefulness, it is possible to make a big
impact on a limited budget.”
Astral is proud of the $1.5 billion it has
invested in Canadian film production, says
Astral CEO Ian Greenberg, but he’s happy to
be out of risky film production.
“We have supported the industry through
The Harold Greenberg Fund, through
production financing and pre-buys and licence
fees. But none of the product is produced by
Astral,” he says. “Everything is produced by
indie producers, and it’s one of the things that
I’m most proud of.”
PROTOCOL ENTERTAINMENT
Congratulates its Gemini Nominees for
TURN THE BEAT AROUND
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GEMINIS
Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy in her iconic
pink Chanel suit. Greg Kinnear plays John Kennedy.
On the eve of the Gemini Awards,
Playback checks in on the stories
behind-the-scenes of some of
Canada’s most acclaimed TV shows.
CRAFTING
THE KENNEDYS
BY MARK DILLON
The Canadian craftspeople who helped
bring to life Muse Entertainment’s mini The
Kennedys knew they had to take special care.
“This is the retelling of a beloved American
dynasty’s history, so visual accuracy was
paramount,” explains Chris Hargadon, head of
wardrobe on the Toronto-shot series.
The plot of the mini, which aired on History
Television in Canada and ReelzChannel in the
U.S., follows the titular clan from the 1930s-era
political ambitions of Joseph Kennedy Sr.
(Tom Wilkinson) to the career rise of son John
(Greg Kinnear), John’s marriage to Jacqueline
Bouvier (Katie Holmes) and his victory in
the 1960 presidential election. It also tracks
the appointment of Robert Kennedy (Barry
Pepper) as attorney general and Jack’s 1963
assassination. The story ends after Bobby is
assassinated five years later. The series earned
10 Gemini and 10 Emmy nominations this year.
It’s a large-scale, decades-spanning drama
that posed considerable challenges to both the
costume and makeup departments, both of
which were nominated for Gemini Awards.
According to Muse, which produced
in association with U.S.-based Asylum
Entertainment, there were 50 costumes for
each of the six lead actors, also including
family matriarch Rose Kennedy (Diana
Hardcastle) and Bobby’s wife Ethel (Kristin
Booth). Plus, there were 130 secondary
actors and 3,000 extras, all requiring period
costumes. Muse says it spent $640,000 on
wardrobe and $416,000 on makeup. Producer
Jamie Paul Rock says the costume budget
was higher than usual.
“You need the period clothes and you need
them all to look new — these were rich
people,” he notes. “You usually can’t go to a
second-hand store to buy a suit from 1963.
You have to build it. You have to design it and
then hire somebody to sew it for you. So you
have to put additional money into wardrobe.
That’s just for the guys. For the women, it’s
even more so, and if it’s Jackie Kennedy, it’s
even beyond that, because her clothes are
iconic. Her pink Chanel suit looks only like
itself.”
Hargadon and his team bought or took on
loan some pieces from vintage stores and
in other cases acquired old fabric to make
new costumes. His favourites were Jackie’s
party dresses. “One raffia ball gown was
reproduced using French ribbon lace instead,
stripped of colour and over-dyed, then
under-layered with two additional fabrics. It
was a risk, but I feel we achieved the overall
look of the garment,” he writes via email from
Australia, where he is working on the Steven
Spielberg series Terra Nova.
As First Lady, Jackie’s attire was frequently
photographed, but there was a private Jackie
as well.
“The public perception of Jackie is of a
beautiful and intriguing woman in suits
with matching hats,” Hargadon adds. “The
script called for many looks not documented
— Jackie in sleepwear or dressed casually.
I considered her overall style and approach
to dress through quality and colour and
imagined what these unrecorded garments
might have been.”
He explains that Jack — played by John
White in scenes up until 1946 — “was very
thin and lanky in his younger days, so we
dressed young Jack in suits that fit big. I
tried to find wools with a certain vibrancy to
help him stand out in a room full of advisors
wearing grey and navy suits.”
The resemblances between the actors and
their real-life counterparts are remarkable, right
down to smaller roles such as Don Allison as
Lyndon Johnson. Makeup head Jordan Samuel
credits director John Cassar and casting,
headed by Deirdre Bowen. “They made it fairly
easy for us,” says Samuel, who is working in
Toronto on the Colin Farrell blockbuster Total
Recall. “We were halfway there by the time
“You need the period
clothes and you need
them all to look new
— these were rich
people,” explains
Kennedys executive
producer Jamie Paul
Rock. “You can’t just
go to a second-hand
store and buy a suit
from 1963. You have
to build it.”
we had people in the chair. They [even] cast
extras that looked like people who were
actually in the crowds at the time.”
Samuel was originally called in to work
with Barry Pepper, who underwent the most
dramatic transformation in becoming Bobby.
Samuel applied veneers (dentures) as well
as a silicone nose and blue contact lenses.
Pepper was the only cast member who wore a
prosthetic, which was at his own request.
In helping Holmes become Jackie,
Samuel noticed a key difference between
the two women. “Jackie had a really
unique structure to her face,” he says. “Her
eyes were quite wide-set, while Katie’s
got a symmetrical face. I had to alter the
structure of her face before I could even
begin adding any of the elements of the
period.” He also altered Holmes’ bottom lip
line to make her lips as full as Jackie’s.
Samuel shares the Gemini nomination
with Jenny Arbour, head of the hair
department; Linda Dowds, who did
Kinnear’s makeup; and Colin Penman, who
aged Wilkinson and Hardcastle 30 years
throughout the series. Samuel, Dowds,
Penman and makeup artist Amanda
Terry are up for an Emmy, as are Arbour
and hairstylist Judi Cooper Sealy in the
hairstyling category.
31
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GEMINIS
Darkroom’s long-limbed alien: he looks friendly now,
but this uninvited guest has a secret agenda
‘AWAKENING’ STARGATE’S
ALIENS
Saying goodbye in style,
the Vancouver-shot series
Stargate Universe racks
up Gemini and Emmy
visual effects nominations
for its second and final
season. Writer Mark
Dillon finds out the
method behind the
Canadian-made magic
32
Stargate Universe has gone out with a bang.
The Stargate TV franchise’s third series —
cancelled by Syfy last December and airing locally on
Space — claimed nominations at the Gemini Awards
and Emmys for its Vancouver visual effects squad.
The franchise has been a fixture on the Vancouver
production scene since 1997 when Stargate SG-1
started filming.
The spinoff’s latest kudos come a year after the
series nabbed a Leo Award and two Emmy noms.
“It says a lot for Vancouver in general and the
people who worked on that show,” says Mark Savela,
the visual effects supervisor who shares the Gemini
nom with nine colleagues, including Adam de Bosch
Kemper, Jamie Yukio Kawano, Michael Lowes, Kodie
MacKenzie, Krista McLean, James Rorick, Wes
Sargent, Luke Vallee, and Craig Van Den Biggelaar.
“It was one of the best experiences I’ve had,” he
says. “It was somewhat bittersweet finding out about
the Gemini and the Emmy nominations. Usually
we’re shooting at this time. I’d trade them both to be
working on season three right now.”
The episode that won over the jurists is titled
“Awakening,” in which the crew of spaceship Destiny
docks with another craft they’ve nearly struck. They
find no signs of life on board, but just when the
crew thinks it’s alone on the ship, Dr. Volker (Patrick
Gilmore) gets a tap on the shoulder from an alien
creature. It seems friendly — at first.
“It was an alien we had a lot of fun creating,” says
Savela, a veteran of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate:
Atlantis who hails from Ontario but now calls Vancouver
home. Series production designer James Robbins
provided the original design of the alien,
which has a protruding skull, thin neck and
curved limbs. Darkroom Digital Effects’ Van
Den Biggelaar built and animated the alien
in 3-D.
“We wanted to make him feel real and
living in that environment as opposed to
being cartoony,” Savela says. “People
were asking if it was an animatronic or
a person in a suit. We wanted to make a
character that couldn’t be a person in a suit
because no one could fit into that body.”
They didn’t do things the easy way on
Stargate Universe. The show is shot with
a fluid handheld camera to give the drama
a sense of urgency, but which also made
incorporating digital elements more involved.
“We never locked off the camera,”
Savela says. “There’s nothing worse than
having a semi-static shot where you know
it’s going to be a digital effects shot.
We wanted to make it as seamless as
possible. It makes it a lot tougher, because
you have to track every shot. You usually
have tracking markers everywhere, which
is another step, and then you have to
remove them from the shot.”
On its two 20-episode seasons, the
series averaged 120 visual effects shots
per episode, the labour divided among
an in-house team of 20 artists and
independent vendors.
A $100,000-per-episode budget for
effects outsourcing led them not to local
giants like Sony Pictures Imageworks but
rather to skilled boutique shops including
Darkroom and Atmosphere Visual Effects.
With a number of episodes on the go
simultaneously, Savela had to be strategic
in assigning the work.
“We would lay a heavier episode on one
vendor and then the other vendor would
get a heavier episode after that so nobody
would get slammed two or three episodes
in a row,” Savela explains. “Darkroom
Digital handled all the CG alien and
animating on ‘Awakening,’ but they didn’t
do the episode before or after. I would
give the correct people enough time and
space to actually do an episode and do it
right, instead of trying to blast through it
just because there’s other work behind it
or ahead of it.”
In the Emmy effects race, which wraps
Sept. 10 with the Creative Arts awards,
the little Vancouver show that could is
up against HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and
Game of Thrones, AMC’s The Walking
Dead and Canadian copro The Borgias.
Meanwhile, at the Geminis, Stargate
Universe will compete with The Borgias,
Sanctuary — another Vancouver-based
sci-fi — Being Human and The Tudors.
In the absence of Stargate Universe,
Savela and Ken Kabatoff, a PA on the
series, have written a spec script for
a drama called Echoes, about Earth
caught in the crossfire of an alien war.
With coproducers Van Den Biggelaar and
Atmosphere’s Andrew Karr, they have shot
13 minutes of a pilot and are looking to
finance a full one hour.
Savela believes the local talent pool can
get another spaceship show off the ground.
“I don’t believe anybody can do high-end
television as well as Vancouver,” he adds.
26/08/11 5:00 PM
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GEMINIS
REPUBLIC OF DOYLE
BY SIOFAN DAVIES
In January 2010, the CBC
rolled out a new one-hour-long
drama about a father-and-son
private investigation firm in
St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Starring co-creator, writer and
showrunner Allan Hawco as
Jake Doyle, and Sean McGinley
as his father, Malachy, Republic
of Doyle was an instant
success. Nominated for three
Geminis this year and five
last year, Doyle is in the midst
of shooting its third season.
Playback caught up with the
wildly busy Hawco, show
co-creator and writer Perry
Chafe, and executive producer
Michael Levine to chat about
bringing Doyle to life
on the Rock.
THE IDEA
Allan Hawco: When I was 18 or
19, I had the beginnings of an idea
[for Doyle] — I borrowed a friend’s
computer, printed it off and mailed it to
myself to prove that it was my idea.
Perry Chafe: It was a gold nugget
idea: A father/son P.I. show set in St.
John’s, Newfoundland.
Michael Levine: Allan had a
not-for-profit theatre company and
we have a very close mutual friend,
[CTV’s] Seamus O’Regan. Seamus
brought me to one of Allan’s plays,
and I was so impressed by his work,
I asked him what his dream was, and
he said to make The Rockford Files in
Newfoundland. So I ended up taking
him to Sally Catto at the CBC — Sally
was so enamoured she gave him
money for a treatment.
34
Allan Hawco and Sean McGinley star in Republic of Doyle
THE SCRIPT
PC: Allan and I started a bible — we threw around
the ideas we liked about characters, what the
show is about, and then Malcolm [MacRury] came
in to help us with putting together the first script.
AH: The original pilot was a half-hour, which was
a challenge because we’d conceived the show as
an hour. Luckily the network agreed that it should
be pushed to an hour.
PC: We were writing a very difficult show, an
hour-long comedy/drama that is case heavy, [has
complex characters] and is shot in St. John’s,
Newfoundland. So that’s a crazy formula when you
think about it.
PC: The first season was a real trial by fire:
our studio roof almost blew off, and then Sean
McGinley became ill towards the end of the year.
So we had to adjust the scripts to reflect that and
we rewrote the final episode to take into account
his illness. We literally rewrote it two days before
we started shooting the episode.
Congratulations on your nominations:
Best Writing in a Comedy or
Variety Program or Series
Best Ensemble Performance in a
Comedy Program or Series
Garry Campbell
Charles Picco
Alex House
Maggie Castle
Bill Turnbull
Melanie Leishman
Chris Leavins
Jason Mewes
Angela Jill Guingcango
Best Direction in a Comedy
Program or Series
James Dunnison
Craig David Wallace
Best Picture Editing in a Comedy, Variety
or Performing Arts Program or Series
D. Gillian Truster
Best Achievement in Casting
Sara Kay
Jim Heber
Jenny Lewis
Best Performance by an Actor in a
Continuing Leading Comedic Role
Chris Leavins
From everyone at
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“When we saw
the numbers,
we felt we had
hit a chord with
people across the
country,” says
series co-creator
Perry Chafe.
“Even though
it’s shot in
Newfoundland,
it’s a universal
show that appeals
to everybody.”
FIRST SEASON RESPONSE
AH: We’d already shot the entire season
by the time the first episode aired.
By January I was almost falling over
because it was a marathon sprint to the
finish line.
PC: When we saw the numbers, we felt
we had hit a chord with people across
the country. Even though it’s shot in
St. John’s, it’s a universal show that
appeals to everybody.
AH: We hit over a million in our first
episode, partly thanks to the great
publicity, but also I think people were
genuinely interested in what we
were trying to do. Now we’re in that
above-the-million mark — which is
kind of unheard of for a show that’s not
simulcast in primetime with an American
network. I’m just so thankful Canadians
have embraced it.
MORE GREEN LIGHTS
AH: By the end of season two we really understood where we were going.
PC: The stakes every year should keep going up. We don’t go to broadcast until January, so it’s a long time
between [seasons] and we really want our viewers to be thinking about the show and be invested in our
characters.
THE FUTURE OF DOYLE
PC: Right now we have roughly a five-year plan. We hope we’re on for much longer than that — we’ll adjust it.
We don’t take anything for granted; we take it year by year.
SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
AH: We’re fortunate that the show sold to 96 countries across the world, which is staggering when you think
about it. We talked about going after a U.S. network to partner with us in the beginning, and I just started
thinking about the reality of a cop/P.I. show set in St. John’s being broadcast in the United States. I think the
things that are [culturally important] may have been jeopardized: our accents, the ideology of Newfoundland,
the idea that Jake doesn’t carry a gun. Sometimes people think these deals are spectacular, but if they’re
contributing very little to the financing structure of your series, you have to look at what you’re selling. Are they
giving you enough that it’s worthwhile financing your show for loss of a large portion of creative control?
ML: To me this is the creation of a brand. We’ve been deeply involved not only in selling the show, but through
a regional book publisher, creating an episodic guide that’s going to be available this September. We’ve also
been extremely aggressive about things like merchandising and we’re starting to address product placement.
35
We are proud to congratulate
our Gemini nominees
congratulates all our
CALL
ME
FITZ
Con
grat
s
ashley leggat
Best Performance by an
Actress in a Children’s or
Youth Program or Series
saĐaƟon ǁith ereŬ
Gemini Nominees!
alison pill
Actress in a Featured
Supporting Role in a
Dramatic Program or
Mini-Series
The Pillars of the Earth
rebecca williams
AGE NTS
Actress in a Featured Role
in a Dramatic Program or
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F a ith Ha l ma n
Ke v in Je ns e n
Ra nd i Ra s k in
Reviving Ophelia
S a nd i S l o a n
Ro b e rta Ro ma no
Ring-a-ding-ding!
J u l ie L a fo nta ine
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4 1 6 . 5 3 8 . 6 8 8 8 s www.founta i nhea dta lent.com
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GEMINIS
It may be a comedy, but Todd (played by Alex
House) takes his battles seriously
With eight Gemini nominations for its first
season, Todd and the Book of Pure Evil was one
of the biggest surprises of the day.
When was the last time a raunchy sci-fi
comedy starring a high school metal hero prone
to wearing codpieces, smoking bongs and
saying things like “I’m going to make you bleed
out of your [insert expletive here]” took top
billing in the lead-up to Canada’s TV awards?
Here, Playback goes behind the scenes with
Todd’s director and showrunner Craig David
Wallace and Frantic Films’ VP of scripted
programming Shawn Watson to find out how
Todd became such a work of evil genius.
BY: ROSE BEHAR
BY ROSE BEHAR
TODD AND THE BOOK OF PURE EVIL
THE IDEA
Craig David Wallace: I was at the Canadian Film
Centre in 2003 in the Director’s Lab and I was
really into the punk rock and heavy metal scene
— the kind of black metal where guys paint their
faces and burn down churches. And so as part
of my time at the film centre I co-wrote a short
film based on that scene called The Horror with a
fellow student Max Reade. Then we had the idea
to make a film based on the Faust myth [in which
a man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for
magical abilities] but [set in] modern day and call it
Young Faust. This concept evolved to become Todd
and the Book of Pure Evil. Todd uses the book to
become popular, but at a price.
THE PICKUP
CDW: We became involved with the National
Screen Institute, which helped us in pitching a
written pilot to CHUM, which owned the Space
channel, and we were in development with CHUM
when it was bought by CTV. That sort of left us in
the dark for nine months. Then all of a sudden CTV
offered us a pilot deal in 2008. We shot the pilot
in the spring of 2009. By that summer we had
the entire first season of Todd scripted, and it was
given the greenlight that September.
THE AUDIENCE
CDW: It’s essentially a high-school show for adults.
It’s got a very nostalgic feel to it. There’s a lot of
1980s influence, primarily from [directors] Sam
Raimi and John Hughes. Our core demographic
is 25 to 45 but we have everyone from young
teenagers to men and women in their fifties and
sixties watching the show.
36
BRINGING TODD TO LIFE
CDW: [We had to figure out] what needed
to be added to the concept to flesh it out
— that took us a while to crack. At first
we were going to do an anthology series
in which each show was independent of
the next, but then we realized we needed a
hero to bring everything together, so Todd
[as the central character] came back into
the fold, and he needed a group of friends.
Other than that, the storylines stayed pretty
much the same — after-school-style
specials centred on some social or teen
issue, ending in a disgusting gory mess.
We’ve dealt with teen pregnancy, obesity,
sexual orientation and much weirder
things. I think we’ve been through every
teenage problem, but there are still lots left
for us to mine.
WORKING WITH SPACE
CDW: Working with Space, we’ve always
been pushed to go as far as possible.
Shawn Watson: It’s funny because you
always hear stories about how networks
try and rein shows back, but they really
pushed us to be edgy.
CDW: And with our show, and the heavy
metal aspect of it, there was a real risk of
marginalizing the audience, but they were
always entirely supportive.
SW: From a business side, they’ve been
great, too. I think we probably broke
records in Canada for having such a
well-financed pilot.
WAVING THE FLAG
CDW: I think it’s a distinctively Canadian show but not in the way
people would expect. We didn’t put Canadian flags everywhere,
or make the characters use Canadian slang. It’s Canadian in
that what we can get away with separates us from international
markets. We have violence, mature content and a lot of drug use.
I think we’ll always be labelled a crazy Canuck show because of
our outlandish content.
SW: We’ve had people in the U.S. market say that when they saw
it, they could tell right away it wasn’t American.
FIRST SEASON RESPONSE
CDW: Our premiere broke records on Space for an original show.
So right away we breathed a huge sigh of relief. And those stats
remained consistent. Our show also got picked up by different
channels within CTV, which was flattering.
THE SEASON TWO GREENLIGHT
CDW: We were cautiously optimistic, but you do breathe a sigh
of relief when you get the official pickup. Once we heard we just
jumped right in, and just wrapped up shooting the second season.
SW: Now we’re looking ahead to season three!
THE FUTURE OF TODD
SW: We’re excited about our expansion into the U.S. — the first
season just launched on FearNet — and we can’t really disclose
anything yet, but there are other territories on board already.
CDW: And FearNet has been phenomenal at promotion, with stuff
like billboards in Times Square. If I hadn’t been so busy here in
Winnipeg I would’ve immediately hopped a plane and gone to
New York and taken pictures.
Todd and the Book of Pure Evil is coproduced by Frantic
Films, Aircraft Pictures and Corvid Pictures. It is distributed
internationally by eOne.
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GEMINIS
Things are about to get a whole lot worse
for Fitz. Trust us.
Originally conceived as a comedy
sample for writer Sheri Elwood, HBO
Canada’s Call Me Fitz roared out of
the gate with a whopping 16 Gemini
nominations for its first season.
Starring Jason Priestley, the show
follows the debauched behaviour of
Richard “Fitz” Fitzpatrick, a used car
salesman who finds himself in a moral
pickle when a new coworker arrives
and claims to be his conscience. With
the show’s second season imminent
and a third greenlit, Playback caught
up with series creator and head writer
Elwood, eOne executive producer
Noreen Halpern and Amaze Film +
Television executive producer Michael
Souther to find out what makes
Fitz tick — on screen and in the
international marketplace.
CALL ME FITZ
THE SCRIPT
Sheri Elwood: I developed a show around a character
— his original name was Phil — based on my brother
who, for most of his 20s was a bit of a degenerate,
fun-loving disaster. One day, I was out with my
grandmother talking about the latest horror story and
she said “that boy needs to sit down and have a drink
with his conscience.” And that concept always stuck
with me as being the perfect buddy comedy — a man
who is forced to go into business with his conscience.
During the writers’ strike, Teza [Lawrence] and Mike
knew that I was just kicking around [so] they called me
up and said “What do you have? What’s your passion
project?” I showed them Fitz and they liked it.
Michael Souther: The first reaction was, “Oh my god
that that came out of her?!” [laughs] She seemed so
nice and innocent. We thought that it had a really clear
voice and really distinct characters that were not stock
at all — that were really well drawn. We had been
talking to people at Astral and they were forming HBO
Canada and looking for half-hour dark comedies.
SE: That’s right; they hadn’t done any half-hour
comedies yet.
MS: We knew that it was really the only home for it in
Canada — and that combined with Sheri telling us she
really wanted to be able to keep the integrity of it — we
brought it to eOne.
Noreen Halpern: I think we had a really similar reaction:
“Wow, this came from Sheri? She’s so sweet!”
38
CASTING
SE: The show was greenlit and we were told by TMN, “we
don’t need a name actor in this, just cast the best person you
can find.” Jason [Priestley] was very much an after-the-fact
addition — a perfect addition, I can’t imagine anyone else
playing Fitz — but we cast for months and months. The show
was so delicate. We knew that if we didn’t find the perfect
Larry-to-Fitz ratio, the whole world would collapse.
MS: I think it’s worth pointing out that with his character, it’s
easy to not like him. Jason brought that charm and likeability
that sucks you in despite the despicable things he does.
SE: That was a comment that I got a lot: “we really like
this, we really like the writing — can you make the main
character more likable?” I would say, “well, the premise of
the show is a morally bankrupt guy — he can’t be likeable
or else there’s no show.” But with Jason, it’s the perfect
blend of devilish, diabolical and injured little boy. You can’t
help but root for him no matter what he does.
NH: I think we [at eOne] were extremely excited from all
kinds of perspectives. There’s just this great angle of this
guy who’s known for one thing who’s going to reinvent
himself in a completely different character. I think at the time
we likened it to John Travolta in Pulp Fiction.
SE: I knew that casting Fitz would be easier than casting
Larry. There was the potential for that character to become
irritating, sanctimonious and cartoony. Noreen was kind
enough to talk a friend of hers, an amazing casting director,
Libby Goldstein, into helping us out in Los Angeles. Mike and
I flew down [to L.A.] and Ernie Grunwald came in and just
blew us away. He created Larry in the room.
BY KATIE BAILEY
FIRST SEASON
SF: I’ll probably get shot for saying this, but it was
actually incredibly easy. First of all, the show is
heavily serialized. We were really able to go the
distance and come up with our most outlandish
dream plots because we knew that we had a very
solid, very truthful emotional core at the centre and
once we had locked into that tone, it really flowed
very easily.
THE BROADCASTER
SE: Once [TMN] bought this show, they said, “we
trust you, we love it, the cast is working, go for it.”
They have been very mindful about reading scripts,
being sensitive to story lines and signing off on every
stage but never have they gotten in the way of the
vision of the show. And I just don’t think that happens
very often. Certainly not in my career, it hasn’t.
MS: I think from the get-go, everyone bought in
and because we were all buying into the same
show, it evolved out of that quite naturally.
NH: In all fairness, I remember a lot of discussions
at the beginning: is this man really his conscience?
What is he? Is this real? Is it fantasy? Once some
of those key decisions are made, everyone stuck to
them. That really was the key — everyone bought
into the vision. If you’ve got that, then everyone
gets to make the show that they want to make. The
challenge is always when people don’t buy in and
then start doubting themselves.
26/08/11 5:01 PM
SELLING THE SALESMAN
NH: From an international standpoint, the show has done really well.
At MIP and MIPCOM, Mike, Teza, Jason and Sheri have come to the
markets and...people love it. It’s a really good lesson in that sometimes
we are afraid to let things that are a little too edgy move forward.
It’s selling around the world — there was recently a sale in the
U.S. to Direct TV. Jason is a recognizable star around the world and
that has helped hugely. I think, though, that it’s very unique. It’s a
weird, odd, fabulously original show. And people like that — they like
something different.
MS: The audience continued to grow as well, which is always a good
indicator. Not only were people were coming back who had seen it
before but new people were discovering it all the way through. We
started off really strong and ended even stronger.
NH: it’s been a great show for eOne because it’s a really edgy show
for us. We’ve had a lot of development and production in Canada
that has been more traditional. We’ve had a lot of success on the
conventional networks and I think that this is a show for us that we’re
extremely proud of — it really pushes the boundaries, it’s a show that
sits in our catalogue well, alongside a show like Hung.
The only other thing I would add is that I do think a huge compliment
goes out to TMN and Movie Central. The show was developed by
executives who left somewhere around the first season and it was
kept going by new executives who embraced the show as their own.
It’s a great sign when a new team comes in and still believes in the
show and wants to embrace it and make it their own.
Jason Priestley, Sheri Elwood and Michael Souther on the Fitz set. “I can’t imagine anyone else playing Fitz,” says Elwood of Priestley.
39
ETM LTD
CONGRATULATES
OUR 2011
GEMINI NOMINEES.
DAVID ADJEY,
RACHEL BLANCHARD,
MAGGIE CASTLE,
PHYLLIS ELLIS,
MATT GORDON,
CHRIS LEAVINS,
TIM ROZON,
GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS
and KATHRYN WINSLOW
Contact: PAUL HEMREND, ANGELA WRIGHT, DAVID DUNSTAN,
LISA DEMEO, PAUL SMITH and EDNA KHUBYAR
www.etmltd.com
PB.20002.Edna.indd 1
[email protected]
416 413 7800 t
416 413 7804 f
26/08/11
3:04 PM
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25/08/11 3:32 PM
26/08/11 5:01 PM
Roger Abbott
(Photo: CBC)
Playback is proud to present the 2011 inductees into the Canadian
Film & Television Hall of Fame. This year, we honour six iconic
Canadians: former CBC president Pierre Juneau, filmmaker Denis
Héroux, animator Frédéric Back, Air Farce co-founder Roger
Abbott, Just for Laughs founder Gilbert Rozon and actor Tantoo
Cardinal. Also, Republic of Doyle creator Allan Hawco, writer
Adam Barken and CBC host George Stroumboulopoulos are being
recognized for their oustanding achievements.
The Hall of Fame ceremony will be presented in association
with the CBC on Sept. 15 at the Glenn Gould Theatre in Toronto.
Inductees were chosen by a panel of jurists including: SCGC
executive director Maria Topalovich, CBC’s EVP of English
Services Kirstine Stewart, Paperny Films’ David Paperny, Park Ex
Pictures founder and producer Kevin Tierney, DHX Media chair
and CEO Michael Donovan, TIFF executive director and COO
Michele Maheux and ACTRA’s Art Hindle.
Denis Héroux
(Photo: Université de Montréal)
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“Pierre Juneau is a cultural warrior. Under
his leadership, his profound and sustained
commitment to the principles of public
broadcasting helped to protect and redefine CBC/
SRC at a critical time in its evolution,”
— Maria Topalovich, executive director,
Screen Composers Guild of Canada
PIERREJUNEAU
Although he wouldn’t have known it then, Pierre
Juneau’s first brush with politics would come in
1940s Paris, France, where, as a student, he would
meet future Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Although
some credited his ’80s term as president of the CBC
to the friendship he struck up with Trudeau during
that time, Juneau’s mark on the Canadian TV and
film business started with his ascension through the
ranks at the NFB starting in the late 1940s.
As the NFB’s head of French production, he saw
the board functioning, he reckons, 90% in English.
He told Don Mulholland, the organization’s director
of planning and operations, that the distinctness of
French Canada needed to be officially recognized.
“I convinced him the situation didn’t make sense
— that there ought to be an Anglophone side and
a French side, and that I should be autonomous,”
Juneau recalls. “From then on there were two
sections that worked closely together, but I made my
own decisions.”
At the CRTC he was tasked with enforcing the
1968 Broadcasting Act that called for substantial
airtime for homegrown programming and an end to
foreign control of Canadian-based broadcasters.
“He was seen as a tough regulator,” says John
Hylton, CRTC general counsel under Juneau. “He was
a wonderful person to work for. He let his staff have a
lot of responsibility; it meant that he trusted us to do
what he felt needed to be done.”
In a bid to end American and British influence in
the system, the CRTC stipulated that broadcasters
could be no more than 20% foreign-owned.
“I must give credit to the government, which
had been studying that question. It’s amazing the
amount of foreign control there was at that time,”
Juneau recalls.
In the early 1970s, he and his staff proposed, and
subsequently implemented, guidelines demanding
broadcasters air 60% Canadian TV programming
overall and 30% Canadian music on AM radio,
despite protestations from the Canadian Association
of Broadcasters. The local recording industry was
so grateful it named its annual awards show, the
Juno Awards, in his honour. It was also a period in
which the CRTC had to figure out how to regulate
burgeoning cable TV.
Although Juneau and Trudeau were friends, they
did not always see eye to eye. Soon after Juneau
BY MARK DILLON
took over at CBC, the prime minister requested three
nights of CBC airtime to discuss his new budget. The
pubcaster thought it disastrous to pre-empt so much
programming, but its hands were tied.
“The law was clear that the prime minister had
the right to speak his mind if he had an issue he
considered serious,” Juneau says. “It was a difficult
decision for me. I read the law and consulted my
lawyers. The conclusion was that he had the right to
ask for that, and he did it.”
Then, in 1984, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive
Conservatives came to power.
“There was some worry the new government would
not be pleased that I was the president and that it
might affect their decisions when it came to their
budgets,” Juneau says.
It was widely believed Juneau’s association with
Trudeau would work against him, and several friends
and colleagues recommended he step down. He told
them, “I represent the independence of the CBC and
they can do whatever they like.”
What the government did was cut $75 million
from the CBC’s budget, resulting in 750 layoffs. The
pubcaster had anticipated the cuts, however, and had
started quietly reducing administrative expenses to
lessen the impact on programming.
Despite this hardship, Juneau enjoyed many
successes at CBC/Radio-Canada, including stellar
ratings for programs such as Degrassi Junior High
and Lance et Compte. He aimed for Cancon levels of
95% and oversaw progress of the CBC’s Canadian
Broadcasting Centre, which would open its doors
in 1993. Also under his watch, CBC Newsworld
(now CBC News Network) launched in 1989. He
was interviewed on the cable channel’s inaugural
broadcast, his last day on the job.
Franklin Delaney, who worked with Juneau at
the BBG, CRTC and then CBC as VP of French TV,
characterizes Juneau as a demanding but pleasant
boss. “He was very committed and passionate about
Canadian programming, Canadian music and public
service,” Delaney says.
And he still is. Eighty-eight-year-old Juneau remains
highly focused on the pubcaster’s present state.
“I don’t like everything, of course,” he admits. “But
I’m worried about the [government] financing. I’m
very much [in support of] the CBC.”
BIOGRAPHY
Juneau’s distinguished career began at the NFB in 1949 as
Montreal district representative, and by 1964 he had become the
film board’s director of French-language production. In 1960, he
cofounded and presided over the Festival International du Film de
Montréal, a precursor to the city’s current cinematic celebration.
In 1966, he was named vice chair of the Board of Broadcast
Governors, the radio and TV regulator at the time. When that body
was replaced two years later by the CRTC (then known as the
Canadian Radio-Television Commission) he was its first chair. After
his departure in 1975, he entered federal politics and held posts
as undersecretary of state and deputy minister of communications,
followed by his seven-year term as president of CBC/Radio-Canada
starting in 1982.
41
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HALL OF FAME
“Denis Héroux is a Renaissance filmmaker. Not only
did he make culturally relevant and accessible films
but he also looked at the larger marketplace and
seized the opportunities that were emerging. Look
at the first big Canadian coproductions, Atlantic
City and Quest for Fire: he reached out beyond the
borders of Quebec to produce films that would be
seen around the world. I recently watched his early
“maple leaf porno” hit, Valérie — it’s still fun, fresh,
sexy and whimsical. Héroux paved the way for the
next generation of producers and entrepreneurs like
myself who aren’t tethered to the CBC or the NFB.
Like him, we make our own films and get them out
to the world.”
— David Paperny, founder and producer, Paperny Films
BIOGRAPHY
DENISHÉROUX
Photo: Université de Montréal
Denis Héroux is a groundbreaking producer and director, whose movies
have won awards at film festivals in Cannes, Venice, Montreal and Toronto,
made investors millions of dollars and garnered Oscars, Genies and
Césars. He’s worked successfully with Denys Arcand, author Brian Moore,
French New Wave icon Claude Chabrol, Burt Lancaster, Robert Lantos,
Quebec’s legendary cinematographer and director Michel Brault, Donald
Sutherland — and helped to discover Donald’s son Kiefer and Tommy
Chong’s daughter Rae Dawn. A recipient of the Order of Canada, Héroux
produced the viciously dark thriller Violette Noziere starring a teenaged
Isabel Huppert, Louis Malle’s acclaimed romantic character study Atlantic
City, the “prehistoric film” Quest for Fire, the coming-of-age Depression-era
drama The Bay Boy and the immensely important Quebecois family tale Les
Plouffe. And if all that was not enough, Héroux along with Lantos, Stephen
Roth and John Kemeny, is one of the founders of Alliance, one of Canada’s
leading distributors and producers for more than 25 years.
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To accomplish such a storied resumé, Héroux had to be very confident as well as talented. His account of
how he recruited the gifted veteran Brault to shoot Seul ou avec d’autres, the debut feature for Denys Arcand,
Stéphane Venne and himself, reveals much about the man.
“I didn’t know how to operate a camera,” recalls Héroux. “I read in the newspaper that Michel Brault had just
come back from France where he’d made Chronique d’un été with Jean Rouch. So I put a nickel in the pay
phone and called him at the NFB. I said, ‘I’m making a film with my partners. We’d like to you to be our DOP.’
He asked if we had any expertise, and I said, ‘No, but we have a scenario and we know what we want to do.’
He said, ‘Why me?’ And I said, ‘We want the best and that’s what you are. It’s that simple.’”
Héroux remembers, with a trace of wonderment, that the film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival.
“We were already there — among the best. But our film was made in a kind of New Wave style. I realized
that we had to make cinema that was popular — that would reach the people — but always with quality.
That’s why my first [solo] movie, Valérie, was a film with nudity.”
After his erotic follow-up L’initiation, Héroux spent the ‘70s producing “comedies and popular movies,”
developing professional relationships with foreign investors while wooing the CFDC, the precursor to Telefilm,
for financial support. He produced the Jodie Foster horror film The Little Girl who Lives Down the Lane and
films by Chabrol (Blood Relatives, Violette Noziere).
Teaming up with producer John Kemeny and finding the right properties made all the difference. Atlantic
Thinktank
42
BY MARC GLASSMAN
29/08/11
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PB.19975.
City proved to be a huge hit, with the film garnering Oscar
nominations in all major categories, from Best Director to
Best Picture.
“I forced Louis Malle to take a Canadian DOP and
soundman and so on,” says Héroux. “I told him, ‘take it
or leave it.’ But Louis did insist on John Guare, who was
a fabulous writer and Suzanne Baron, his regular editor.
[Getting Malle to agree to casting] Burt Lancaster was
difficult. We needed to raise $16 million. For tax shelter
people, Lancaster was still a name, a star. Louis wanted
James Mason, who couldn’t raise us money — he wasn’t a
big enough name.”
Héroux eventually persuaded Malle to accept Lancaster,
and his performance earned an Oscar nomination.
Kemeny and Héroux followed that success with Les
Plouffe, a feature that most Québécois assumed would be
an adaptation of the famous ’50s TV series that seemed out
of fashion in the ’80s.
“It was a fight,” remembers Héroux. “The [industry]
intellectuals were against it. When I asked Gilles Carle to
direct, at first he refused. I said to him, ‘You’re a lazy man.
Have you read the book?’ And Carle said, ‘No.’ He assumed
it was bad. So I told him ‘Read it. That’s the film we’re
going to make.’ The next morning at 7 a.m., he called me
and said. ‘I’ve read the book. I’m doing the film.’”
Les Plouffe went on to win seven of 14 Genies it was
nominated for that year, including Best Direction and Best
Screenplay.
After a very successful run in the ’80s, highlighted by
Quest for Fire, The Bay Boy and the creation of Alliance,
Héroux eventually settled down in the south of France.
Then, on his 65th birthday, he received a request from the
director of l’Université de Montréal asking him to come
home to teach cinema.
“That was 2007,” says Héroux. “I was allowed to
transform the course into what I wanted it to be. We are
now doing 50 sessions where we receive a writer, director
and producer to talk to our 25 students. [Among the guest
speakers have been Jean-Marc Vallée (Young Victoria), Yves
Simoneau (Assassin’s Creed: Lineage), Bernard Émond (La
donation) and Sophie Deraspe (Les signes vitaux).]
“The sessions are shot on video and later shown on Canal
Savoir as the series Au coeur du cinéma québécois revient.
It’s becoming a cult event; it’s repeated four times a week.
Over 1,000 broadcasts!”
Héroux pauses and then says with satisfaction: “The
audience gets to see the next generation dare to take a
chance and make their film, just like Arcand and Venne and
I did when we were at university.”
Denis Héroux directing Samantha Eggar on the set of The Uncanny (Photo:
Université de Montréal)
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HALL OF FAME
“His work resonates throughout the fabric of our
culture in Canada and is another reason why
Canadians should be proud of their culture.”
— Art Hindle, actor and ACTRA Toronto councillor
BY KEVIN RITCHIE
FRÉDÉRICBACK
BIOGRAPHY
In all facets of his lengthy career as an illustrator, animator and
artist, Frédéric Back has maintained an unwavering focus on
the preservation of the natural world. An environmental activist
since the 1960s, a time when preoccupations with animal rights,
recycling and reforestation were considered avant-garde, the
87-year-old animator remains just as impassioned today.
A two-time Academy Award winner, a knight of the Order of
Canada and member of the Order of Quebec, Back moved to
Montreal in 1948, joining Radio-Canada’s graphics division in
1952 and its nascent animation studio in 1968. His first project
with collaborator Hubert Tison was Abracadabra, a children’s
short, followed by the original screenplay for 1978’s All Nothing,
which made famous his signature hand-drawn style and
garnered the first of his four Oscar nominations.
The ‘80s brought three more shorts: Oscar winners Crac! (1981)
and The Man Who Planted Trees (1988) and the Oscar-nominated
Mighty River (1994). Having retired from animation in 1993, he
continues to create artwork for environmental organizations. This
year, his work is the subject of a massive, two-floor retrospective
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo that will travel to
Sapporo, Hiroshima and Beijing over the next year.
44
Nearly two decades after retiring as an animator, Frédéric
Back is soft-spoken, but full of conviction: “I felt a big
responsibility in trying to make the best drawing possible
with the most meaning possible,” he says of his life’s
work. “So I was very conscious.”
There’s an interesting dichotomy in Back’s best-known
films; they have a soft, impressionist-style aesthetic,
but always contain a sharp message and call to action.
Fittingly, his animation technique was born of a desire
to limit his environmental footprint while working on his
favourite film, All Nothing.
To make his drawings’ footprint smaller, he drew on frosted
acetate paper and used wax-based pencils, which gave his
films the gentle, fluid and textured look for which he is known.
“For a half-hour of film, you have to make 20,000
drawings, backgrounds and calculations,” he says.
“The films themselves are made of material that could
be recycled. I am very conscious [that] you cannot do
something without [using] anything.”
Back’s tireless work ethic and exhaustive approach have
made him legendary in his field, but have proved to be as
costly physically as they’ve been rewarding creatively.
While working on Crac! Back suffered a huge setback.
The fumes from a fixative coating got into his eye,
damaging his vision. He had two corneal implants and the
doctors insisted he take a break, but Back refused and
continued working with a magnifying glass: “I didn’t want
to stop. It was so important to continue.”
The decision would cost him his vision in one eye.
His long-time producer and collaborator, Hubert Tison
remembers in 1979 when Back’s eye filled up with blood
right before the Academy Awards in L.A. “It was dramatic
because it happened so quickly,” he says of the injury. “He
had to learn to work with one eye and it was really tough
but he succeeded. It was an épreuve [ordeal] for him.”
The five-year production for The Man Who Planted Trees,
based on French author Jean Giono’s book about a shepherd
Stories to discover.
Made in Quebec.
2011 Toronto International
Film Festival.
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who re-forests a barren valley, is an epic testament to the
director’s meticulousness. Having learned to animate with one
eye, Back worked 12- to 16-hour days, through weekends
and during vacations to finish the film. More than a creative
endeavour, the film became a test of his endurance.
“He looked for perfections. He looked for excellence,”
says Tison, who adds the scarcity of Radio-Canada
funding for animated films was a huge motivator. “When
we produced those films the first thing we had to be was
excellent because we had to be able to do the next one.”
The Man Who Planted Trees was distributed worldwide,
won an Oscar and galvanized a tree-planting movement, but
Back looks back at the film’s success somewhat ruefully.
“I always felt my film came too late compared to the
situation, which was deteriorating [quickly].”
In discussing his final film, The Mighty River, an ode to
the St. Lawrence River, he points out that a book based on
the film was published in French and Japanese but never
in English, despite the involvement of Canadian author
Farley Mowat, who championed the project to publishers.
Today, Back continues to contribute to the environmental
movement through his art and in 2008, flew to L.A. for an
exhibit of his work organized by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.
In accepting his induction into Playback’s Hall of Fame,
Back plans to use the opportunity to speak about the
cause to which he has dedicated his life’s work.
“[Prizes] have very little significance if there is no
change in the way we use the fantastic technology we
have our in hands in order to make changes in the minds
and behaviour of people,” he says.
“Why, if you like my films and the message, don’t you
make better films in order to continue the fight?” he
asks. “A film can be very funny or interesting, but [the
filmmaker] should always find a way to move people, to
make them aware of the power they have to contribute to
saving this world from disaster.”
www.sodec.gouv.qc.ca
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26/08/11
25/08/11 2:10
3:35PM
PM
PB.19902.
/11 3:35 PM
“Roger was a game changer in the
world of comedy, as was Air Farce.
They really were the forerunners
of political satire in this country —
not only was it funny, interesting
and innovative at the same time,
it actually changed the way we
looked at ourselves, which was a
tremendous gift to our audience and
the nation. Roger deserves a huge
credit for that.”
— Slawko Klymkiw, executive director, CFC
BY EMILY CLAIRE AFAN
ROGERABBOTT
Abbott is remembered fondly by audiences for
impersonating prominent Canadian figures from
Jean Chrétien to Peter Mansbridge, but he’s
also remembered for an expression that the
cast of Air Farce adopted as its motto: “There’s
no limit to what a group can achieve if you don’t
give a shit who gets the credit.”
Long-time friend and partner Don Ferguson
recalled the line at Abbott’s memorial earlier
this year, echoing Abbott’s explanation that “the
important thing for us was to get it done, not to
go around saying, ‘it was my idea.’”
The expression encapsulates not just Abbott’s
approach to comedy, but his work as well.
“That guy knew more about week-to-week
ratings than anyone in the research department;
he knew the demographic of the audience, age,
sex, all those issues that people generally didn’t
pay attention to. He was absolutely consumed
with all the details of the program and could
discuss every scheduling and audience issue,”
recalls former CBC exec and current Canadian
Film Centre executive director Slawko Klymkiw.
Abbott never showed up to a meeting without
a pad of paper to keep written records, flow
charts and diagrams of, well, everything,
Ferguson says. He was so meticulous, it
inspired a common refrain among Air Farce
crew: “Roger knows my job better than I do.”
His dedication was evident the night Air Farce
was to debut in HD, Ferguson remembers, and
an equipment malfunction almost caused the
show not to air.
“It was so incredibly frustrating, but Roger
was here with the editor and assistant director
and he stayed up all night to fix it,” he recalls.
Abbott also sought to share his passion for
the craft of showbiz, serving as the president
of the ACTRA Writers Guild Toronto Branch in
the mid-’80s, which eventually evolved into
BIOGRAPHY
When he passed away this spring from leukemia, beloved funnyman Roger
Abbott left behind a void in the Canadian comedy world. His career in satirical
and political comedy began in his early 20s as an original member of the improv
troupe The Jest Society in Montreal, a play on Pierre Trudeau’s goal of making
Canada a just society. With the addition of Don Ferguson and Luba Goy, the troupe
created The Royal Canadian Air Farce as a radio show, which launched on CBC
Radio in December 1973 and on TV in 1980. Abbott and Ferguson also co-hosted
the Easter Seals Telethon for 30 years and were known for nurturing local talent,
helming the TV program SketchCom, which featured up-and-coming sketch
comedy groups.
45
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HALL OF FAME
the Writers Guild of Canada.
Former branch president Briane Nasimok remembers that Roger would
hold a writers brunch for fellow scribes to meet and learn from each other.
“People showed up because of him,” says Nasimok. “He understood that
because of his position, he could influence other writers and the public.”
Abbott was also instrumental in helping to build the Canadian Comedy
Awards to its success today.
“Once [Roger and Don] saw it needed their assistance, they became
very involved,” recalls Nasimok.
“They were our figureheads and they helped legitimize the Comedy
Awards, [helping it evolve] from just being an in-house pat on the back.”
In a similar effort to foster the Canadian comedy scene, Ferguson and
Abbott created CBC series SketchCom to develop new talent.
“The business was very good to us and we just had to give back,” says
Ferguson. “It didn’t matter if there were people who were so new at their
careers that they virtually had no experience or if they were students
calling for advice. Roger was always taking the time to talk to them.”
And what advice would he give them?
It was advice that Ferguson feels Abbott would still give out today: “If
you have a problem that’s really eating away at you, deal with it. If you
have a script deadline that’s getting worse and worse, the only way to do
it is to sit down and write the fucking script. If you can’t fix it, let it go. Be
practical, you can’t try to achieve the impossible.”
46
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Photo: Rodney Daw
From left to right: Don Ferguson, John Morgan, Roger Abbott, Luba Goy.
25/08/11
3:40 PM
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HALL OF FAME
“Gilbert Rozon has built on one of Canada’s most plentiful natural
resources — our humour — and the result is a Canadian-based
multinational, multi-platform comedy juggernaut centred around
Juste Pour Rire (Just for Laughs). His entrepreneurial traits have
put Canada centrally on the world map, and his generosity saw
him develop Juste Pour Aider. Gilbert knows the single language
Canadians speak most eloquently is comedy.”
— Kirstine Stewart, executive vice president,
English Services, CBC
GILBERTROZON
BIOGRAPHY
When Gilbert Rozon realized that most major art forms had
their own international festivals, except comedy, he set out to
change that. The Montreal-born founding president of the Just
For Laughs/Juste Pour Rire Group started his career in events
management in 1980, creating a celebratory festival (la Grande
Virée) for the town of Lachute, QC., which attracted 60,000
people in its inaugural year. Prior to la Grande Virée, he’d
explored careers in just about everything, from law to real estate
and even as a gravedigger, but he eventually found his calling
in comedy. Just For Laughs made its debut in 1983 and as the
festival heads into its 30th anniversary, it continues to draw over
two million people to Montreal each year. Rozon has since grown
his comedy empire to include festivals in Toronto, Chicago and
Paris, TV series such as Just for Laughs Gags and Funny as Hell,
live shows featuring the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C.K.,
and talent management. He’s also involved with the Montreal
Festivals Collective, the Canadian Festivals Coalition and chairs
the Performance Committee of the Quebec tourism industry.
Call him a seducer. That’s one of the many ways that Andy
Nulman, president, festivals and TV, Just for Laughs/Juste
Pour Rire, describes his long-time business partner.
“He’s not a salesperson as much as he’s a seducer and
I mean that in the most positive of manners,” explains
Nulman. “He can throw a pair of 3-D rose-coloured
glasses on you and it’s almost like he saying, ‘Let me
show you what the promised land looks like...but you
don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’”
Nulman climbed aboard the Rozon Express in 1985
to help bring JFL to English-speaking audiences, after
its launch two years prior. Though the fest is now a
household name, Rozon is not one to rest on his laurels.
“Gilbert will always find something to improve in any
triumph,” says Nulman. “He’s always questioning, not
sitting back with a cigar and a drink. He’s almost like a
mutant cell that keeps moving, dividing, expanding.”
And that’s similar to how Rozon looks at the JFL Group
— a big machine with moving parts that work together to
function properly, but with each unit constantly trying to
top the other.
The most recent addition to JFL Group is Zoofest, a
Fringe-esque festival for all artistic genres, which he says
was created to compete with other units within the Group.
“If you have five great units that do well, maybe there
are two that impress you and there’s one you think should
be careful,” he explains. “It’s like looking at all your
Separated at birth? Just for Laughs president Andy Nulman (left)
and JFL founder Gilbert Rozon (right) hug it out.
48
children and asking them to be the best they can be.”
Rozon also created the Juste Pour Aider/Just Cause
telethon using his network of comedic talent to help raise
money for non-profit organizations, including la Maison du
Pere and Comic Relief.
Rozon’s passion is one of his most outstanding
attributes, and it can burst out in unexpected ways,
Nulman says fondly, recalling a memory from the ’80s
when Rozon felt the JFL brand was being threatened.
While working with HBO, the channel wanted to get
rid of the now-iconic JFL green mascot, and Rozon was
having none of it.
“I’ll never forget his Bruce Lee moment of frustration
— he defied the laws of physics,” remembers Nulman.
“He threw a carton of chocolate milk, kicked the garbage
can and pulled a Just For Laughs poster off the wall all
at the same time. He didn’t want anyone to mess with
his brand.”
One of Rozon’s favourite festival moments was getting
British funnyman Rowan Atkinson to agree to perform a
nonverbal act, which proved to be the very beginnings of
his legendary character, Mr. Bean.
After all these years, Rozon says he remains fascinated
by comedy, which he says evokes one of our most
visceral reactions.
“It’s different from any form of art because you have
an opinion right away and it affects you on a physical,
emotional and intellectual level,” he explains. “When was
the last time you laughed too much? You never say, ‘Oh, I
laughed so much today, so next week I should be careful.
“When it comes to good comedy, there’s never enough.”
PB.HOF.2011.indd
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26/08/11 10:39 AM
HALL OF FAME
“Tantoo Cardinal is an inspiring example of someone
who has focused her formidable talent to tell tough
stories, transforming the way people see and
understand important issues. That’s a powerful career
that should be recognized and celebrated.”
— Michèle Maheux, executive director/COO,
Toronto International Film Festival
TANTOOCARDINAL
BIOGRAPHY
For over three decades, Tantoo Cardinal has
dedicated her life to the arts and ensuring that
Aboriginal Peoples are well represented within them.
As an actress, some of her most notable credits
include roles in the films Black Robe, Loyalties,
Education of Little Tree, Smoke Signals, Legends of
the Fall and Where the Rivers Flow North, as well
as television roles in Canada: A People’s History,
Moccasin Flats and North of 60, for which she won
a Gemini award. She is also a founding member of
the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company, which
encourages young Aboriginal people to express their
creativity and get in touch with their heritage. For
all of her artistic endeavours, Cardinal has received
many accolades and honours. In 2010 she was
inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada for
her contributions to the “growth and development of
Aboriginal performing arts in Canada.” Earlier this
year, ACTRA chose to honour Cardinal for the 100th
anniversary of International Women’s Day. She has
also received an Outstanding Lifetime Achievement
award from Women in Film and Television (WIFT),
a National Aboriginal Achievement Award and four
honorary doctorates in various artistic fields.
50
A highlight was 1998’s Smoke Signals, a modern and compelling
story about the lives of a community on a Canadian reserve.
The all-aboriginal cast and modern viewpoint led many
to consider the film a breakthrough for Canada’s aboriginal
filmmaking community.
One of her greatest prides is seeing her son, Cliff Cardinal,
become part of the arts community himself as an up-and-coming
writer. One of the best ways to change a prevailing viewpoint is to
become part of the conversation, she says.
And Cliff is doing just that, having recently penned and staged
his first play, Stitch, through Toronto’s SummerWorks festival.
Cardinal is joyful when she talks about her son’s pursuit of the arts.
“We have so many young people that are doing wonderful
things, but unfortunately society doesn’t hear about them very
much,” she says. “They hear about all the troubles and the toils
and the horrors, but we have some young people that are just
brilliant and wonderful and beautiful. That’s very exciting to see
that happening.”
She knows, however, that her son has entered a tough business.
“To be an artist, in many ways you have to be a warrior,” she
says. “You have to make major decisions. You have to stick with
things even though the rest of the world might be in horror and
turmoil, but that’s our agreement when we decide that we’re going
to be artists. We’re working with the human experience and it
seems to me that we’re thrown into some experiences just so that
we’re more aware. We’re able to share stories in a stronger way
by having some understanding, compassion and experience.”
An activist to this day, Cardinal continues to fight for what she
believes is right. On Aug. 23, 2011, she and fellow Canuck actor
Margot Kidder were briefly arrested outside the White House while
protesting the construction of a pipeline from Alberta to Texas.
PB.19896.PlanetinFocus.Ad.indd 1
PB.HOF.2011.indd 50
As Neil Diamond’s 2009 NFB documentary Reel Injun expressed,
Aboriginal Peoples are some of the earliest stars of film but
were quickly stereotyped as “noble savages,” the enemy of the
cowboy and alcoholic down-and-outs. And when it came to
aboriginal women, roles were limited to those simulating the
fictionalized Pocahontas legend.
These are the kinds of stereotypes Tantoo Cardinal has been
working against since she started acting.
Raised in Anzac, Alberta, Cardinal discovered acting as a young
aboriginal rights activist. Cast in a small role in a docudrama, she
realized she loved the art of storytelling and saw the potential for
the evolution of roles for aboriginal women in film.
As opposed to being plotted, her acting career has followed
her heart, she says, choosing to go where the “creative force”
moves her.
One of her favourite characters she’s portrayed is Bangor from
Where the Rivers Flow North. A servant and lover to Rip Torn’s
stubborn 1920’s lumberjack, Bangor is a layered character that
reminded Cardinal of the many women who raised her and with
whom she grew up.
“[She] was part of a world that not a lot of people were aware
of,” says Cardinal.
However, she notes that throughout her career she has
been battling the prevailing attitude that if a role is to go to an
aboriginal person, there needs to be an explanation for why the
character is aboriginal.
“That’s a frustration,” she says. “Rather than accepting that
we’re a part of this society, that we’re a part of the mesh,
[there’s always a rationalization],” she says.
Now in her 60s, Cardinal has seen attitudes and awareness
around Aboriginal Peoples change since the beginning of her career.
BY LINDSAY GIBB
26/08/11 2:42 PM
26/08/11 2:55 PM
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29/08/11 3:02 PM
HALL OF FAME
PLAYBACK OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:
ALLANHAWCO
When Allan Hawco was in his early 20s, he wrote a list of what
he wanted to accomplish in his career by the time he was
33. While he admits to throwing the list out at around age 30
because it was too much pressure, somehow in the following
three years all those career to-dos happened, the biggest of
which would be his roles as executive producer, showrunner
and creator of the successful CBC drama Republic of Doyle, a
show he first had the idea for when he was 19.
The Playback Outstanding Achievement Award recognizes
young talent who have made a significant contribution to the
Canadian film and television industry but are too young to be
inducted to the Hall of Fame. With over a decade of acting credits
in both film and television, and his achievements with Doyle, the
bar has been set high by the multi-tasking Hawco.
“Writing, acting and producing was always the path that I
knew to take if I wanted to have a truly fulfilling career,” he
says. “Sometimes I feel the writing and the stress of producing
keeps me from thinking too much about my acting work and
allows me to be truly in the moment.”
BY SIOFAN DAVIES
Regularly watched by a million people in Canada alone, not
to mention its distribution to 96 countries, Republic of Doyle
shows off a slice of Canada — St. John’s — at its best.
Kevin Tierney, a producer on the Hawco-starrer Love
& Savagery, nominated the Newfoundland actor for the
Award. When asked what sparked the nomination, Tierney
easily rattles off Hawco’s winning attributes, from his charm
to his drive, but it’s clear his choice speaks to a larger
accomplishment.
“To invest your time and energy into staying in Canada and
doing this is to be applauded,” he says. “The fact that he took
that gamble and that he’s winning — hats off.”
Hawco has no plans to write a new, post-30, list — not
even one including the Hall of Fame — but when asked about
his legacy, he says he’d rather think about the mark he’s
making right now: “I like the idea that I am contributing to this
fantastic community that we’re a part of — I feel so lucky that
I am able to add my two cents and help push the ball forward
for the greater good of all.”
Allan Hawco is co-creator, showrunner and producer on CBC’s Republic
of Doyle, in addition to being a part of the writing team.
PANAVISION AWARD:
ADAMBARKEN
Two of a kind? Adam Barken, one of 2010’s 10 to Watch, accepts his award from Panavision’s Stewart Aziz
at Playback’s 4th Annual Canadian Film & Television Hall of Fame.
52
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Since being named to Playback’s 10 to Watch
2010 list, screenwriter Adam Barken has had a
year full of development — literally.
The Whitby, ON.-based scribe earned a
spot on the list last year for landing story
editing and writing gigs on Flashpoint and
Rookie Blue and earning a Writers Guild of
Canada Screenwriting Award for an episode of
Flashpoint.
Barken has since served as a consulting
producer for Blue and returned to Flashpoint
to pen several eps for its latest season. In the
meantime, his plate has been full: he wrote a
CBC pilot earlier this year, is currently in the
early stages of co-writing another for CTV and
has a third show in development with Global.
Being one of the 10 to Watch has also been a
career boost for the screenwriter, Barken says.
“It was something that people would mention
in meetings going forward,” he explains. “It’s
the kind of thing that producers pay attention
to and it was really amazing to be in that
company.”
As for what’s next, Barken still has his sights
set on exploring his love for drama, and intends
to continue both teaming up with other writers
and pushing forward with his own material. But
he’s also aiming for a bigger goal: producing.
With the successes of Flashpoint and Rookie
Blue outside the Canadian market, he’s eyeing
the potential to bring his future projects to
international broadcasters.
“Ultimately the goal is to have your shot and
to have your voice heard on as large a stage as
possible,” he says. “There’s still a huge amount
for me to learn, so hopefully one day I’ll have
the opportunity to run the ship myself.”
Barken is repped by The Alpern Group.
25/08/11
26/08/11 3:58
2:11 PM
PM
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Film Conference
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The Only Film Market in Hollywood
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HALL OF FAME
SWAROVSKI HUMANITARIAN AWARD:
BY KATIE BAILEY
GEORGESTROUMBOULOPOULOS
Stroumboulopoulos in Pakistan’s Swat Valley on
Feb. 26, 2011 (Photo: CBC)
54
Celebrity and charity often go hand in hand, but true dedication to a
cause is a rarer breed. In recognition of the individuals from the film
and television industry whose efforts go above and beyond, Playback
has established the annual Humanitarian Award, sponsored in its
inaugural year by Swarovski, whose charitable mission is to bring
clean water to developing countries, with a focus on children.
Our first recipient of the Humanitarian Award is CBC’s George
Stroumboulopoulos, a fixture in the Canadian television industry
since 2000 and radio host since 1993. As host of George
Stroumboulopoulos Tonight and The Hour prior to that, Strombo’s
youthful look and vibrant personality make him a direct conduit to
television’s most sought-after audience, the 18- to 34-year-olds.
An advocate for many causes throughout his career,
Stroumboulopoulos was in 2011 named an Ambassador Against
Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The first
Canadian to hold the title, Stroumboulopoulos is charged with raising
awareness of global food issues with Canadians.
The UN post was not one he accepted lightly, he explains.
“It’s a humbling thing. I spent almost a year thinking about it. I wanted
to carefully consider what I thought I could bring to this discussion.”
The first media personality to represent WFP, Stroumboulopoulos
says his goal is largely to continue to do what he and his team at
George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight already does: seek to engage
audiences with the issues surrounding global food resources and
contribute to the conversation on a domestic and international level.
In addition to domestic projects in development, Stroumboulopoulos’
international presence extends to travelling to regions where food
resources are in crisis, due to external factors such as politics or as
a result of natural disaster. CBC chronicled his February 2011 trip to
Pakistan, where he met with locals and regional WFP workers to better
understand the issues plaguing the region after the floods of 2010.
Seeing others’ experiences first-hand was a critical part of gaining
insight into the effects of food crises, he says.
“A lot of what you’re doing is asking people to come along with you
on a journey like this,” he explains. “So you need to go see it first-hand.
You go and pick up the humanity and the nuance of the situation.”
Food and nutrition are basic human rights, he says, and he’s proud
to be working with a team of people in pursuit of achieving that for all.
“To me, food aid is a health and justice issue — people having a
fair shot. Everyone has a right to justice and a fair shot at life.”
Want to give it your best shot?
We’ve got what you’re looking for.
CBC TV Archive Sales, a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has
been a leading source of footage for broadcasters, independent documentary
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entire English-language collection.
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PB.HOF.2011.indd 54
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25/08/11 3:59 PM
10
0
10
2
WATCH
Each year, Playback puts out a call for the industry to recommend its best and brightest
up-and-coming talent for our 10 to Watch list. With over 100 nominations this year, including
only 10 seemed impossible — virtually every nominee deserved to be on the list. The selection
represented here is the culmination of careful consideration by Playback’s editorial jury, in
association with film, TV and interactive industry execs and organizations. Having already made
a splash, these talented 10 are poised for great things.
PROFILES BY EMILY CLAIRE AFAN, ROSE BEHAR AND KATIE BAILEY
NOMINATION LOGISTICS AND RESEARCH BY EMILY CLAIRE AFAN
JASON AND RYAN
BELLEVILLE
SCREENWRITERS &
PRODUCERS
Hometown: Calgary
Agency: United Talent Agency, Los Angeles
Big break: Creating, writing and producing Showcase’s Almost Heroes
THE BUZZ: Hailing from a family of entertainment pros, the brothers are quick to say they’re at their funniest
when they work together. Both have achieved success in different fields in the TV biz with Jason screenwriting
and producing for FX’s Testees and CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairie, and Ryan as a stand-up act and comic
actor in Fox’s Life on a Stick and 2008’s Finn on the Fly. Earlier this year, the duo found themselves in Toronto
together and between projects — the next thing they knew, they found themselves with a deal for Almost Heroes.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE COMEDY OF ALMOST HEROES?
Jason: We don’t have a mean bone in our bodies, comedy-wise. We wanted to create a family within our
characters, something that everyone can relate to. Our favourite shows aren’t necessarily hip or edgy.
Ryan: We don’t want our show to have humour that you have to watch twice to understand — we want broad stuff.
Sometimes we’re wrong, but it’s a fast-paced comedy, so if there’s something that doesn’t work, well, on the next joke.
TELL US ABOUT DEVELOPING THE SCRIPT. WHO WERE YOU HOPING TO REACH?
Jason: We aren’t doing a show for boomers or teenagers, it’s for people who haven’t figured things out yet,
people who are 20 to 30 years old…I think with our comic shop in this little crappy strip mall, we found
the perfect setting for some fantastic characters. There’s an instinct to have nothing really matter to sitcom
characters these days, for them to be very glib, but we think ideally, audiences would be invested in our characters.
HOW DO YOUR PERSONALITIES BALANCE OUT IN YOUR WORK?
Jason: I’m more serious, Ryan reminds me to have more fun. I remind him that we need to actually get the work done.
Ryan: More silly, I wouldn’t say fun.
Jason: Yeah, you’re no fun. Ryan has more guts; he makes me push the envelope. RB
Hometown: Toronto
Agency: Creative Drive Artists / William Morris Endeavor Entertainment
Big break: David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method
SARAH GADON
ACTOR
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THE BUZZ: The 24-year-old kicked off her acting career at age 11 with an appearance in La Femme Nikita in 1998,
followed by roles in Canadian and U.S. TV series such as Being Erica, The Border, Happy Town and Total Drama Island.
But, she professes, her first love is film and it’s a passion she’s been indulging to widespread recognition. In the past
two years, she’s seen her name appear on the credits for Jim Sheridan’s Dream House, Mary Harron’s The Moth Diaries
and two David Cronenberg films: A Dangerous Method, in which she plays psychologist Carl Jung’s wife Emma, and
Cosmopolis, as heartthrob Robert Pattinson’s love interest.
YOU’VE REALLY EXPLODED ONTO THE FEATURE FILM SCENE. WHAT’S CHANGED IN YOUR APPROACH TO ACTING?
When you’re a younger actor, you’re just trying to get experience, but when you transition into being an adult, and develop
your values as an artist, you can say things like “I really want to work with auteur directors who have an interesting
vision, and aren’t tainted by studios or people or big-name producers.” So last year, I worked with Sheridan, Herron and
Cronenberg. Those kind of choices aren’t just, “oh lucky me.” They are conscious choices I’m trying to make.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH SUCH WELL-KNOWN CASTS?
For A Dangerous Method, I cast off tape then I found myself on a flight to Germany. I’d never met [David Cronenberg]
until our camera test and there were no rehearsals. I was beside myself, working with actors like Keira Knightley and
Viggo Mortensen and then to have the added layer of David Cronenberg, it was surreal. I don’t know how I did that!
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR CAREER EVOLVE IN THE FUTURE?
I’m a cinephile. If I can, I will always keep working in film. But will film always pay the bills? I don’t know, but I’m trying
to find that balance between art and commerce. Everyone struggles with that, whether you’re an actor, writer or director.
I’m trying to do projects that I think are interesting, and I’m definitely not opposed to TV. ECA
(Photo: Caitlin Cronenberg)
26/08/11 12:17 PM
Hometown: Toronto
Big break: The Whistleblower
Agency: United Talent Agency
LARYSA
KONDRACKI
DIRECTOR
THE BUZZ: Toronto-born director Kondracki made big waves last year at TIFF with her still-unfinished feature,
The Whistleblower, a film she started working on as her masters thesis at Columbia University. Fast-forward a year, and
Kondracki is jetting around the world promoting the premiere of the thriller, which follows a UN worker, played by Rachel
Weisz, who helps uncover a sex-trafficking ring in post-war Bosnia. Since she first started working on it as a student in
2003, Kondracki has been on a roller coaster ride, having her first feature attract not only two Oscar-winning actresses
(Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave) but win international distribution and critical acclaim.
TELL US ABOUT DEBUTING THE WHISTLEBLOWER AT TIFF LAST YEAR.
We got it as a very last-minute opportunity. We didn’t know if the film would be presentable but because Christine
[Piovesan, the film’s producer] and I are Canadian, we really wanted to do it. It was one of those 18-hour, working
around the clock things to get the tape finished. We put it out three hours before it was due. It was all temp score, the
sound wasn’t mixed — the picture wasn’t even totally locked either. But it ended up brilliant. The Elgin was packed
and we sold the film.
LOOKING BACK, WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED DURING THIS JOURNEY THAT YOU’LL CARRY FORWARD?
Everything and nothing! I’ve learned not to give up. That’s what a lot of people said to me: a lot of people are going to
fall out along the way or won’t continue, but don’t give up. Everything about this was kind of a last-minute thing. After
all those years it was suddenly a phone call on a Friday and Rachel [Weiss] said yes and I was packing on Sunday and
we hadn’t even scouted Romania before we got there. You also learn that there are things you can’t control but in a
weird way that’s where the energy comes from.
WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO A STORY OR A SCRIPT?
It needs to be something you just can’t stop thinking about. Because if you’re not 100% committed, you’ll never get
it done. And if for some reason you get the opportunity to do it, you won’t do a good job. So I think it just has to be
something that grabs you. For me, I look for originality and a challenge. We’re now working on a kind of epic horror,
set in the WWII-era Soviet Union. There are still fundamentally important scenes underneath [like Whistleblower] but
this time I want to do something totally different. KB
Hometown: Toronto
Agency: Meridian Artists
Big break: HBO Canada’s Less Than Kind
JENN ENGELS
SCREENWRITER
THE BUZZ: Although Engels has been everything from Bay Street businesswoman to stand-up comedian in her career,
she always kept her underutilized English Lit degree in the back of her mind. Seizing the day in 2006, Engels joined the
Canadian Film Centre’s screenwriting program and earned a Global Apprenticeship Award from the Banff World Media
Festival in 2007. Shortly after that, she began a three-season run on Less Than Kind, which earned her two Gemini
nods as well as a Writers Guild of Canada award nomination. She’s now penning scripts for CBC spy farce InSecurity.
WHAT DID YOU FIND WAS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN BREAKING INTO THE WRITING WORLD?
It takes a lot of perseverance. I think one of the things I learned from acting was that you have to develop a thick skin,
because your job description is to go to auditions for roles that [statistically] you’re just not going to get. So I think in
this field as well, you have to be rigorous about looking at your skill set and seeing what needs enhancing.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMEDIC WRITERS IN CANADA?
I think they’re good. It seems like [Canadian] networks really want half-hours. Comedy is always in demand. And
there’s also a very strong animation industry in this country. Judging from the people that I graduated from the [CFC]
with, there were a lot of writers trying to make it into drama writing, which can be harder to crack. So you’ve got lots of
opportunity if you want to be a comedy writer.
YOU’VE SEEN A LOT OF SUCCESS IN A FEW SHORT YEARS. WHAT’S YOUR SECRET?
Riding on the coattails of others? I used to be in this sketch comedy group and we weren’t very good, but our shows were a
lot of fun. Our motto was “ride on the coattails of others,” because we would invite great stand-up comics to do sets between
our lousy sketches and nights turned out really well, largely because of these comics. Really, my success is because I’ve been
working with amazing people and I’ve been learning a lot from them. It’s such a collaborative experience and job. RB
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LINDSAY GEORGE
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Hometown: Vancouver
Big break: Terry Miles’ A Night for Dying Tigers
Upcoming projects: Web series The True Heroines, docu-drama East Side
Pharmacy and Canadian/Cuban copro Three Days in Havana
THE BUZZ: George may only be four years in to the world of cinematography, but she’s already made a big impression
on the Canadian film scene. She studied film at UBC and started working professionally in 2007 with the debut of The
Porcelain Man, a short directed by UBC classmate Mark Ratzlaff, which earned her a Leo for Best Cinematography
in a Short Drama. Since then, she’s jumped from indie to indie, including the Ratzlaff-directed Voodoo starring Colm
Feore, and a recent co-directing credit on short Run Dry. This year, she nabbed a Women in Film & Television Award
for excellence in cinematography and two more Leo nominations.
WHAT’S THE SECRET TO YOUR SUCCESS?
I worked for free a lot at the beginning, and that’s really been the reason I’ve gotten as far as I have — because
people have seen my passion for it outside of the financial aspect of film. My advice would be to volunteer until people
start to see you love what you do.
WHAT’S ONE OF THE MOST CHALLENGING PROJECTS YOU’VE WORKED ON?
Voodoo, the short I shot on Super 16mm black and white. It was a challenging medium to shoot with and the project
was set in the 1940s, which challenged me to look at the style of the films from back then and really analyze which of
the techniques from that time period I wanted to bring into the piece.
WHO INSPIRES YOU?
It sounds so cliché, but Roger Deacon is a huge influence as a DP. Even though he does so many films he’s really good
at pinpointing the specific styles of the films rather than just overlaying a certain style that he has onto any film. RB
Hometown: Waterloo, ON
Big break: Critter Crunch
Upcoming projects: Project Grindstone (working title)
NATHAN VELLA
CO-FOUNDER
AND PRESIDENT,
CAPYBARA GAMES
58
THE BUZZ: With Vella at the helm, Toronto-based independent game developer Capy has gone from licensed titles
(Cars, American Idol) to reaching its goal of developing original IP. The Ryerson University film school grad kicked off
his career as an editor at prodco Marblemedia before co-founding Capy in 2003. Since then, he and his team have
steadily built an international reputation launching attention-getting and successful projects such as Critter Crunch,
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and most recently, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.
WHAT HAS MADE YOUR APPROACH TO INDIE GAME DEVELOPMENT SO SUCCESSFUL?
People are always talking about how to hit these wider demos, but we weren’t trying to do that with [a game like]
Sworcery. My mentality is to get 100% of the attention of 10% of people, rather than [the other way around]; I’d rather
have a loyal interest from a smaller group than a few people in a giant pool. We knew we weren’t going to be Angry
Birds, but we thought if we could provide something genuine and soulful for 50,000 people, then the game would be a
real success. We’re about to hit a quarter-million in sales.
DID YOUR EXPERIENCE IN FILM AND TV INFLUENCE YOUR WORK IN THE GAMES BUSINESS?
I think people try to make more correlations between film, TV and games than there actually are. Games are a
120-mile-per-hour head-on collision between creative and technical — you have to work together to turn these crazy
ideas into lines of code or coloured pixels. The best games are made by the best teams, not the best individuals.
WHAT’S WITH ALL THE BUZZ AROUND INDIE GAMES AND DEVELOPMENT THESE DAYS?
It’s a great way to make projects: it’s inexpensive and provides a lot of opportunity on the business side. If you can
make a game for $500,000 or $1 million and that game can hit three platforms, it doesn’t need to sell that many
units to be profitable. It will make the digital landscape more competitive — everyone has to step up their game. A
relatively small investment in gaming can guarantee more success than a large investment in other industries. I want
to continue to prove that it’s not as risky as it sounds. ECA
26/08/11 12:18 PM
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10
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102WATCH
Company: Echo Bay Media
Hometowns: Andre: Carlisle, ON; Scott: Brantford, ON
Upcoming projects: Descending for OLN
ANDRE DUPUIS
& SCOTT WILSON
PRODUCERS
THE BUZZ: Dupuis and Wilson launched Hamilton-based Echo Bay Media in 2001 right out of school, working
on corporate and agency video gigs until a job on a travel show sparked the idea for a show of their own. The
duo financed the demo for Departures, a true-to-life international travel show that Dupuis shoots and in which
Wilson co-stars, with student loan money and sent it to OLN in 2007. Today, Departures is three seasons
deep, won three Geminis and airs in 45 countries, becoming widely regarded as a successful and innovative
take on a well-worn genre.
DID YOU EVER EXPECT TO SEE DEPARTURES BECOME SO SUCCESSFUL?
Wilson: I remember Andre and I saying at one point, “Who the hell is going to watch this?” We went into it
thinking, “this is how everyone travels, this is what reality TV should be, regardless of whether it’s glamorous
or not.” But I think what people really saw in it was the ability to connect. We’re not actors, we are who we are
and we try to get that across.
WHAT’S UP-AND-COMING FOR ECHO BAY?
Dupuis: Descending. We like shows that start with the letter D! When Scott and I were doing Departures in
Brazil, we were scuba-diving and and once you’re in the water, you’re exploring the last frontier of the planet.
We thought, “wouldn’t it be great to do a travel exploration show that has to do with diving?” So we shot
a demo ep, OLN greenlit it and we’re halfway through shooting. (Editor’s note: Descending is slated for a
February 2012 delivery on OLN.)
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CRAZIER THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED WHILE SHOOTING?
Wilson: Recently in South Africa on Descending, there was a crazy current that caught us off guard — you
have to control your ascend or you get the bends. Our Red camera is a 75-pound beast and getting it in and
out of the water is like lifting a submarine. Basically, Andre was caught in an upswell and went up like a bullet.
It looked like he was trying to decide to save the camera or save his life. It was scary at the time, but now it’s
almost comical. ECA
Hometown: Toronto
Agency: Vanguarde Artists Management
Big break: Defendor, 2009
GEOFF
ASHENHURST
EDITOR
60
THE BUZZ: After losing two editors while directing an “epically ambitious” short in 2000, Ashenhurst bought himself
Final Cut Pro, taught himself to use it and edited the film himself, realizing in the process that he loved to edit. Working
his way up the ladder, Ashenhurst landed his first big feature gig for 2009’s Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson. The
film earned him a DGC nomination for best picture editing of a feature film, kicking off his career in features. He’s
since edited Jonathan Sobol’s Beginner’s Guide to Endings, co-edited Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower and most
recently wrapped work on The Samaritan from David Weaver.
WHAT PROMPTED THE CHANGE IN CAREER?
I’d interviewed for an assistant director gig on Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and also for an editor’s job at an ad agency before
backpacking through Europe in 2001. I liked Atom and the job was pretty alluring — and the editor job made far, far
less money — but in the end, I decided [editing] was what I wanted to pursue. Directing wasn’t creatively fulfilling for
me, unlike editing — looking at material with fresh eyes, making it work and finding the movie.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU’VE LEARNED AS A FEATURES EDITOR?
On any movie, you may think it’s great and you think you’re done, then you screen it for people, and issues emerge and
suddenly you think it sucks and then it doesn’t suck. It’s dealing with those ups and downs, which is part of any creative
process. It’s a tough thing to get through. I’ve been able to learn from those experiences and be more aware of my emotions.
HAVE YOU RUN INTO ANY SURREAL MOMENTS WHILE EDITING?
The first time I went to the Defendor set, I brought my laptop so I could show [producer Peter Stebbings] some of the
scenes. Peter called over Woody Harrelson and said, “Hey, Woody, do you want to see this stuff?” He left us alone in
a holding room and there I was, standing with Woody, showing him these scenes on the laptop and he said, “These
scenes are pretty good, man.” They were ready for him on set, but he didn’t want to leave! ECA
26/08/11 12:18 PM
Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Agency: Claire Best and Associates in L.A. (worldwide)
Big break: Dirty Girl
JEFF TOYNE
COMPOSER
THE BUZZ: This Vancouver-based, classically trained composer did his post-grad at the University of Southern California
studying film score composition. The majority of his career has seen him arranging orchestration for Hollywood
blockbusters such as Fast Five, Battle Los Angeles and 2012, but he’s recently begun pursuing his true passion of writing
music for the screen, landing his first feature composing gig on 2010’s independent film Dirty Girl, starring Milla Jovovich
and William H. Macy.
TELL US ABOUT MOVING FROM ORCHESTRATION INTO COMPOSITION.
If you’re seen as an orchestrator, people will want to put you in that category and won’t consider you for writing original
music. I’d probably be lying if I said I just did it for fun because it pays pretty well, but I’m consciously moving away from
it. Now I’m excited to orchestrate my own projects. For the last 10 years, I’ve had a two-streamed career, working in
supporting roles for movies you’ve heard of and wrote music for movies you probably haven’t heard of.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES OF WORKING ON DIRTY GIRL?
Indie films are always budget-challenged. We worked a little bit of magic to have a 35- to 40-piece orchestra play since
live musicians add so much to the film. Luckily for me in this case, I didn’t have to convince the director [Abe Sylvia] — he
wanted it right from the start. Directors generally know that an orchestra is a really effective way to tell the story. We [tend
to] have resistance with producers, as they have a hard time seeing value for dollar spend.
EVER HAD ANY UNUSUAL REQUESTS?
I try to come up with those on my own, to be honest! Film composers work in clichés — the bad guy walks on and you
hear low trombones. We have this bag of devices that audiences are subconsciously aware of, but it’s nice to create new
ideas. On Dirty Girl, Abe wanted a pedal steel guitar because the film starts in Arkansas. It’s an amazingly complex and
powerful instrument and not used in film enough because it really suffers from a country-western connotation. Any chance
to bring an instrument out of its baggage is an exciting opportunity. ECA
Hometowns: Leo: Caledon, ON; Rosen: Toronto
Company: Aircraft Pictures
Upcoming projects: The River of Blood, Hiding and Love Me and a
project with Corvid Pictures. The duo are also in development on
projects with Family Channel and CBC
ANTHONY LEO &
ANDREW ROSEN
PRODUCERS
THE BUZZ: Leo and Rosen met at the CFC Producers Lab in 2002; Rosen was working at Alliance Films and
Leo as an actor. Sharing a common passion for the TV biz, the partners launched Aircraft in 2005 with the help
of private investors. Out of the first shorts they produced, Todd & The Book of Pure Evil, eventually evolved into a
show on CTV’s Space channel. Now green-lit for a third season, Todd generated eight Gemini nominations this
year and Aircraft’s What’s Up, Warthogs! is entering its sophomore season for Family Channel.
WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO A PROJECT FROM AN INVESTMENT PERSPECTIVE?
We get excited by projects with a big picture in mind — stories that have a world rich enough to start out
as a television series but also sustain another part of the story being told as a string of feature films and
another part being told as a web series. We would rather have five projects with that amount of potential in
development than 20 separate projects each with a limited scope.
IN WHAT WAYS ARE YOU HOPING TO EVOLVE AIRCRAFT PICTURES AS A BUSINESS?
It’s a very interesting time to be a content producer. On the one hand, the prospect of being part of the first
generation of producers to have this many platforms on which to launch their content is very exciting, but on
the other hand the fear is that more platforms will amount to less financing to make the content we really
want to make. Our current business model for Aircraft involves continuing to take advantage of traditional
financing models for television and feature film projects while staying as nimble as a possible as a company
so we can always take on a project for the digital space if we believe in it — even if the financing and
revenue potential is not so apparent at the outset.
WHAT ARE THE KEY INGREDIENTS TO A SUCCESSFUL YOUTH PROPERTY?
One of our biggest mantras would have to be never dumbing-down content, whether you’re creating
programming for a nine-year-old girl or a 35-year-old guy. We’ve been fortunate to work with broadcasters
who have always encouraged us to push boundaries, which has allowed us to take the risks we needed to in
order to make something fresh while remaining true to the situation. KB and ECA
61
26/08/11 12:18 PM
BACKPAGE
THE ONE THAT
GOT AWAY...
BY KATIE BAILEY
Even at a time when celebrities get reality-show rehab and
toddlers wear tiaras on TV, some show concepts are just
too wacky to make it to market. We asked three execs
from the Canadian TV biz to tell us about the boldest
concept they ever had, or were pitched, that they really
wanted to do, but was just too crazy to make it to air.
From bikers and babes to epic disasters, these
are their favourites.
A DISASTER OF EPIC
PROPORTIONS
A STRIPPED-DOWN
TRAVEL SHOW
DEATH BY MULTIPLE
TIME ZONES
AS TOLD BY: ANN HARBRON, DIRECTOR OF
COMMISSIONING AND PRODUCTION, DISCOVERY
AS TOLD BY: CLAIRE FREELAND, DIRECTOR OF
DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION, ROGERS MEDIA
AS TOLD BY: MARK BISHOP, PARTNER
AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, MARBLEMEDIA
This is the scenario: two
screenwriters take a car trip from
San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Two “no one ever listens to
screenwriters” screenwriters.
They have a ragtop and they
decide to drive south down the
Pacific Coast highway because they are going to pitch this
show. And the show is, “what happens when a disaster
strikes Los Angeles?” So the entire trip down in the car, they
talk about all the disaster scenarios and what would happen
if they struck. So then, of course, you cut through to all
the scenarios in which the city could be destroyed:
earthquake, tsunami, infrastructure failure, all the
things that are the hallmarks of a great disaster
movie. And then they reach L.A. and — it has
happened. All of it. L.A. is decimated. And there’s
no one left to pitch!
I loved [the idea] because it had all the elements of
surprise and humour and irony and science and then
at the end, there’s no one there to receive their pitch!
It turns all the big Hollywood disaster movies on their
head. It’s a brilliant idea; it’s so brilliant — it happens!
And when they get there, all the broadcasters are
dead! I loved it that at the end, the [directors] could
tell the broadcaster, ‘oh yeah, and by the time they
get there, you’re dead!’ I wailed with laughter.
It was a show about a small
group of bikers, I think there
were four or five, that were
going to ride their bikes across
North America, looking for the
best places to ride, eat, drink,
camp — and see strippers.
The concept didn’t work for a fundamental reason: we
would never commission a show about the exhibition of
strippers. But what was good about it was
that the characters were great.
They were big, they were
unapologetic, and they were
kind, which I thought was
important. They also seemed
like the type of guys that both
women and men would like and
would watch. So the characters
were interesting and they were
an unlikely bunch and I found that
intriguing. The execution of the
piece — they had done a demo —
was produced beautifully but it just
didn’t work for us. But maybe
I liked it so much because
I was watching too much
Sons of Anarchy at
the time!
We really wanted to do something
that was live on TV and had a strong
interactive component to it that
could actually influence what was
happening on television. So a friend
of ours brought forward an idea —
over drinks and a jam session — of
developing a live, real-time improv show. It would be a sketch
comedy show that would feature a cast of improv performers,
using interactive components online and — this was five years
ago — with this crazy thing called mobile. So the audience could
truly influence the show, not just by voting, but by being able to
make meaningful suggestions [via text messaging], which the
cast would then perform live.
We called the network — it was the CBC — and as soon
as we gave them the [idea] we got a meeting right away. They
loved it and wanted to hear more. But as soon as we went in
and started pitching the idea, we realized the biggest flaw: time
zones. The hard reality was that our performers would have to do
five live shows in an evening. And as soon as you mapped out
what a schedule like that would look like, our poor performers
would be dead by the end of it. So unfortunately, the idea died
right there, which was sad, because it really took advantage
of the interactive component and it really had the opportunity
for audiences to engage. I think from the improv performance
standpoint, it would have been a ton of fun because it would
have been wacky and a really crazy, zany show.
62
PB.Backpage.2011.indd 62
26/08/11 11:20 AM
Dream
big.
Isn't that what our industry is all about? From humble beginnings in
1961 (photofinishing in grocery stores), Astral Media Inc. has become
one of Canada's leading media companies. The numbers tell the story.
Led by CEO Ian Greenberg, Astral has enjoyed 15 consecutive years of
growth and 59 back-to-back profitable quarters. In 2011, revenues will
reach $1 billion for the first time. Happy 50th to the entire Astral team
from the Rogers Communications Partnership. You've helped us see
that dreams really do come true.
® TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS A REGISTERED TRADE-MARK OF TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL INC.
CANADA
TORONTO11
CELEBRATING OVER 80 CANADIAN FILMS AT
THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL®
A DANGEROUS METHOD David Cronenberg, STARBUCK Ken Scott, TAKE THIS
WALTZ Sarah Polley, WINNIE Darrell J. Roodt Masters HARD CORE LOGO II Bruce McDonald Special
Presentations A BETTER LIFE Cédric Khan, AFGHAN LUKE Mike Clattenburg, BREAKAWAY Robert Lieberman,
CAFÉ DE FLORE Jean-Marc Vallée, EDWIN BOYD Nathan Morlando, GOON Mike Dowse, IN DARKNESS
Agnieszka Holland, KEYHOLE Guy Maddin, MONSIEUR LAZHAR Philippe Falardeau, THE MOTH DIARIES
Mary Harron Real to Reel PINK RIBBONS INC. Léa Pool, SURVIVING PROGRESS Mathieu Roy, Harold
Crooks Vanguard DOPPELGÄNGER PAUL Dylan Akio Smith, Kris Elgstrand, I’M A GOOD PERSON/I’M
A BAD PERSON Ingrid Veninger Mavericks BARRYMORE Érik Canuel City to City CAPRICHOSOS DE
SAN TELMO Alison Murray Contemporary World Cinema 388 ARLETTA AVENUE Randall Cole, BILLY
BISHOP GOES TO WAR Barbara Willis-Sweete, I’M YOURS Leonard Farlinger, SISTERS&BROTHERS
Carl Bessai Canada First! AMY GEORGE Yonah Lewis, Calvin Thomas, LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR
Sheldon Larry, NUIT #1 Anne Émond, ROMEO ELEVEN (ROMÉO ONZE) Ivan Grbovic, THE ODDS
Simon Davidson, THE PATRON SAINTS Melanie Shatzky, Brian M. Cassidy, WETLANDS (MARÉCAGES)
Guy Édoin Canadian Open Vault HARD CORE LOGO Bruce McDonald // and over 40 films in Short Cuts,
Gala Presentations
3 installations in Future Projections, 8 avant-garde productions in Wavelength.
canada-tiff2011.ca
PB.19925.Telefilm.Ad.indd 1
25/08/11 4:00 PM

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