Montage Magazine Spring 2012

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Viewpointby Sturla Gunnarsson

Editor’s noteby Marc Glassman

7 Listen Up! by Peter S. GrantHow the CRTC’s funding changes will help filmmakers.

10 Spirit of Place by John Houston A filmmaker of the North offers a memoir of his home and creative inspiration.

12Passing the BatonThe DGC Moment: Michael Spencer/ Ted Kotcheff/ Tim Southam. Has the 45-year hope for a strong national cinema been achieved?

CONT

ENTS

-

IN CONVERSATION WITH… TED KOTCHEFF by MARC GLASSMANA career-spanning interview with the most recent DGC lifetime-award winner: the director of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, First Blood and Joshua Then and Now.

THE HELEN SHAVER STORY by ADAM NAYMANHere’s a snapshot of Helen Shaver, director—and now an executive producer.

A PRODUCER-DIRECTOR IN THE HOUSEby MARK DILLONGreg Yaitanes, director-writer-producer, told a packed audience at Bell Lightbox what made him a successful in-house producer-director on House. Dillon reports.

CONTENT IS STILL KING by SUZAN AYSCOUGH Canadians are enjoying a multi-platform world as consumers but filmmakers are debating what the new “platforms” are doing to their work. What is a viable stance in an OTT-VOD-iPad world?

CLOSE-UP ON NEILL FEARNLEY by NANCY LANTHIERVeteran director Fearnley has been making stylish TV movies and series for over 20 years. Lanthier profiles one of the hardest-working directors in B.C.

14

40 Tech (W)recby Sean Moore

42Parting Shot:Pierre Juneau (1912–2012)by Marc Glassman

24283236

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DIRECTORS GUILD OF CANADApublisher

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LISTEN

the CRTC decided to apply it to the group of services owned by each major private broadcaster. This was a significant change in CRTC policy. It was a move away from a focus only on individual TV licences to-ward a new concept of impos-ing an expenditure requirement on a group of licences. Given the fact that each of the major private broadcasters has multiple programming ser-vices upon which it can place its programs of national inter-est, this made eminent good sense. Drama and comedy programs have library value, and after their initial exposure on one service there can be subsequent runs on other services. To get a sense of the likely impact of the PNI policy, Table 1 may be enlightening. It shows just how much the CBC and each of the private broadcasters actually spent on Canadian English-language TV drama in the three-year period 2008 to 2010. The numbers below show the aggregate English-language Canadian TV drama spending by these broad-casters, whether on their over-the-air TV stations, or on their specialty or pay channels. While the average figure is $231.3 million in expenditure, the 2010 amount is the lowest: $210.7 million.

UPFifty years ago, 18 Canadian directors got together around the simple proposition that they were stronger as a group than they were as individuals, and established the Directors Guild Of Canada (DGC). Their first office was a desk and a phone in a broom closet at Don Haldane’s Toronto-based production company, Westminster Films. Their goal was simple: to negotiate a contract with Canadian producers that established rates of pay and working conditions for directors in the nascent Cana-dian film industry. They soon realized that while a contract was important, if they wanted to make a living as directors in Canada, they would first have to build a Canadian film industry. And to do that, all roads led to Ottawa. Thus was forged the dual nature of the DGC as both an advocate for Canadian filmmakers’ moral, creative and economic rights

and as a stakeholder in an industry built through the collective political will of Canadians who believe that a mature nation cannot exist without seeing itself reflected in the most powerful medium of our times. Led by pioneering presidents Syd Banks, Don Haldane, Dick Ballentine, George Gorman and Bob Barclay, the group lobbied for feature film financing and were instrumental in the establishment of the Canadian Film Development Corporation (now Telefilm Canada). They argued that broadcasting be considered a public trust and were rewarded with the creation of the Canadian Radio-television Commission (now the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). The entire industry that we now take for granted flows in one way or another from the resources and policies of these two institutions and those that grew out of them. In 50 years, the Directors Guild of Canada has transformed itself from 18 pioneers and a desk in a broom closet to a 4,000-strong national organization of directors, production, art and editing department heads and support staff who enjoy the protection of a collective agreement, health, welfare and retirement benefits and a strong advocacy voice in a multi-billion-dollar industry. We salute those pioneers to whom we owe our careers and take their lessons of foresight, tenacity and solidarity to heart. Montage will publish a special anniversary issue in the fall, chronicling the 50-year history of the Guild and its filmmakers. Meanwhile, I’d like to thank our editor, Marc Glassman, for the current issue, an insightful snapshot of the current state of the Canadian screen trade.

Sincerely,

STURLA GUNNARSSONPRESIDENT, DIRECTORS GUILD OF CANADA

The spring issue of Montage features articles on the past, present and future of the Guild and Canada’s media industries. Attendees at the DGC’s 10th-anniversary awards gala were galvanized by the presence of two legends in Canadian film, Ted Kotcheff, director of The Apprentice-ship of Duddy Kravitz, and Michael Spencer, the first chair and founding spirit of the CFDC (now Telefilm Canada). We’re pleased to premiere a new Montage feature, a “DGC Moment,” with these two key figures in the industry. It was also my great pleasure conduct an “In conversation with…” with the passionate and personable Ted Kotcheff about his more than 50-year career in the film and TV, starting at the CBC in the ’50s and continuing to Law and Order: SVU, which he just finished pro-ducing this year. Speaking of legends, can anyone fit the bill more snugly and securely than Helen Shaver? The critically acclaimed actor, famed for starring roles in such films as The Color of Money and Desert Hearts has become one of Canada’s most highly respected

TV directors. Adam Nayman profiles her. In the world of TV direction, one of the key Canadian players is Neill Fearnley. The B.C.-based director is a stylish and much appreciated presence. Nancy Lanthier offers our “Close-up” on Mr. Fearnley. We are also very pleased to offer direc-tor John Houston’s beautiful evocation of the Canadian North and how it’s affected his career and life in Spirit of Place. One of the key initiatives at the DGC is to bring in extraordinary creators in TV and film who can share their knowledge with the Guild—and other interested professionals. Last fall, award-winning producer-director Greg Yaitanes (House) spoke to the DGC and the industry at Toronto’s Bell Lightbox. Mark Dillon reports on that special event. All of the articles mentioned have dealt with our past and present. What about the future? Peter S. Grant offers hope for future funding of Canadian drama in a special “Listen Up!” And Suzan Ayscough examines the multi-platform media world and how it’s affecting us in “Content is Still King.” We hope you enjoy this issue of Montage. Like Sturla, we’re looking forward to a brilliant year capped by our special tribute edition of Montage, which will celebrate the DGC’s 50th anniversary.

MARC GLASSMANEDITOR

editor’s note

viewpoint

by PETER S. GRANT

Members of the DGC and independent Canadian pro-ducers will begin to notice a profound and positive change in the funding of TV drama and long-form docs in the coming months, thanks to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Com-mission (CRTC). It’s due to a new regulatory policy that fundamentally changes the CRTC’s approach to television licensing. Last summer, the CRTC introduced a new concept—“programs of national inter-est”, or “PNI”—to address the single most difficult problem in broadcasting: how to support high-cost Canadian drama and comedy production.

What is PNI? The new designation applies to three types of Canadian programs:

1. Drama and comedy 2. Long-form documentary3. Canadian award shows that celebrate Canadian creative tal-ent, like the Juno Awards

Having defined what constitutes a PNI program, the CRTC went on to set an expenditure requirement for PNI. Instead of applying the requirement to the individual programming service licence,

T a b l e 1

ACTUAL EXPENDITURES BY BROADCASTERS ONCANADIAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE TV DRAMA

2 0 0 8 – 2 0 1 0

( $ m i l l i o n s )

-

S O U R C E : C R T C S T A T I S T I C S

BROADCASTER

CBC

BELL MEDIA

SHAW MEDIA

ROGERS MEDIA

ASTRAL

CORUS

TOTAL

2008

81.0

66.7

38.7

2.7

28.9

32.7

250.7

2009

76.2

49.2

38.9

4.9

30.9

32.6

232.9

2010

67.0

45.0

30.2

4.6

33.4

30.5

210.7

3-YR.AV.

74.7

53.6

35.9

4.1

31.1

31.9

231.3

listen up


The PNI requirement and what each broadcaster owns

In 2010, the CRTC decided that the PNI requirement would be calculated as a ratio of the overall revenue of all the programming services owned by the group, other than mainstream sports or news services, or digital spe-cialty services with less than one million subscribers. The actual ratio itself became crystallized in the re-newal decisions for the major broadcasters issued last July. Based on their historical PNI spending, the CRTC set a PNI ratio of 5% for each of Bell Media and Shaw Media, 2.5% rising to 3% for Rogers

Media, and 9% for Corus. Before we examine how much each of these broad-casters is required to spend on PNI over the next five years, it may be useful to review just what broadcast services each broadcasters owns or controls. The reason is that the new rules look at all the broadcast services each

broadcaster owns, not just the over-the-air services—you have to include the pay and specialty services as well. In looking at these assets, we have four categories to consider: first, the over-the-air (OTA) TV stations; second, the Category A services—the ones that benefit from niche protection and “must carry” rules; third, Category B digital services, with no niche pro-tection or “must carry” (how-ever, if a Category B service reaches a million subscribers, it becomes part of the system to support PNI); and fourth, Category C services—namely, news and mainstream sports channels—which are not required to support PNI.

So what services are re-quired to support PNI? This is shown in Table 2, which lists all the services owned by each major broadcaster in English Canada, other than their mainstream sports or news services, or digital spe-cialty services with less than one million subscribers.

In the case of four of these group owners—Bell Media, Shaw Media, Rogers Media and Corus—the CRTC renewed their licences last summer, so we know exactly what their PNI obligations will be. In the case of Astral, its renewal is pending. How-ever, we can make projec-tions based on their past PNI spending. (And if Bell is per-mitted to acquire Astral, we may see some additional PNI spending required because of transfer benefits.) The hard player to project is the CBC. Its renewal hear-ings were originally planned for last fall, but those hear-ings were postponed pending the naming of a new CRTC chairperson and

the setting of its budget by the Harper government. However, for the purpose of the projections below, I have assumed that the CBC will continue to support PNI at the level of its drama spending in the past.

Projected spending on PNI in the next few years

Now we get into the math. How will PNI spending change in the future? To find the answer, it is necessary to carry out three steps. First, one has to esti-mate the likely total revenue of the station groups over the next few years, excluding their news and sports (Category C) services, and any Category B services with less than 1 mil-lion subscribers. Second, one has to multiply the estimated revenue by the PNI percentage established for the particular station group by the CRTC in its recent renewal decisions. Third, one has to add the PNI “benefits” for each year committed by Shaw Media, Bell Media and Corus in their recent transfer hearings. To accomplish the first step, the growth projections in the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2011-2015 were used as a starting point. PWC estimated that

conventional TV advertising revenue in Canada would rise by an average of 2.8% per year from 2011 to 2015. For the purpose of this study, to be conservative, the growth rate for OTA revenue was reduced by 25% to 2.1% per year. In the case of pay and spe-cialty revenue, PWC estimated that specialty advertising revenue would increase by 6.5% per year from 2011 to 2015, and retail subscription revenue was projected to rise by 6.9% a year. However, it is anticipated that the sports services will get the lion’s share of ad and subscription revenue increases over the next few years. Therefore, for the purpose of this study, to be conservative, the projected growth rate for pay and spe-cialty revenue was reduced by about 50% to 3.3% per year. PNI spending was calculated using these relatively conserva-tive projections, and applying the conditions of licence in the CRTC renewal decisions; the results are shown in Table 3.

be hoped. However, it will still represent the lion’s share of PNI spending, and we can therefore expect a gradual but significant rise in spending on Canadian television drama over the next few years, driven entirely by the private sector. About 11% of the spending on PNI will be driven by trans-fer benefits required by virtue of the Bell and Shaw owner-ship decisions. However, the likely increase in revenue for programming services over the next few years will also have a significant positive impact.

These are interesting numbers but what do they mean?

First, it is clear that the CRTC policy on PNI will be the un-derpinning of the independent production sector in Canada. Without that policy, and the requirements it imposes on Canadian broadcasters, the independent production sector would be a fraction of its cur-rent size and diversity. Second, it is worth noting that the CBC is no longer the biggest single player in regard to PNI. There was a time in the 1960s and ’70s when the CBC was the only significant player commissioning Canadian English-language TV drama and comedy. But over the 1980s and ’90s, the CRTC steadily increased the require-ments for the private sector. And although the OTA private sector lowered its spending on Canadian drama in the next 10 years, the CPE (Canadian program expenditure) require-ments on the pay and specialty services kept overall spending up. Now, with group licensing and specific PNI requirements for each group, we will see a dramatic rise in private sector spending on PNI. Instead of just relying on the CBC, we now have five major private players also com-

The impact on independent production

As shown in Table 3, for the current broadcast year (year ending August 31, 2012), based on reasonable projec-tions, the private broadcasters are likely to spend about $234 million on PNI. This sup-port is projected to increase to $254 million by 2016. When added to the CBC support of close to $75 million per year, this will be a significant level of support. Of course, in evaluating the impact of these increases, it is important to realize that PNI includes expenditures on long-form documentaries and national award shows as well as drama. In the case of long-form documenta-ries, CRTC statistics show that in 2010, Bell/CTV spent $28.1 million on this genre, in addition to its drama expenditures. (Fully $18.4 mil-lion of that was expended by its Discovery channel, and $7.4 million was spent by its OTA stations, mostly on its investigative newsmagazine show, W-5.) Shaw Media tells me that it spent $32.6 million on long-form docs in 2010. By contrast, Corus spent only $3.4 million on long-form docs in 2010, while Rogers and Astral spent even less. As for national award shows, as noted by Bell Media at the CRTC renewal hearings, these are likely to take up less than 5% of the total. Once you make the neces-sary adjustments to allow for long-form docs and award shows, the amount spent on drama and comedy will not be increasing as much as might

missioning English language drama and long-form docs (although this will shrink to four, if Bell is permitted to acquire Astral). And the dollars are substantial. Bell Media will be the biggest player, with Shaw Media not far behind. Corus will also be a significant player while Rogers—subject to a small PNI requirement-—will only be a bit player in this game. Overall, the private sector will account for over 75% of PNI spending by English-lan-guage broadcasters in the next five years. This is a dramatic change from the situation before. However, depending on its budget constraints, the CBC will still be an important player for distinctive Canadian drama and long-form docs. Program producers and members of the creative com-munity were no doubt unhap-py that the PNI ratio was not set at levels higher than 5% for Bell Media or Shaw Media, or on a basis that would rise over the licence period. How-ever, the new PNI system has a number of features that are quite positive for independent producers. First, the requirement is expressed as a ratio, not a fixed dollar amount. Thus, as revenues for the major broadcasters increase, the amount required to be spent on PNI will steadily increase. That being said, the CRTC did not include revenue from the sports and news services from the denominator, so revenue increases in that sector will not affect PNI. Second, the CRTC rescinded an earlier policy (called the “licence fee top-up policy”) that had allowed broadcasters to count Canada Media Fund contributions toward their expenditure requirements. This means the PNI expenditure requirement can only be met with real money.

Third, the CRTC has required that at least 75% of the PNI expenditures be spent with independent producers. At the same time, the CRTC pressured the major private broadcasters to enter into Terms of Trade with the pro-ducers. These were finalized in the spring of 2011 and made the subject of a licence condi-tion in the renewal decisions. In looking at these num-bers, there is an important caveat to note: the PNI policy does not address the problems faced by Canadian feature films. Yes, feature films count as PNI. But Canadian broadcasters have largely abandoned their support for Canadian feature films and there is nothing in the PNI policy to require them to do otherwise. So is the PNI policy impor-tant? The answer is obvious. The key source of financing for drama and long-form docs comes from private broad-caster licence fees and that is driven entirely by the PNI policy. Absent that policy, it would make economic sense for private broadcasters to buy only Hollywood drama at a fraction of the cost of Canadian drama. From an economic sense, they would find it in their interest to focus their CanCon budget almost entirely on news, sports and magazine shows. But the PNI policy requires them to spend meaningful dollars on Canadian drama, long-form docs and award shows. So where you see licence fees of 22% of the drama budget coming from private broadcasters, that is largely a creature of regulation. But more importantly, it is the key trigger that enables the other funding mechanisms to come into play. Whether it is in the form of tax credits, Canadian Media Fund money,

Canadian distributor fees or foreign pre-sales, none of these will come into being unless there is a Canadian broadcast licence in place. On February 7, 2012, Karen Thorne-Stone, the chair of the Ontario Media Develop-ment Corporation, celebrated Ontario’s film and TV industry. She noted that Ontario’s film and TV production activity in 2011 contributed $1.26 bil-lion to the economy. Of that, domestic TV series in Ontario accounted for $626.7 million in 2011. Most of those series would not exist if not for CRTC pol-icy. And for every dollar that the PNI policy requires private broadcasters to spend, there is a multiplier effect. Another four dollars is added from other sources—tax credits, the CMF, distributor fees, foreign sales, and other sources—to enable those series to be completed. But it all starts with CRTC policy and in particular the PNI policy. It is not an exaggera-tion to say that it provides the crucial underpinning for the whole independent production sector.

Peter S. Grant is a counsel at the law firm McCarthy Tetrault and past chair of its Technol-ogy, Communications and Intellectual Property Group in Toronto. He has pioneered the field of communications law in Canada, and his practice is substantially devoted to this field, including broadcasting and cable television licensing, satellite services, copyright negotiations, mass media and press law, cultural industries and telecommunications regu-lation. Mr. Grant is the author of numerous articles and publications, including The Canadian Broadcasting Regu-latory Handbook, a standard industry reference published every two years.

T a b l e 3

FORECAST EXPENDITURES BY BROADCASTERS ONCANADIAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PROGRAMS OF NATIONAL INTEREST(DRAMA, LONG-FORM DOCUMENTARIES AND NATIONAL AWARD SHOWS)2 0 1 2 – 2 0 1 6

( $ m i l l i o n s )

BROADCASTER

CBC

BELL MEDIA

SHAW MEDIA

ROGERS MEDIA

ASTRAL

CORUS

TOTAL

2012

74.7

87.4

71.5

7.1

32.8

34.8

308.3

2013

74.7

89.2

74.7

8.6

35.6

37.7

320.5

2014

74.7

102.0

60.6

10.5

36.8

39.0

323.6

2015

74.7

87.8

70.5

10.8

38.0

40.2

322.0

2016

74.7

90.6

71.9

11.0

39.2

41.6

329.0

T a b l e 2

CANADIAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PROGRAM SERVICES REQUIRED TO CONTRIBUTE TO PNI

( $ m i l l i o n s )

BROADCASTER

CBC

BELL MEDIA

SHAW MEDIA

ROGERS MEDIA

ASTRAL

CORUS

OTA

CBC Network

CTV, CTV Two

Global

City, Omni

–

CHEX-TV, CKWS-TV

CATEGORY A SERVICES

Bold, Documentary

BNN, Book, Bravo!, CablePulse 24, Comedy,

Discovery, E! (Star), Fashion, MTV Canada,

MTV2, MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic, Réseau

Info-Sports, Space

Food, HGTV, History, IFCC, Mystery, Show-

case, Slice, TVTropolis, Twist TV

Biography, G4TechTV, Outdoor Life

TMN, Family Channel, Mpix

TMN, Family Channel, Mpix

CMT Canada, OWN, Treehouse, W Network,

YTV, Encore, Movie Central

CATEGORY B (1M+ SUBS)

–

Animal Planet, Discovery Science, Discovery

World HD, ESPN Classic,

BBC Canada, DejaView, Movietime, National

Geographic, Showcase Action, Showcase Diva

–

Cosmopolitan TV, Dusk, Nickelodeon, Sundance,

W Movies


But I had no one to tell me how you go about it. I went to school, moved down South, and always watched all the films I could, sneaking into theatres when I wasn’t old enough to be allowed in. I started to see that there were all different kinds of movies and that a few stayed with you long after the others were forgotten. I’d want to make that kind, but how was I going to get a start? My big opportunity came in 1973, when my father’s first novel, The White Dawn, was chosen by Paramount Pictures to be shot as a feature film. I was 18, and told my dad I would give anything for a job on the crew. He put in a good word for me, but in Hollywood, every writer wants to get his kid on a picture. I couldn’t believe all the crew positions had been filled, so my father put me on the phone with the director himself. Phil Kaufman heard my disappointment and mentioned that sometimes on distant locations a crew member wouldn’t show up, and they’d try to fill the posi-tion on the spot. He also gave me the date of the first day of shooting.

On May 7th, 1973, I flew into Iqaluit, or Frobisher Bay, as it was then called. It was great to be back North, good to see my father reunited with old Inuit friends. I was self-conscious, as I didn’t feel qualified for the job—if there was a job—and also because I had lost my Inuktitut. What seemed like moments after my arrival, I was taken to the set, full of hope. Someone intro

duced me to the director, but all he said was “Oh, NO! I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time and money coming here!” I was ready to cry, imagining the flight back South, but my dad said stick around—see what might happen. Keep your eyes and ears open. Just stay out of the shot, don’t get everyone yelling at you. First day of shooting, and tempers ran high. Before the end of the day, the coffee boy had been fired—and I had a job! At first everything was a challenge—getting hot drinks to the crew way out on the sea ice, learning how to help without getting in the way—but after a while, it all settled into a routine. I remember trudging across the ice of Frobisher Bay, carefully stepping around a man-made seal hole, to deliver a coffee to the director. “Thanks, John,” he said, “just how I like it.” I made some remark about my time in university at least being worth something. I think the long hours and the repeti-tive nature of the job had me feeling sorry for myself. Phil Kaufman used our moment alone to give me a pep talk. Later in life, I would recognize

it as the Zen 101, ‘Be Here Now’ speech, but it was new to me then, and I listened. Kaufman said, “Here, today, you are serving coffee, so praising the coffee is the best compliment I can give you. But you have dreams, don’t you? What do you want to do? Write, like your father? Direct, like me? Produce?” I mumbled that all of those sounded good to me. “Well,” he said, “for now, put your heart into mak-ing that coffee the best you can. Before you know it, you’ll be yelling ‘CUT! Print that take… we’re moving on.’” I remember wondering at the time if that was a stock speech to keep the troops motivated, but having no better ideas, I gave his suggestion a try. I started to see that I was part of something bigger than making coffee, that The White Dawn coming to Baffin Island was an opportunity, and not just for me. The careers of many, including the leading In-uit actors Joanasie Salomonie and Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, Nunavut’s commissioner [from 2005 to 2010], were launched with that film…and mine too. Seeing Inuit together, working on a new thing and becom-ing excellent at it, reminded me of how quickly so many of their artists took to printmak-ing during my childhood. I was so proud of them, and so ashamed that I had lost my In-uktitut during my years down South. Thinking of all I was missing, I resolved to relearn my other mother tongue. As I was finishing college, my father helped me assemble a print portfolio, and I was hired by the community of Pangnirtung as advisor to their print program. The elders helped me to regain my Inukti-tut. They were so patient with me, sometimes I wondered why they took the time: four years of teaching. Maybe they could see my future more clearly than I could. Knowing something about film, and speaking Inuktitut, got me more Arctic film work and the opportunity to work with other great directors, like Car-roll Ballard on Never Cry Wolf. But I never served him coffee. I had moved up to do the

Inuit casting for the film and became Ballard’s first assistant director. Assisting in the making of Never Cry Wolf enabled me to move to Nova Scotia and open Houston North Gallery with my mother, the late Alma Houston. Helping other people make their films took me around the world a couple of times and deepened my experience. Taking over Red Square in Moscow, shooting with cheetahs in Kenya or under water in the Bahamas…so many logistical challenges, it took 20 years for the work to start to seem repetitive, but after a while, I felt like I was serving coffee again, or maybe holding the lantern for an artist while he painted his masterpiece. What if I had a story to tell? Would there be someone to hold the lantern for me? In the summer of 1998, I found myself back in Cape Dorset, my old hometown. We were just finishing a dolly shot, moving into a close-up of my father remembering the first days of Inuit art. “…and…CUT!” I called to my crew. “Print that take…we’re moving on.’” Suddenly, on the set of my first film, Songs in Stone: An Arctic Journey Home, I got a very funny feeling, because I was echoing the words Philip Kaufman had given me. I had taken his advice, going for the best job I could get and then learning how to be good at it. Now I write, direct and produce. My dreams all came true.

The original version of this memoir was published as the cover story of the 2005 Native & Inuit Yearbook magazine (http://issuu.com/vantagepublishing/docs/nifn-covers/15), now called the Native & Inuit Resource magazine, to inspire aboriginal youth to follow their dreams. For more information on the Hope for the Future campaign, contact [email protected] or go to the website hopeforthefuture.ca.

by JOHN HOUSTON

I have always wanted to make films, no matter how impos-sible a dream that seemed, even while growing up in a small aboriginal Arctic settle-ment. Some of my earliest memories are of watching cowboy pictures, packed into the recreation hall designed by my father, James Houston, and built by the Inuit of Cape Dorset. In the late fifties, there were circuits for the world-wide distribution of films, but it’s hard to imagine which one of those Southwestern Baffin Island was on. Cape Dorset was on its way to becoming a mecca for the arts but to the folks sending out those films, we must have seemed the end of the earth. We huddled in the dark, waiting for marvelous things to hap-pen on the screen—the Baffin Island premiere of High Noon or 3:10 to Yuma. These black and white Westerns were even then considered classics but they were brand new to us, and I doubt they ever had a more appreciative audience. As a six-year-old, watching the flickering images reflected in the faces of my friends and neighbours, I thought, “I want to make films for them to see…one day.”

SPIRIT OFPLACE

Director Ted Kotcheff on the set of Wake in Fright (U.K., 1971).


THEDGCMOMENT

Passing the Baton: The DGC MomentThe DGC Awards Show, 2011

The air was electric at Toronto’s historic Fairmont Royal York Hotel during the DGC’s 10th anniversary award ceremony. Honorees in-cluded legendary director Ted Kotcheff and Michael Spencer, Canadian feature film pioneer and first executive director of the CFDC (now Tele-film Canada). DGC director Tim Southam introduced Mr. Spencer.

Tim Southam:

”In 1965 Michael Spencer

wrote the two-page memo

that put us all in this room

tonight.

It was a memo to Cabinet that

encapsulated a vision of a

vital, national, Canadian cin-

ema. A memo that asserted

the absolute necessity for

Canadians to see themselves

reflected on the most ubiqui-

tous medium of our time.

A memo that argued the

simple truth that in our tiny

market the invisible hand

alone would never make this

happen. It was a memo, which

resulted in the creation of

the Canadian Film Develop-

ment Corporation (CFDC), now

known as Telefilm Canada.

Most importantly, it was a

memo written in the deepest

and truest sense by a film-

maker, a man who had 57

films to his credit before he

headed to Ottawa and who,

then as executive director,

kicked off the reign of the

CFDC with movies like Goin’

Down the Road, The Rowdy-

man, Paperback Hero and

The Apprenticeship of Duddy

Kravitz. And those are just the

English films.

For his incredible contribution

to the work and careers of vir-

tually everyone inside these

walls and at least three gen-

erations of filmmakers outside

them, and for the priceless

object lesson in succinct lob-

bying he provided with that

two-page memo toCabinet, please join me in

welcoming DGC Honourable

Lifetime member Michael

Spencer.”

Michael Spencer:“I accept this award with humil-ity because the task of creating an entertainment industry in Canada really fell to the creators, mainly French-Canadians: Gilles Carle, Denis Héroux, Pierre Lamy, John Dunning and, in Toronto, a few such as Don Shebib.

Bureaucrats got the legislation passed—in essence, we did the kitchen job.

On this occasion, nearly 50 years after the CFDC legislation was passed by Parliament, let me say that the task is not complete, especially on the English side. There is a rich fund of Canadian stories that hasn’t been pro-duced yet. I think they have been neglected. I am hoping they will be produced. [Applause.]During my 10 years at the CFDC, my high point was the creation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. This was a quintessen-tial Canadian story, written by Mordecai Richler and produced by John Kemeny. All Canadians. True, the star was an American—Richard Dreyfuss—but we never felt that one or two foreigners would affect the Canadianness of a production. And the audi-ences loved the film. It made a lot of money.

I wish it had been the begin-ning of many other Canadian features written and directed by Canadians for our audiences and getting worldwide distribution. Sadly, that is not the case. The task is not complete. Until we have three or four Canadian films or more in our theatres ev-ery year, I know that we will not have achieved our dream. “

Ted Kotcheff:“Michael…Duddy Kravitz would not have happened without you. So many great films wouldn’t have happened without you. You are the hero of Canadian cinema.

It’s been my firm belief that a flourishing film industry defines a nation. That along with its literature, film defines a country’s character: they are its very heart and soul.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the DGC, the baton has been passed to you. It’s your time to come up to bat.”


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eau KOTCHEFFby MARC GLASSMAN

Ted Kotcheff is a force of nature. The winner of the 2011 DGC Lifetime Achievement Award has the energy of someone half his age. He speaks with style and exuberance about his nearly 60-year film career, punctuating his tales with infectious laughter. A born storyteller, Ted Kotcheff re-creates scenes from his life, complete with dialogue, drama and humour. Kotcheff’s air of frankness reminds one of Canadians from his pre-WWII generation: he’s a straight talker, neither falsely modest nor unduly ego-tistical. Kotcheff is a man who has accomplished a lot and he knows it. But that doesn’t stop him from engaging fully with others—he clearly loves sharing his stories from a life well lived.

Ted Kotcheff’s creative journey has been long and adventurous. He spent years making fine work in London and Hollywood although his greatest dream was to make films in Canada. He achieved that goal once, with the classic Jewish black comedy The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, written by Kotcheff’s best friend, the brilliant author Mordecai Richler. Though Kotcheff was never able to realise his dream of making films permanently in Canada, there were many successes for him along the way.

in conversation with… TEDTed Kotcheff at the DGC Awards dinner, 2011


Selected Filmography

Director, feature filmsThe Shooter (1995)Folks! (1992)Winter People (1989)Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)Switching Channels (1988)Joshua Then and Now (1985)Uncommon Valor (1983)First Blood (1982)Split Image (1982)North Dallas Forty (1979)Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978)Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)Billy Two Hats (1974)The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)Wake in Fright (1971)Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969)Life at the Top (1965)Tiara Tahiti (1962)

Director, TV Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2001–05, director, 7 episodes; 2000-11, executive producer, 23 episodes) TV seriesCrime in Connecticut (1999) TV movieBorrowed Hearts (1997) TV movieA Husband, a Wife and a Lover (1996) TV movieFamily of Cops (1995) TV movieRed Shoe Diaries 5 (1995) TV series, one episodeLove on the Run (1994) TV movieRed Shoe Diaries 3 (1993), TV series, one episodeWhat are Families For? (1993) TV movieRed Shoe Diaries (1992), TV series, one episodeThe Trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel (1975) TV drama for the anthology series Perfor-manceRx for the Defense (1973) TV movieAckerman, Dougall and Harker (1972), TV drama for the series Play for TodayEdna, the Inebriate Woman (1971), TV drama for Play for TodayHave You Any Washing, Mother Dear? (1969) TV drama for the series ITV Play-houseOf Mice and Men (1968) TV MovieAt the Drop of Another Hat (1967) TV MovieThe Desperate Hours (1967) TV MovieThe Human Voice (1967) TV MovieDare I Weep, Dare I Mourn (1966) TV MovieThe Big Eat (1965) TV MovieThe Close Prisoner (1964) TV drama for the series Studio ‘64 Land of My Dreams (1964) TV drama for the series First NightThe Strain (1963) TV drama for First NightCollect Your Hand Baggage (1963) for ITV Television PlayhouseI’ll Have to Remember You (1961) TV MovieThe Trial of Dr. Fancy; Into the Dark; Dead Letter; No Trams to Lime Street; Under-ground and 23 other TV dramas for the series Armchair Theatre (1958-1964)Spare Your Pity (1957) TV drama for the series Hour of MysterySome Are So Lucky (1956) TV drama for the series On Camera

Director Ted Kotcheff on the set of Wake in Fright (U.K., 1971).

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M: Any early memories of cinema?TK: My father was besotted with movies. When he came over to To-ronto from Bulgaria, the first job that he had was an usher in a theatre. That started his love of films. You won’t believe this, but when my father finally got a job when I was about five, we were going to the movies about three times a week. It’s funny, sometimes late at night I’ll turn on the television and see a film and say, “I know this one and how it turns out.” The reason I have these vague memories is because I wouldn’t have seen the film since I was six or 10 years old.

M: By 23 you were at the CBC?TK: When I graduated University of Toronto, I went through all sorts of jobs. I went to work at Swift’s Packing’s slaughterhouse at Keele and St. Clair and then I worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber in the foam rub-ber department down in Long Branch. The closest anybody’s ever come to Dante’s Inferno. Then the CBC said that they were going to start a television service. So I went down there and was interviewed by Mavor Moore. He was programme director. He said, “Have you ever had any experience in the theatre?” And I said, “Yeah, I directed a Tennessee Williams play at Uni-versity College.” And he said, “Any experience in radio?” I said, “No.” He said, “Any experience in television?” I said, “Who in Canada has had any experience in television? It’s not here yet.” And he said, “How would you like to be a stage hand? You can learn the business and I think this is going to expand and you’ll move up with it.” And I thought, “Well, I guess throwing scenery around will be infinitely preferable to throwing carcasses or foam rubber around like I’d been doing for the last three months.”

M: How soon did you become a director?TK: It didn’t take long. Somebody said, “You know, Sydney Newman is going to do 12 documentaries about new currents of thought at the University of Toronto.” So I went up and knocked on his door and I said, “Listen, I’m 23. I graduated two years ago from English Language & Literature. I studied physics at university. Maybe I could write scripts for you.” He looked at me and said, “Okay.” Sydney was kind of engaged with my impertinence. (Laughs.) Right around that time, Sydney was asked to head up the drama department. I think he was feeling insecure, so he said, “Ted, would you like to come with me and be my story editor?” Because I’d graduated in English literature, he thought I knew something about drama. It was a great experience, I’ve got to tell you. The greatest. I was 24 by that time. Guys would come in and say, “Ted, Ted! I’m 10 minutes short on a play! I need you to write me three scenes by tomorrow morning!” So I’d stay up all night long. I was writing funny scenes, then dramatic scenes, then period scenes and then there would be thriller scenes. Just an incredible experience.

And then one day, Sydney Newman walked into my office and he said, “You know, Ted. You’re a pretty good writer. Not a great writer. But a pretty good one. You know what you’d be really great at?” And I said, “No, what would I be great at?” Sydney said, “You’d make a great director.” Don’t ask me what he based this on. And he says “Would you like to try your hand at it?” And I said, “Absolutely, that’s my dream.” He said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you direct one drama. If I like it, you’ll get a year’s contract. If I don’t like it, you’re out on the street. You can’t come back to this job. But if you don’t want to risk it, I’d love you to stay on this job because you’re doing such good work on it.” I said, “I’ll risk it.”

He was very smart, when you think about the psychology of it. He want-ed someone who was going to risk everything. Wasn’t going to hold back and play it safe. And boy, I sweated every shot on that first drama. Sydney liked it, so that’s how it started. Started directing at 24. I hate to say this, I was the youngest director in television.

M: What was it like directing in those days? You were doing live broad-casts, weren’t you?TK: Yes, we were going live all across Canada, right? And, here I was, the director. You’d have the guy who changes from one camera to another. I always had my finger in his face and I’d say, “Take it! Take it!” And then my assistant, she’d say, “Ten seconds to air. Ten...nine...eight...” And there would be butterflies in my stomach the size of Pegasus. My gut would be wailing with the thought, “Oh my god, this show is going across Canada. Please let it go smoothly. Please don’t let anything go wrong.” “Four...three...” “Ready the music. Ready camera number one. Hit the music. Fade up on one! Super the title! Cut to three! Take it!” And I’d be conducting the damn show for the whole country. Conduct-ing all the time. Cutting from one camera to another. I would be so high on adrenaline, Marc. I couldn’t sleep for two days. You had to be careful with four cameras because they were all ca-bled. And you didn’t want to suddenly ‘knit two, purl one.’ Everything was worked out carefully, every shot. It was great training. Each shot was written out by hand and then typed up by the girl for the camera-man [so] the cameraman had all the shots. They were all numbered, and what it was—“Close up. Two shot. Dolly left”—it was all typed up. So the cameraman would look, because she would say, “Ready shot 134 of camera three.” And they’d have learned it by that time. But if they didn’t, it was right there. And they’d put up the shot and I’d say, “Take it.” To this day, I know every shot on my films beforehand.

SCENE TWO: ENGLAND

M: Sounds like a great experience. Why did you decide to leave the CBC?TK: I wanted to be a film director, but I wanted to make films about the Canadian experience. And I also wanted to work in the theatre, because I liked the theatre. And of course, at the time there was precious little Canadian theatre and no film industry whatsoever. So I thought about going. Our whole generation of CBC directors—Norman Jewison, Arthur Hiller, Harvey Hart—we all wanted to make movies. And if you wanted to be a film director, you had to go else-where. You had to go abroad. They chose to go to America. I chose Lon-don, because I wanted to work in the theatre as well. Silvio Narizzano, another Canadian, was in London working in television for Grenada.

M: What was it like when you arrived in England?TK: It was an amazing time. I went to work for Armchair Theatre with ABC [Associated British Corporation] Television and I went through the whole CBC experience again. I did live drama for a couple of years be-fore they finally went to tape.

M: You worked with a lot of really good playwrights in that period.TK: Yes, Sydney Newman came in as the series producer and he was very smart. Up to that time, what they were doing in England was tired old stage plays. Or else they brought over American television plays. Sydney said, when he took over, “We’re going to have only originals from now on.” Well, for six months we suffered. All of the directors

TED KOTCHEFF INTERVIEWED BY MARC GLASSMANM: Marc Glassman, Montage’s editor TK: Ted Kotcheff

SCENE ONE: CANADA AND THE CBC


Life at the TopTed Kotcheff(U.K., 1965)

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his relationships. As a father, as a husband, as a friend. And the other thing is that he had an extraordinary sense of humour. It was, as you say, politically incorrect—a totally unconventional sense of humour. We had a good time together. He loved food and drink and I did too. People would say, “Why do you always work with Mordecai?” And I’d say, “Because I don’t have to use words when I speak to him.” “What do you mean?” “Because instinctively we know each other.” I would say, “You know, Mordecai, what this scene needs is...” “You’re abso-lutely right, Ted. It needs it.” We finished each other’s sentences. We just were on the same wavelength all the time. And it was just so much fun to work with somebody like that.

M: So you were spending a lot of time with Mordecai in the early ‘60s. You were directing TV and getting into film. What was he doing?TK: That was the period when he wrote The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. One day he finished it and said, “Ted, I’d like you to read the book.” I read it and said, “Mordecai, not only is this one of the best Ca-nadian novels that was ever written, but one day I’m going to go back to Canada and make a film out of it.” And we started to laugh at the absurdity of such an idea.

SCENE FOUR: BRITISH FILMS

M: You made your first feature film in 1962, Tiara Tahiti. It’s about a working-class guy (John Mills) who ends up being a higher rank officer than his old employer’s son (James Mason) during World War II. How did it come about?TK: I wanted to make two or three movies in Britain to find out how to direct a film, then go back to Canada. My whole dream was to go to Canada and make films. Anyway, what happened was I directed a play in the theatre called Progress of the Park. It was a Romeo and Juliet story, about Liverpool Catholics and Protestants but it did have some funny stuff in it. The producer Ivan Foxwell saw it and liked it and thought, “Oh, this guy’s perfect for...” So he hired me to direct Tiara Tahiti. I got to work with James Mason and John Mills and Herbert Lom. I’m afraid to see it. I think I wanted to make an evil noir social satire out of it but Foxwell wrote the script and he wanted a kind of a panto-mime. I don’t think I really made the film that I had in my head.

M: What about Life at the Top? That was with Mordecai as your script-writer. I saw that recently. I thought it holds up very well.TK: I saw it recently at a retrospective of my work and it was pretty good. The performances were all good.

M: They are and it’s a really interesting sequel to the working-class clas-sic Room at the Top. Laurence Harvey starred again in it. I’ve heard he could be difficult. Was he?TK: He was so sweet with me. He loved me. I was kind of nervous. I had a habit of pacing up and down behind the camera between shots, which irritated the shit out of the producer. I was only 33. And he want-ed to fire me.

M: What did you do?TK: Laurence Harvey went to him and said, “If you fire Ted Kotcheff, I’m going with him.” I’ll never forget that. And I learned: Stick with the stars. It’s funny the memories that flash into your mind. There was a wonderful guy who wrote Casablanca, Philip Epstein. I had dinner with him one night. He’d just seen Life at the Top. I told him the story about Laurence Harvey. He said, “Ted, that’s the first lesson you learn. This is a wonderful film and you’re going to have a great career. The first thing: Stick with the stars. And I’ve got one other piece of advice. During your career, you’re going to fight for the integrity of your material. I know you are. But there are two fights you can’t win. Don’t bother wasting your time and your energy and your spiritual vision on these fights. Titles and endings. Producers want happy endings. And they think they know about titles. Fight for everything else. But don’t fight in those areas. You won’t win.” SCENE FIVE: WAKE IN FRIGHT (OUTBACK)—AUSTRALIA

M: What are your favourite films, Ted?TK: I think my two best films are Wake in Fright (Outback) and Duddy

were in revolt and the critics were ripping us to shreds. Then suddenly Alun Owen came. And Clive Exton. Harold Pinter had his first play for us. The plays they wrote were amazing. My very first play with Owen was No Trams To Lime Street. Alun read it to me and I said, “It’s terrific. The music of the accent is extraordinary. But I’m not directing it.” He asked “Why?” I said, “Look. I came from a working-class background, but what do I know about working-class people in Liverpool?” He said, “Ted, you don’t understand. No one in this country knows anything about Liverpool working-class people. All they know about is London and Oxford. By the fact that you’ve heard this play, you know more about Liverpool working-class people than the rest of this country.” I said, “God, you’re very persuasive.” And that’s how I started working with him.

M: What was the response to the plays you were doing with people like Exton and Owen?TK: We got great reviews. The Times sent over John Russell Taylor to do a whole article on me. You see, the British directors used to come out of the theatre and their camera work was very static. Whereas we in Canada had developed a very fluid camera style, in spite of the fact that the cameras were bulky and cumbersome. We had a cinematic style. So what I did, and what Silvio was doing, was a revelation to them. Which got me a lot of attention. In 1959, two years after I arrived, I won the Best Director award in England.

SCENE THREE: MORDECAI RICHLER

M: I know you were roommates with the novelist Mordecai Richler dur-ing this time. How did you meet?TK: Mordecai was my best friend for 44 years. When I was thinking about moving to London in the summer of 1957, [legendary Canadi-an theatre critic and Kotcheff’s script editor] Nathan Cohen asked me “Where are you going?” I said, “I’m going to go to the south of France for a vacation. Then, England.” And he said, “You know the writer Mor-decai Richler? Here, read these novels.” He gave me The Acrobats and Son of a Smaller Hero. After I read them, I told Nathan they were very good. And he said to me, “You know, I’ve never met Mordecai Richler, but I’ve read his writing and I have a feeling that you and he would be really good friends. Why don’t you go down and meet him while you’re down there?” So I met Mordecai and right away we liked each other. He was in the middle of writing Choice of Enemies, his third novel, and he was the most taciturn person I had ever encountered. We met in a village. It had one square with a few houses around it and one bar. We sat out there in the square drinking and Mordecai kept quiet while I was talking away. I thought, “Boy, this guy’s really heavy. Wow.” So I kept razzing away and he said to me “Who’s your favourite novelist, Ted?” I said, “Henry James.” He said, “Oh, that’s great. You’re going to get along fine with my novels, then.” (Laughs.) I thought, “This guy’s got a good sense of humour. We’re going to get along fine.” Anyway, I went back to London where Silvio had arranged for me to direct a play on television. And I got a letter from Mordecai. He wrote, “I just want to say, Ted, that I apologize for not being very communicative while you were in France. I get very, very introspective when I’m writing a novel and I’m not very social, but I really liked you a lot. I feel you’re a horse of the same colour.” I’ll always remember that. “A horse of the same colour.” And he wrote, “If you come and live in London, let’s get together.” So we did and when he broke up with his then-wife, he asked, “Do you want to come and share the apartment?” So we shared a flat.

M: Can you tell me a bit about Mordecai? He was a good friend of yours for such a long time. What was he like?TK: First of all, he was the most moral man I’ve ever encountered. Moral in the real sense of the word, not talking about some stupid sexual practice. He was moral in the sense that if he had decided that you were his friend that was it. You were his friend. There was nothing that he wouldn’t do for you. I’ve said to people that if I was arrested in Timbuktu, the first person I would phone would not be my wife. The first person would be Mordecai, because I knew that he would jump on a plane immediately and come. He was that kind of person. He was incredibly loyal. And he honoured


SCENE SIX: THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ

M: So you had the dream of making Duddy Kravitz for 14 years. Did you try to get it made during that time?TK: Of course. I was going to make the film in Canada. Always. But I tried to get American financing for it. I worked with Sam Z. Arkoff at American International Pictures, AIP. He produced Two Gentlemen Shar-ing. I went to him and said, “Sam, I’d love to make a film about this Richler book. Will you finance it?” He read the book and said, “Oh, I love it.” And I said, “Great! Will you finance it?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “We’re shooting in Canada.” He said, “Fine. Only one thing.” “What’s that?” He said, “I want you to make Duddy a Greek.” And I said, “No, I’m not making him a Greek. It’s about Jewish life in Montreal.” “Well, then I’m not getting involved.” And I said, “I’m sorry, Sam.” I tried to persuade him. Couldn’t shake him. Only when the CFDC [the precursor to Telefilm Canada] was created and Michael Spencer said “I love this” could I get the film made. Finally I was able to make my best friend’s novel into a film without violating its integrity.

M: Casting Richard Dreyfuss as Duddy was brilliant. I can’t imagine the film without him. How did you cast him? TK: I looked all over. First of all, I obviously wanted to get a Canadian. But I couldn’t find a Canadian actor. I felt it was going to be a very dif-ficult part to play. The actor had to carry the film. I went to the greatest casting director in Hollywood, Lynn Stalmaster. I phoned him and said, “I don’t have any money. I’m making this film for $750,000. But I need you to cast my film.” He said, “Don’t worry about that, Ted. We’ll make other films together and you’ll make it up to me.” So I sent him the script and it was two weeks before shooting and we still hadn’t gotten anybody. No Duddy. Poor John Kemeny the producer was getting very worried. Finally, Lynn phones me up and says, “First of all, I’ve got to tell you, this is the best script I’ve read in five years. This is a great script. Wow. What a picture this is going to be. And there is a guy that was born to play this part.” I said, “Well, who is it?” “Ted, you’ve never heard of him.” “What’s his name?” “Richard Dreyfuss.” I said, “You’re right, I’ve never heard of him. Can I see something that he’s done?” “Well, he was in Dillinger. He plays Baby Face Nelson for four minutes. But I wouldn’t go see it if I were you.” “Why?” “He over-acts.” I said, “Excuse me? You’re recommending an actor for the part of Duddy Kravitz who overacts?” He said, “Ted, I promise you that when you come, I’m going to bring the 10 finest, most promising actors in Hollywood, but I’ll bet you any money in the world that you’ll end up with Richard Dreyfuss.” So I didn’t look at Dillinger. I went down there and he brought in 10 actors and then Richard Dreyfuss came in. And he was totally at variance from the way I’d seen the character for 14 years of dreaming about this film. I saw that character and he looked like a version of me. Polish, Rus-sian, Jewish, Bulgarian. Dark eyes. Dark hair. Slim. Thin. And in walks this German Jew with greying hair, blue eyes and a rather pear shape. I think, “Lynn Stalmaster has flipped his wig.” “Okay,” I say, “Mr. Drey-fuss, go on. Read the material.” Well, he started and right away, it was electric.

M: He nailed it immediately.TK: [Laughs.] Yeah. I cast him. And Lynn cast Randy Quaid as well. Randy walked in and stood in the doorway and I said, “You’re cast.” He didn’t even read.

M: And Micheline Lanctôt?TK: I’d seen her in a film at the Cannes film festival when I was there with Wake in Fright. It was by Gilles Carle: La vrai nature de Bernadette. Terrific film. I said to Mordecai, “I’m going to cast that woman that we saw in Gilles Carle’s film.” That was easy. And then I took her out to lunch. She and I lived together for about six years afterwards. Yeah, I left my wife [Sylvia Kay]. She was in Wake in Fright. Jack Warden I’d used in Billy Two Hats [a film that Jewison produced and Kotcheff directed between Wake in Fright and Duddy Kravitz]. I loved the guy who played Duddy’s uncle. Joe Wiseman. I’d seen him in Viva Zapata. Remember? Yeah, it was a very good cast. And Lynn, he loved it. He got two per cent of the profits and he made money until he died.

Kravitz. After I did Tiara Tahiti and Life at the Top, I made a film called Two Gentlemen Sharing, which was scripted by a very good writer, Evan Jones. Evan came to me one day and he said, “You know, Ted. I’ve just gotten a job adapting a book in Australia. It’s called Wake in Fright. It’s just great. Right up your alley. You’d love it. Why don’t you read it and see if you like it. And if you do, I’ll go to the producers and tell them about you.” I loved the book [which is about a nightmarish Christmas a middle-class teacher spends in the outback] and Evan spoke to them. They liked me and hired me.

M: Now Gary Bond. That’s probably the best performance of his career. Tell me about that. First of all casting him as the lead and then secondly getting him to act so brilliantly.TK: Well, I first offered the lead to Michael York. And he passed on it. Ten years later, Michael said, “To my dying day, I’m going to kick my ass for not doing that film. What a film.” I’d seen Gary Bond in a play and I thought, “This guy’s great.” I didn’t even audition him. M: I know you’ve been asked this before, but I have to ask about the kangaroo hunt. It’s so brutal but it absolutely makes the film. I was won-dering about the story behind it, having it in there.TK: How I did it? That was a great big problem for me. You see this little fingernail, Marc? There’s no film that’s worth that fingernail let alone a man or dog or kangaroo getting killed for a film. I was showing the level of these guys, of the hell that they had de-scended to by what they were doing to these kangaroos. To a certain extent, I did fake it. I had a shot of a kangaroo and I’d zoom in as if a bullet was coming and I’d say “Jump!” and the kangaroo would jump and it’d look like the bullet had hit him, but it was just zooming in.

M: Do you reflect back on Wake in Fright? Because it’s not like you shy away from doing tragic films, but this is such a tough film.TK: There’s a moment toward the very end of the picture where John Grant [the school teacher played by Gary Bond] is setting out almost to walk to Sydney to get away from that terrible place in the outback and he’s carrying his books and he dumps [them]. And I noticed that one of the books is Plato’s Dialogues. I remember that one of my poet friends said, “You bastard, Kotcheff. You dumped Plato’s Dialogues.” And I said, “Yeah, we don’t need Plato in this man’s town.” I think back now and realize that the reason the picture is so tough and depressing was that I was going through a very strange frame of mind. I was very depressed about life and human beings and what the hell was going on. The film was made in 1971 during the Vietnam War. I was feeling very dark about people.

M: Despite its darkness, didn’t it do well critically?TK: You know the story about Cannes, don’t you, Marc? In 1971 at the Cannes film festival, on the day of the screening, the nine-person jury came in and I was sitting at a special seat on the balcony. They looked at each other and bowed to one other. And Michelle Morgan was the president of the jury. What a great actress, and she was so elegant! Anyway, the film starts and there’s a voice behind me. Now, on that balcony, they don’t allow just anybody—you had to be a writer, direc-tor, producer. I realise that it’s an American voice saying, “Wow. What a scene!” “Shhhh.” And he kept making these noises that are music to a director’s ears. It might have been distracting to others but I’d seen the film 800 times in editing, so it wasn’t bothering me. And then the scene with the homosexual rape came. Donald Pleasence on top of Gary Bond. The voice says, “Oh my god. This director’s going to go all the way. He’s going all the way. Oh my god, he went all the way! Fantastic! What a climax! Oh my god, it’s incredible!” So, the lights go up. The jury leaves. And as I’m going out, I glance back and see this 25-year-old kid. I ask the two representatives from United Artists who distributed it in France, the only country it [made] money in because of the festival: “There was a young American sitting behind me. Do you know who it was?” “No.” I said, “Well, I’d like to know who it was because he was kind of talking about the film and making noises.” And suddenly he walked out of the theatre and I said, “Oh, that’s him. That kid right there.” They said, “Oh, he’s a young American director who has just directed one film. You won’t know him.” And I said, “Yeah, but what’s his name?” And one of them said, “It’s...uhhh...Martin Scorsese.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve never heard of him.”

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Mordecai Richler, Richard Dreyfuss and Kotcheff on the set of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Canada, 1974).


M: Duddy is what used to be called “a tough customer.” He’s manipula-tive and egotistical. I know Mordecai wrote a great book and it’s very funny but I have to ask: what attracted you to make a film about such a reprehensible guy?TK: One of my favourite writers in the world is Anton Chekhov. Besides the great plays and stories, he also wrote amazing letters. I read a book of his correspondence in which he wrote, “I’m not the judge of my characters. I’m their best witness.” A chill went down my backbone. I had a physical reaction when I read those lines. I practically burst into tears. It’s become a part of my artistic credo. I’m interested in what goes on in Duddy’s head and what makes him do the things he does and how he sees the world. With Duddy, I wanted somebody that grabbed the audiences’ sympathies in spite of the horrible things that he did. The cheating, the crippling and all of the other things.

SCENE SEVEN: AFTER DUDDY—WHITHER CANADA AND KOTCHEFF?

M: What happened when Duddy was released?TK: I’d had this dream. I dreamt it for 14 years: “I’ll make my best films in Canada. I want to make films about the Canadian experience.” And I make Duddy and I say, “There! It proves it! This is my best film. This is it! Michael Spencer is going to finance these films!” And you know, it was a big success. Duddy made its money back in two weeks from Cana-dian exhibition and distribution. It was made for $900,000—the original budget was $750,000—but it made it all back in two weeks. Not only because artistically I felt it was successful, but right away, it was a hit. I thought, “They’re going to be chasing me with scripts and to do their film because they’re going to make money off me!” That’s the Hollywood approach. A film that makes money? They want you. They want people that can earn money for them. And then—Mordecai and I had done an adaptation of St. Urbain’s Horseman before Duddy was even finished. I tried to get it financed. Couldn’t get it financed. I spent a year. You know what I got paid for directing Duddy Kravitz? $20,000. Richard Dreyfuss got $25. By the time I finished shooting, I’d spent the money. (Laughs.) It was gone. The money was over. I was broke. I went back to working in television. A new producer at the CBC, John Hirsch, said, “Ted, we smuggled up the transcript of these dis-sident writers, the trial of them. Why don’t you adapt it and direct it?” I wrote and directed the play. It was called The Trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel. I needed the money. All the while I was trying to get St. Urbain’s made. I worked for six months trying to get it produced.

M: What a missed opportunity for Canada, Ted. TK: We didn’t just want to adapt Mordecai’s books. Mordecai had an idea for a film about corruption in Toronto in the ‘40s. We had other ideas.

SCENE EIGHT: HOLLYWOOD

M: What happened then?TK: My Hollywood agent called and said, “Hey, a lot of people want you to make films for them.” I said, “No, I want to make this film up in Canada. I don’t want to make films in Hollywood.” He said, “Well, why don’t you come to Los Angeles? These two guys want to make film.” The film they wanted to do was Fun with Dick and Jane. [It was a sat-ire about an out-of-work executive and his wife finding a lucrative new career as bank robbers.] I cast George Segal, who I’d worked with in the ‘60s. We’d done a version of the Steinbeck play Of Mice and Men for David Suskind with Segal as George and Nicol Williamson playing Lenny. So I was friendly with George. I cast him in Fun with Dick and Jane. I said, “George, you’ve got to read this script. I need you.” The budget was just $4 million. George had just come off a big film, Touch of Class. He was a big comedy star at the time. But he loved the script and said he would do it.

M: Dick and Jane was a big hit. And you followed that up with Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe and North Dallas Forty, both of which did very well. Did you still want to go back to Canada after all of that?TK: Sure. I started bringing Hollywood films back to be made in Can-ada. I did First Blood, the original Rambo film, and shot it in British Co-

lumbia. And Switching Channels, with Burt Reynolds—that film I shot in Toronto. And of course, I directed—it wasn’t a successful film—but I did Joshua Then and Now in Montreal.

M: Let’s talk about First Blood. Obviously that was a huge hit. It started the Rambo franchise. Did you have any idea that it would turn into something so major?TK: The novel was by a man called David Morrell. He’s a Canadian. What I liked about it was that it was real film material. It was all action. It had very few words in it. And, as a matter of fact, at one point, when Sylvester Stallone and I were working on the script together, he said, “What if he never speaks? What if Rambo never, ever says a word in this whole film?” And I loved it. I love extreme things like that. So we tried it and in the end, I said to him, “Sly, it looks forced. It works in a lot of places but in certain areas it looks like a writer and a director decided that he wasn’t going to speak when obviously he would have spoken.” But we made it very laconic and sparsely dialogued. Because it’s visual action that carries that film.

M: What was it like shooting in B.C. with Canadians?TK: I love B.C. When I couldn’t make Canadian films in Canada, I made American films in Canada (laughs). We had a whole Canadian crew. It was great.

SCENE NINE: JOSHUA THEN AND NOW

M: You finally got to make another adaptation of a Richler novel, Josh-ua Then and Now but I know you don’t feel it was successful. Do you think it was a problem, making two versions—one as a feature film and the other as a TV mini-series?TK: Yes, but it was the only way that we could get financing. You see, we didn’t add extra scenes. We took existing scenes and made them longer for television. If we’d gotten into extra scenes, I think that re-ally would have created problems in terms of the story. Because if the scenes were necessary, why weren’t they in the film? And if they were unnecessary, why were they in the television show? (Laughs.) You know what I mean? Making existing scenes a little longer gave us the time that was nec-essary for television. But it made it difficult shooting. “Okay, we’ve fin-ished the film. Now we’re going to do the television version of the same scene.”

M: Was it hard to get the actors motivated to do it again?TK: Yes. I think the through-line was weakened by making the scenes longer. For me, the whole experience was not very comfortable artisti-cally. You know, I try to make my films economical and sparse. Sparse in dialogue and economical in drama. To unnaturally elongate these scenes seemed to go against the whole grain of how I work as a film director.

SCENE TEN: KOTCHEFF AS DIRECTOR

M: You often talk about directing musically. Can you explain why?TK: I was brought up as a musician. I was a child prodigy on the violin, if I may say so. When I direct, I feel pacing is very important in a film and pacing comes from getting a variety of speeds. What is the ideal shape for an art? It’s the sonata form in music, which starts with an allegro. It goes into andante, a slow movement. And the third movement is lively—vivace. And then finally you get al-legro furioso—passion—as the completing movement. Beautiful shape. I don’t know who said it, but “all art should aspire to the condition of music.” And I agree. To remind myself, I put musical notations at the be-ginning of every scene that I do. Obviously, there are many movements in a film, so you get contrast. Some scenes play slower, others faster. Some scenes have comedic energy; others have drama. But I always put notes on it and when the time comes, I look at it and I say, “I want this scene to be allegro,” and I pace it accordingly.

Marc Glassman is a broadcast and print journalist, executive director of This Is Not a Reading Series and editor of Montage.

Ted Kotcheff and Sylvester Stallone on the set of First Blood (U.S., 1982).

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by ADAM NAYMAN

The Mississauga studio housing NBC’s legal drama The Firm is a laby-rinth made all the more disorienting by the fact that it also seems to be

several places at once. If you make a left turn at the courtroom, you’ll end up in the suburban kitchen of the characters played by Josh Lucas and Molly Parker, complete with notes on the refrig-erator. Most surreal of all is a large cafeteria space that is for the moment populated with extras—almost but somehow not quite indistinguishable from mere, unglamorous interlopers—having a chat on what’s going to be going on in the foreground of their upcoming scene; making sure they’re ready for their close-up, even if no close-ups are going to be forthcoming. My guide through this bustling maze is the one person whom everybody on the set seems to know: Helen Shaver, the show’s executive producer and the director of three episodes so far in its debut season. When I visit the set, she’s on a break from direct-ing but still takes me through the set-ups for the following day’s shoot, explaining the angles she’s working out for an upcoming courtroom scene and pointing out the innovations of the show’s lighting designers, who have had to jerry-rig their equipment in what is essentially a cavernous, track-lit warehouse space.

The Helen Shaver Story

The Helen Shaver Story

Helen Shaver

is one of Canada’s

most sought-after directors. Adam Nayman

profiles a Canadian icon.


Below and previous page:Director and executive producer Helen Shaver on the set of The Firm (Canada/U.S., 2012).

“I felt like I had run through

the gauntlet, naked, bruised and bleeding,

but I had that Golden

Fleece. By the time it was

edited, what I delivered to the producers

was better than the script they had given

me.” —Helen Shaver, on

directing her first TV episode

which Shaver explains as a willingness to be flexible in pursuit of a clearly defined goal. “Scorsese will sit and storyboard, but when he comes into the rehearsal he knows what his bottom line for the scene is going to be.” She remembers a moment acting with Newman where the actor was so into their exchange that he forgot his lines, but Scorsese let it go and a portion of what might have been discarded as one more flubbed take survived into the final cut. Given her experience, it’s no surprise that Shaver is preoccupied with how to best direct her actors. “I look back on those 25 years of acting before I started directing as my undergraduate [degree],” she says, “and now I’m doing my post-graduate.” At the same time, she bristles as the notion that coaxing performanc-es is the only important aspect of her job, or that a show like The Firm—which is fairly standard-issue in its narrative format, favouring shot–reverse-shot shooting patterns and continuity editing—is anathema to the idea of visual storytelling. “I was never one who pretended the camera wasn’t there,” Shaver says. “I’ve always tried to understand the frame. Some shows have a limited point-of-view: on Law & Order there is no God’s-eye perspective and the camera stays with the characters, because that is the conceit of the piece. On [The Firm], we look at things from afar; we try to set up this sense of paranoia, that people are watching and being watched.” Shaver can talk about the way Law & Order is directed because she’s done that job: Law & Order: SVU is one of the many American-shot shows on her CV. “One of the things about being a guest director [on American shows] is that you’re walking into a group of 150 people that’s already been formed and then you start telling them what to do. You have to earn trust [and] get a shorthand language down, because as a director you have to instruct a group of people—not just ac-tors but also location managers and wardrobe people, and you have to do it with words. And while words are great once you understand each other, in the begin-ning I can say ‘love’ and you can say ‘love’ and we can each mean something entirely different.” It’s not like love is always part of the equation, either. Shaver admits that there have been moments as a director that have been less than creatively fulfilling. “To make a living you have to do commercial things,” she says bluntly. “The artistic side is not something I’ve had to learn. But the business part, the time-manage-ment part, where I am walking into an established commercial idea and trying to do my art within that…that’s the learning curve. Sometimes it’s profoundly gratifying; sometimes it’s very hard and very debilitating. You say, ‘This is not the truth, this is not right,’ and they just say, ‘We’re taking a little creative licence.’” It’s a similar problem to the one Shaver faced back in the ’70s when she was beginning her career as an actress, when she would frequently be cast opposite American actors in tax-shelter productions whose rules insisted that the second-billed lead be a Canadian. “The system really helped me in that way,” she says, “but most of these characters, the female leads, were very underwritten and undeveloped. So I had to try and take them and make them whole.” She worked diligently on her craft on the stage—”By the time I was 25, I’d done two Ibsens,” she says with a smile—and eventually got some great film parts, too, including Vivian Bell, the strait-laced English professor who unexpectedly falls in love with a female sculptor in Donna Deitch’s groundbreaking lesbian romance Desert Hearts. “That was an odd experience,” says Shaver. “The script was sent to me, I opened it and two-thirds of the way down the first page there was a description of the character. A woman in a hat standing on the steps, a wide mouth, high cheekbones…as I read it, I knew I was going to do the film. It was such an over-whelming feeling that I shut the cover page, put the script down and didn’t read it again for two days, because it freaked me out, the feeling was so profound.” Shaver gets similarly passionate when she talks about a screenplay she’s work-ing on that she’s been thinking about for four years—“a story about three wom-en who all have a backstory with the same man but they don’t know each other.” She says that she’s had the characters in mind for a few years but hadn’t located the desire to write the script until she visited New York to see her son, who is working on staff for CBS’s drama Person of Interest. “We were at the Whitney for the Biennial, and he was saying that he wanted to work on a feature script and I said, ‘You don’t have to do that. If you want to make a little movie, just do it. You’re an artist. Make an art film. Fuck it. You don’t have to obligate yourself at 23 years old to write a feature, to roll the rock up the hill to get the money to make it. Go make a movie if you want to make a movie, don’t hold yourself back with the business.’ And when I stepped outside, I thought, ‘Who are you talking to, Helen?’ About five steps later I realized I was talking to myself.”

Adam Nayman writes on film for Cinema Scope, Montage, POV, Cineaste and The Grid.

At 61, Shaver retains the sly-eyed beauty she possessed as an actress in films like Desert Heart (1985), and In Praise of Older Women (1978), which won her a Canadian Film Award. [She also took home a Best Supporting Actress Genie for playing an open-hearted drug addict in We All Fall Down (1990)]. Her resumé in front of the camera, which also includes films with Martin Scorsese (The Color of Money, 1986) and Sam Peckinpah (The Osterman Weekend, 1983), is impressive enough that she has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. Over the past 15 years, Shaver has reinvented herself as a sought-after helmer for a number of television series both American and homegrown, including prime-time hits like Castle, Judging Amy, Flashpoint and The O.C. “I wanted something with good writing and good acting,” says Shaver when asked what brought her to The Firm, an episodic continuation of the 1993 film of the same name starring Tom Cruise. “By the time I came on board, Josh Lucas was already signed, and they were in negotiations with Callum Keith Rennie, so the actors were there. The first three hours of scripts I read were good, too. My mother, who is 98, lives in Toronto and my five sisters live in Toronto, and so I said OK.” Shaver has worked hard to get herself into a position where projects like The Firm come to her—when she first broke into directing back in the mid-’90s, the dynamic was the other way around. “I had a manager who asked me what I really wanted to do, and eventually I realized that it was to direct,” she says. “So we were going to choose things based on whether they got us closer or further away from [achieving] that goal. She told me I was going to be taking a big cut in pay, too. About a year went by, after I acted in the two-hour opener of The Outer Limits, which was produced by Trilogy. I got a call from Richard Lewis at Trilogy about a series for Showtime that was going to start shooting in 10 days in Vancouver called Poltergeist: The Legacy. He wanted me for the female lead. He could sell snow to Eskimos but he sent me the script and I thought, ‘Really, Ghostbusters but it takes itself seriously? I don’t think so.’” Shaver was wary of committing to the full-time grind of acting in a series, but her manager suggested that she might be able to negotiate an agreement where she’d be able to do some directing, too. “She said, ‘We can let it go, but Show-time really wants you for this, and they do Outer Limits on the same lot. If I can leverage directing, you should accept it because they’re not going to just come to me and say we need a good-looking actress in her 40s to be a new director. It’s not going to happen that way.’” A few hours later, Shaver was told that she was guaranteed to direct one episode each of The Outer Limits and Poltergeist—ex-actly the ‘in’ that she’d been looking for. “I was confident that I would know how to work on a set,” she says, “because I never sat around in my trailer saying ‘Call me when it’s time for my close-up.’ I sat with Scorsese, with John Schlesinger, with Peckinpah. And I’d worked with some of the worst directors, too, which was also educational. But I had no idea how to prep, and I was being heavily used in the episode being shot while I was supposed to be prepping. My script [that I was directing] was profoundly medio-cre and I had to act in four or five scenes of it as well, which is difficult for a first-timer. And we shot in seven days, with visual effects and all that stuff, which was ambitious. But I did it. By the end I felt like I had run through a gauntlet, naked, bruised and bleeding, but I had that Golden Fleece. By the time it was edited, what I delivered to the producers was better than the script that they had given me.” Shaver’s anecdote is telling in two ways: it illustrates her sprawling literary frame of reference (she’ll cite Ibsen and Greek mythology in short succession) and her unapologetic pride in her professional accomplishments. In a business where many favour self-deprecation, Shaver’s serene sense of self-confidence is refreshing. It speaks volumes about how she’s managed to successfully navigate the Canadian and American film and television industries for the better part of 40 years. Her boldness might also have something to do with her background. Growing up in St. Thomas, Ont., in a family with six sisters, Shaver says it was always in her best interest to learn how to hold her own. But she also cultivated her artistic im-pulses under very difficult circumstances. At age five, Shaver was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, which led to several extended hospital stays over the next seven years. “Between the ages of five and 12, I spent at least three months of the year in the hospital,” says Shaver. “I think it’s very interesting that many people who are artists have childhoods that are in some way isolated.” It’s a topic she says that she discussed on the set of The Color of Money (1986) with Martin Scorsese, who famously developed his love for cinema because his asthma prevented him from playing outside with his friends. Shaver speaks rever-ently of the Oscar-winning filmmaker, who gave her the highest-profile role of her career, opposite Paul Newman. He also passed on a crucial lesson about directing,


A PRODUCER-DIRECTORIN THE HOUSEFew programmes in TV history have enjoyed as stellar a run as the medical

drama House. The program has been blessed with a compelling central perfor-mance from British actor Hugh Laurie and brilliant scripts overseen by Canadian creator and showrunner David Shore. In its final three seasons, it has also ben-efited from the efforts of producer-director Greg Yaitanes, who was able to help the production run more efficiently and keep the show fresh by fostering a cre-ative environment for directors, cast and crew.

by MARK DILLON

For those who have been living under a hospital bed, House follows the personal and professional life of Dr. Gregory House, whose genius for crack-ing medical mysteries far outweighs his capacity for civil behaviour. The series went to air in 2004 on Fox and Global and in its first season averaged more than 13 million U.S. viewers. It peaked at nearly 20 million in 2006-’07 and maintained more than 10 million last year. Its farewell season airs Mondays at 8 P.M. Greg Yaitanes had directed the popular series Lost, Cold Case and CSI: Miami before taking on the House episode “Damned If You Do” in the pro-gramme’s first season. The native Bostonian went on to helm other such prestigious shows as Heroes, Damages, Prison Break and Grey’s Anatomy and returned for a couple more turns on House. But he really made his mark with “House’s Head,” a season-four stunner in which the good doctor tries to piece together events surrounding a tragic bus accident in which he was involved. Yaitanes won the Emmy Award for outstanding director for the episode, which led to the producer-director offer from the show’s executive producer, London, Ont.-born David Shore. The producer-director is a common position in U.S television, but less so in Canada. The role is of-ten looked upon as a series’ in-house helmer who directs the most episodes, but Yaitanes prefers to think of his job as being a bridge. “Often we get scripts with very ambitious ideas, and I try to be that liaison and facilitator between what the writ-ers are going for and the physical production,” he told a packed Toronto audience filled with TV and film professionals last fall at the DGC event “Build-ing a Better Show: The Producer/Director’s Role in

Episodic Television.” “When this role doesn’t exist and the conver-sation is directly from line producer to writer, it’s often, ‘It can’t be done. We don’t have the money for it,’” he continued. “So I try to be there to help with creative solutions and get people talking and get a sense of what they’re after: ‘What’s the goal of the scene? Can we do it? What can we do to pull it off? How can we creatively get around the schedule?’ We want to make sure everything flows through my office as much as it can, because we want to keep the writers writing and production moving. It’s also about being that bridge for any studio feedback so that everybody is communicat-ing.” In addition to his leadership experience as direc-tor, Yaitanes was no stranger to management phi-losophies, being a founding shareholder of Twit-ter and a consultant to Silicon Valley startups. He nonetheless had to feel his way through his new role. “There’s really no manual for artists to learn to manage other people,” he said. “The way I would go about directing an episode—bringing people together with that singular focus—was very differ-ent from what was needed by the production as a manager in terms of helping people prioritize and helping with the smaller brushstrokes. It was more job- and task-oriented.” The producer-director position had been difficult for the series to fill, with Yaitanes by 2009 being the sixth person hired to the post. “No one had been able to keep it for longer than a season,” he said. “They were bashing heads or didn’t really un-derstand what the show needed. I had freelanced on the show enough to know what frustrated me

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This page and opposite: Producer/director Greg Yai-tanes on the set of House (U.S., 2004).

ble working hard to sustain that. I knew the wheels were going to come off. I thought, ‘What would happen [if] the ratings went down a couple of years from now? Would we be ready?’” He said the producers took a close look at how the crew was functioning on a daily basis. “Few seemed to want to rise to the challenge of doing

better. There was a lot of ‘Hey, man, the show’sdoing alright.’ The people who did rise to the chal-lenge exposed a lot of people who were hiding. For example, when the director of photography started going faster, we saw the ADs weren’t particularly organized. They were taking their time and couldn’t keep up. We ended up wiping out our AD staff and bringing in people who were much more precise, fresh, eager and excited,” Yaitanes said.

ENCOURAGING DIRECTORS’ VISIONS

Having already helmed episodes of their series, pro-ducer-directors can be especially nurturing to guest directors. Yaitanes would give the freelance helm-ers the lay of the land as soon as they’d enter the House world, and would encourage their individual visions—this in network television, where directors must all too often adhere to a boilerplate style. “I want the directors to be proactive about the things they want and to look at each script as though it’s the first episode of House. Each direc-tor can find how the script speaks to them,” he

said, pointing to the season-seven episode “Last Temptation,” in which medical student Martha Masters (Amber Tamblyn) must make a crucial de-cision about her future. Calling the shots on the episode was Canadian Tim Southam. “Tim’s take was ‘I want to make this like the pilot to Masters’ own show.’ It worked out great and everybody was

very happy with the results. If people come with a point of view and ready to play, they’re going to have a great time.” That ‘great time’ consists of engagement from preproduction to post. Yaitanes wants to see di-rectors contribute to the spotting and mixing ses-sions. “We hired them to direct, but why should that stop there?” he said. “The biggest stakes are trusting your set to the director, so giving them an invitation to post-production is a way to give them another voice and feel they can take authorship of their work. As a result, we kept attracting great talent and directors who wanted to come to the show and share in the experience.” Yaitanes acknowledges that it can be challeng-ing for directors to find the hook in a script. He found himself in this predicament on the season-eight episode “Parents,” about a young patient who wants to adopt his father’s vocation of party clown. “I thought they were going to come to my house and take the Emmy away from me,” he joked. “It took until I cast the kid [Harrison Thom-as, son of Canadian comic Dave Thomas] for me to

find my way in. Then I was thrilled with the episode, and oddly, David Shore loved it. Given where it started, I was very surprised where it wound up.”

AVOIDING EACH OTHER’S TOES

Producer-directors must ensure they are facilitating the work of writing showrunners while not stepping on their toes. “David Shore and I have had a great marriage in which we know each other’s strengths,” Yaitanes said. “He would like to be writing and working in the edit-ing room. In terms of everything else, that fell onto my desk. When I took the job, I told him ‘I want to cre-ate an environment where the physical day-to-day of the show is not something you have to worry about.’” Functioning at the executive-producer level, Yaitanes booked directors, planned the schedule and made sure it was being followed, regularly checked in with the director and called on his experience helming 30 House episodes to help resolve shooting challenges. He views his role as a partnership also with Hugh Laurie—who is in nearly every scene—line producer Gerrit van der Meer and, really, each department head. “We’re not sitting there struggling for power,” he said. “Although there can be some redundancy, I just want to make sure everybody is talking to each other. I’ve seen line producers get very squirrely at the producing director because they feel it’s somehow stepping on their toes, and it shouldn’t. I come at ev-ery position as, ‘How can I make what you do easier and better?’”

Yaitanes said that following all the firings after sea-son five, anxiety pervaded the set, with many crew members fearing they might be next. But then the renewed emphasis on organisation began to pay off. “When people started going home to their families and the show was getting done in eight or nine days, things started to even back out,” he said. “There was a better quality of life. People were less tired and doing better work and the actors had less downtime. Once everything started to gel, it all seemed to make sense, and that just trickled out into every other part of the production. Seemingly the writers were happier and the people at the production office were happier. Ev-erybody was feeling it.” Efficiency bred further efficiency. When season five finished under budget and ahead of schedule, Yai-tanes convinced the studio, Universal Media, to invest the leftover cash in improving the show’s sets, where 80 per cent or more of the scenes are shot. Input was solicited from every department. “We said ‘What makes you crazy about the sets?’” Yaitanes recalled. “And everybody came back with a list of 10 things. The sound guy had something, and so did the grips

about it. I saw the AD [assistant director] staff do-ing crossword puzzles on set and people sleeping or reading magazines. The hours were atrocious. The show—which is set in a hospital with people stand-ing around a bed—was taking longer than Heroes, which has people with super-powers. It was taking sometimes 10 to 12 days to shoot an episode. It was completely out of control.” To better understand where the problems lay, Yaitanes took a hands-on approach to season five’s final six episodes, directing every other one. He lik-ened himself to Robert Redford’s warden character in Brubaker, who goes undercover in his own jail to figure out how to clean it up. Unfortunately for the inmates of House, that resulted in a substantial turnover, which Yaitanes and his fellow producers deemed necessary. “We ended up firing about a third of the people who had been on the show for the previous five years. They had just gotten complacent and were not working at their best,” he recalled. “[That year we were named] the most popular show in the world and [I] felt we deserved the best team possi-

and the electricians. I had my own list of things, which I could not fathom why we were doing a certain way. We were able to take the funds and do probably 90 per cent of the entire list.” This is where a producer-director’s nuts-and-bolts knowledge of filmmaking and ability to communicate with a crew proved particularly beneficial. During the show’s hiatus between seasons five and six, the crew cut down major sets to make them lighter and then put them on chain motors and dolly systems. Walls could then pop out in a minute or two, avoiding the hammering and nailing that previously would take 15 minutes. Chain motors were similarly added to the lighting system to speed things up. “When I got [Universal] to give us that money, I promised I would return it ten-fold,” Yaitanes said. “I was willing to stake my job on the fact this would translate into something quantifiable by the end of the season. We kept a log. We started to pick up five min-utes, six minutes, two minutes—and that added 15 to 20 minutes a day. Over the nine-month season, we ended up finishing 18 days faster than we had done any previous season. Eighteen days is the equivalent of two individual episodes for us.”

THE CREATIVE UPSIDE

Saving time and money this way allowed the series to embark on a few out-of-the-box episodes. A no-table example is the season-seven installment “Bomb-shells,” in which Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), while hospitalized, has a series of dreams involving her and

House, her romantic relationship with whom is at the crossroads. It proved to be an expensive but emotion-ally critical episode that leads to the couple’s breakup. Cuddy’s dreams take the form of a 1950s sitcom, a Western, a horror movie and a musical. There were thoughts of bringing in an appropriate director for each of the dream sequences, but Yaitanes ended up helming the entire episode while calling on some outside expertise. For the song-and-dance scene, that expertise was provided by Emmy Award–winning cho-reographer and So You Think You Can Dance judge Mia Michaels. “I thought how great it would be to bring her mind over to House, also knowing that the actors were going to be very fussy about singing and dancing and getting out of their comfort zone. She said, ‘I’ve never run a set before,’ to which I responded ‘I will be your physical arms. I will direct this but I want your storyboards and graphic design and costuming. I want you to create the world within my episode,’” Yaitanes recalled. To realize the musical sequence, the cast and crew filmed five sections incorporating 150 camera setups in a 15-hour day that capped off the shoot. Yaitanes’

open, collaborative approach was especially important on such a demanding endeavour. As per usual, the production held concept meetings at the start of prep and midway through the shoot, bringing together wardrobe, production design, the director of photog-raphy [DOP] and director so all could voice concerns and help minimize mistakes on the frenzied shooting days. This way, Yaitanes pointed out, they would avoid such problems as ending up with a dark-skinned char-acter dressed in dark clothes sitting on a dark chair in a dark room, creating headaches for the DOP. “This is what we’ve tried to encounter every week at House, whether it’s at this scale or the smallest scale,” Yaitanes explained. “I love the creative chal-lenge our team has risen to and has been encour-aged to speak to. We don’t have anybody whose ego trumps that. Everybody knows when it’s their episode to shine. Everybody has gotten their space to do their best work.” As production on House looked to wrap by mid-April, it has secured its legacy for its often ground-breaking storylines and style. None of that hap-pened by accident, and taking advantage of what a producer-director can offer is something the series’ many contributors can take with them. As Yaitanes looked ahead to new challenges, he reflected fondly on what he and his colleagues accomplished. “It’s been incredible,” he said, “and I would love to be at the front end of something at a pilot level where we create that environment as the show finds its legs and the directors enjoy that same hospitality and that experience.”

And he is getting his wish. When contacted by e-mail in February, Yaitanes had signed on as show-run-ner on Banshee, a 10-episode Cinemax crime-drama series created by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood) that is slated to air in January 2013. “House will be missed and is a huge chapter of my life that’s come to a close,” Yaitanes writes. “But it’s very exciting to be director/showrunner of Banshee. Working with [Cin-emax parent] HBO feels like the natural progression of the work we’ve been doing at House these past seasons, evolving the role of producer/director into the role of showrunner. These new chapters of building a show from the ground up are invigorating.”

Mark Dillon is a former editor of Playback magazine. Currently a Toronto-based freelance writer, he has recently completed his first book, Fifty Sides of The Beach Boys, which will be released June 1.

“I love the creative challenge our team has risen to and has been encouraged to speak to. We don’t have anybody whose ego trumps that” —Greg Yaitanes


KING

CONTENT IS STILL

S-VOD CONVERTING SILVER-SCREEN ADVOCATES INTO PLATFORM AGNOSTICS

conglomerates became ‘pipelines’ (Bell) and ‘broad-casters’ (CTV), impacting all ‘content providers’ and every release pattern in the business. All that was miss-ing was content, so they bought Astral Media. “Major transactions within the industry have cre-ated four large, vertically integrated companies that not only own various media properties, but also the networks over which broadcasting content can be distributed,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, when he was still the affable and outspoken chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), in a spicy Quebec public-hearing address in June last year. “These companies can produce content, program it on their television services and make it available to customers on their television sets, mobiles devices and over the Internet,” continued von Finckenstein. That means that multiple-platform owners such as Bell Media, Shaw Communications, Rogers and Que-becor—along with pubcaster CBC—are largely decid-ing what gets made in English-speaking Canada, from webcasts to feature films. The circle tightens. “It has become a single industry, thoroughly con-verged and integrated,” said von Finckenstein in a separate keynote speech at the Banff TV festival last June. “It is therefore up to you to organize your-selves,” he added, “and make sure the message gets out loud and clear.” That’s the politically correct way of saying the rules are about to change…again. So the obvious question becomes: What do content creators actually want? And before answering that, it is worth noting that the converged companies are making additional billions. It was recently reported in Realscreen magazine that the CRTC “unveiled its latest survey of Canadian broadcast distributors, and pointed to strong sector growth as the combined revenues for cable, satel-lite TV and multipoint distribution companies rose to CDN$12.5 billion for the year to August 31, 2010, against revenues of $11.4 billion for the year-earlier period. Cable generated the bulk of that business, with the sector’s total revenues rising 9.7% in 2010 to $10.1 billion.” So what do Canadian filmmakers really want? The question now is what message to send to the airwaves’ watchdog, the CRTC (as it aligns for a new chief), and the multi-platform owners? Does screen size or platform really matter to creators? Is “platform agnostic” actually viable? “It is for me,” says Canadian filmmaker Tim South-am, director of American episodic series such as House and chair of the DGC’s National Directors Division. “It’s the basis for my entire relationship with film.” It’s about as many eyeballs as possible on his work. “Equally important is ‘authorship’,” adds the direc-tor, who is as proud of his ratings-winning TV movies such as One Dead Indian as he is of docs like Satie and Suzanne and features like The Bay of Love and Sor-rows. “The platform isn’t anywhere near as important; I care much more about my freedom of authorship, and reaching an audience, than any platform. “I consider television a perfectly good place to practice my art as a filmmaker,” Southam continues. “Showing a film on a small screen, potentially to mil-lions of viewers each watching their own television set, is as good as an audience in a theatre.” Southam hails the introduction of controversial plat-forms such as Premium VOD and sees it as part of the trend toward large-screen home entertainment cen-tres—complete with superb stereo sound.

by SUZAN AYSCOUGH

Almost overnight, directors (who once coveted

the ‘final cut’ and a silver-screen release) became

multi-platform content providers when telephone

companies became broadcasters and mobile

phones became screening devices.

So much rapid change has left many filmmak-

ers advocating becoming platform agnostic,

meaning: let’s not worry about how people see

the work as long as they see it uncut, uninter-

rupted by commercials and under good technical

conditions.

Does the Canadian “media” industry agree?

What do multi-platforms mean for Canadian film-

makers? Is it a viable stance in today’s world of

OTT’s and iPads to become “platform agnostic”?

Premium VOD and OTTs the hottest platforms

A couple of definitions for the slang and acronym chal-lenged: OTTs are the “over the top” content providers (such as Netflix and AppleTV), or companies that sup-ply traditional video programming in a not-so-tradi-tional way over the Internet. Premium VOD is more like a “first run” video-on-demand offer being experimented with in the U.S., and regular VOD is still in its infancy in Canada. “OTT is still young,” says Omar Chalabi, digital as-sets coordinator at Mongrel Media. “We’ve only been at it for two years. It’s too early to count on those rev-enues for upfront money. “Right now [Netflix and iTunes are] the dominant [OTT] brands…but who knows? Everyone thought Netscape would be around forever,” he says. “But I’m not going to bet against them. We have a good rela-tionship with them, but the marketplace is changing so quickly it’s impossible to know what’s coming.” Mongrel, like most other notable Canadian distribu-tors, has sold its libraries/catalogues in bulk or in part to the foreign OTTs and are offering both Canadian and foreign product as VOD in their post-theatrical re-lease patterns. Another of the unpredictable marketplace changes that Chalabi refers to is the ongoing convergence of media companies (e.g., Bell Media) whereby the new


ultimately transforming business models, which imme-diately impacts both financing and productions. In Hollywood—often a harbinger for what is to come in Canada—the issues are the same, just on a bigger scale. With DVD revenue down about 40 per cent from the market peak and box-office revenue and attendance off 20 per cent in 2011 (according to the Los Angeles Times), many in Hollywood are eager to experiment with new business models. That’s where Premium VOD really enters the new fray and kicks up controversy.

Sony Pictures was perhaps the first out of the Pre-mium-VOD gate when DirecTV launched its Adam Sandler comedy (Just Go With It) only 69 days after the film premiered in theaters. Next up was Warner Bros.’ comedy Hall Pass, then Universal Pictures’ thriller The Adjustment Bureau and, finally, Fox Searchlight’s quirky comedy Cedar Rapids: each was scheduled to be available only 30 days after its theatrical debut. Derek Chang, who oversees DirecTV’s Home Pre-mier program, told the L.A. Times that he thought Premium VOD would generate new revenue before a DVD release. “This gives the movie new life in be-tween existing windows,” Chang told the Times. “It’s hard to say we’re going to be taking revenue from movies that aren’t even playing in theaters.” David Reckziegel, president of Entertainment One Films (eOne) North America, says, “In the U.S., they’re experimenting. We’re not there yet. In Canada, we’re still pretty much following those [traditional release] windows.” Canada seems to be watching and waiting to see what will happen in the almighty American market as the studios duke it out and independents test-drive Premium-VOD models wherever possible.

“I care much more about my freedom of authorship, and reaching an audience, than any platform” —Tim Southam

Top row (from left): Mongrel Media’s Omar

Chalabi and OMDC’s Karen Thorne-Stone

Middle row (from left):SODEC’s François Macerola

and A71 Productions’ David Miller

Bottom: ACTRA’s Joanne Deer (left) with Nicholas Campbell

and Wendy Crewson

“You’re showing your work in a 16:9 ratio with ste-reo sound virtually anywhere in the world now, so I don’t see why I’d have trouble with the screen,” says Southam. He sees no problem with the size of iPads but thinks the smartphone screens are too small for features, although they open a portal to a whole other realm of artistic possibilities. Joanne Deer, ACTRA’s director of public policy & communications, says that actors absolutely embrace VOD and other new platforms: “My members want to be seen; they’re actors. So we say the more opportuni-ties and platforms to be seen on, the better.” Many filmmakers agree

“Platform agnostic…yeah,” says pUNK Films president Ingrid Veninger, writer/producer/director of Modra, which was released through VOD platforms iTunes and amazon.ca, after a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It is about eyeballs and as many platforms and portals as possible.” Deer believes that the convenience of platforms such as VOD will also provide “new audiences” for Canadian pictures and points out that unless one lives in a major city, there may be no other opportunity to see Canadian features. “I think people will be more willing to give Canadian films a chance,” she says, wisely adding that the Internet downside is clutter. Producer David Miller, president of A71 Produc-tions, agrees: “The digital universe is even more clut-tered than the theatrical market and the DVD market, so the film has to be positioned properly as well as being able to be found easily. This is basic stuff, but still things that are not always considered.” Mongrel’s Chalabi also believes the real challenge is proper positioning in a crowded cyber-world. “That’s the paradox of the Internet,” he says: “There’s so much to browse through, [users] tend to gravitate to-ward new stuff or stuff they’ve heard of.” It comes as no surprise then that marketing, brand-ing and positioning of strong authorship and unique storytelling is more vital than ever before. “That’s the distributor’s job,” adds Chalabi, “to know the film is there and to get people to see it. It’s no different [with VODs] than DVDs or Blu-rays; it’s not enough to just get it up and out there anymore.” If you’re still wondering how all the new platforms are accessed, Veninger explains it best. “iTunes is not a streaming thing,” explains the Toronto filmmaker, who lives so close to the cutting edge, she may even be at the industry’s bleeding edge. “iTunes is a download. If you rent Modra for $4.99, you download and have 30 days inside [of] which to hit ‘play’ and watch it; but once you hit ‘play’ you’ve got 48 hours; then the rental window expires,” she explains. “[But] if you buy Mo-dra for $14.99, you download it and essentially own it digitally for personal use,” she continues, effectively outlining the latest experimental distribution methods. “You can ‘transfer’ it to your iPhone or iPod touch, et cetera, but it is authorized to your computer just like a song you download from iTunes, so it would be illegal to give it away to your friends. Global distribution has changed forever “You don’t use your old technologies like a com-puter!” says SODEC (Société de développement des entreprises culturelles) executive director François Ma-cerola. “Digital is not the flavour of the month—it’s here to stay. We must get used to working with these new technologies.” One thing is already certain: the new technology is

tor] than a broadcaster.” In fact, most distributors are saying that “regular” VOD screenings will eventually replace hard-copy DVDs, but for now, they’re supplying both, whether it’s Canadian, American or international product. “Given the consolidation of the traditional brick-and-mortar rental stores, we—like most distribu-tors—offer VOD ‘day-and-date’, with Blu-ray/DVDs as a complementary means for consumers to access their home entertainment,” explains Harry Grivakis, who is

in marketing and acquisitions for V V S Films, which released the Clive Owen picture Trust simultaneously on DVD, Blu-ray, digital download and VOD, in July.

Rezekiel agrees that the unstoppable trend is VOD

“On-demand is the way many people want to con-sume,” Rezekiel says. “You want to consume when you want it and where you want it…any time there are more ways to see shows, that’s good for both the producer and the consumer.” So as distributors continue to experiment and ex-hibitors quake in their boots, funders try bravely to keep pace. “The OMDC [Ontario Media Development Corpo-ration], like everyone else, is trying to work with the industry to see where the future lies and what those new business models might look like,” says Karen Thorne-Stone, the organization’d president and CEO. “In interactive tax credits, new platforms are already embedded. But as distribution models and platforms are changing, it is incumbent on us, like everyone else, to look at traditional triggers and to evaluate if they’re still relevant.” Exactly what will be considered a distribution model (or models) that will trigger production funding in the future is currently under the microscope at many levels in Canada. It is time to review the distribution triggers, which is a long process,” said Canadian Media Production As-sociation (CMPA) president and CEO Norm Bolen (just before he announced his departure). “In the meantime,” says SODEC’s Macerola, “35mm is an option; [so is] digital. The platform is important, but even if you watch a film on your phone, it’s always the content that will be the most important thing.”

Suzan Ayscough is a Canadian correspondent for U.K.-based Screen International. A media expert on Cana-dian film, Suzan’s career includes frontline reporter (Daily Variety) and TV producer (Heartland).

“I’m not sure that the industry in its current state is a model that perpetuates well,” Chang told the Times, “so we have to keep looking for new ways to inno-vate.”

VOD tops pay-TV sales “VOD revenues are quite significant already, represent-ing 15 per cent or more of total revenue, on wide-

release theatrical movie,’’ Reckziegel says. “VOD rev-enue is now greater than pay-TV.’’ A surge in those VOD revenues is in part due to the sale of older titles to Netflix, but Reckziegel says eOne is also “trying to get into the premium section of the VOD service. We want to maximize all the ways to see it,” he says, adding VOD “is now part of our funding model—it’s already factored into my advance.” Distributors are loath to give out exact dollar fig-ures, but just how much money are we talking? “We are making money with OTT,” Chalabi says. “We’ve seen pretty sizeable growth in the two years we’ve been at it and I think we perform better than av-erage when it comes to OTT/digital revenue. Our DVDs don’t get distributed everywhere, but digital distribu-tion reaches everywhere.” But when asked if there is any real “upfront money” for filmmakers, or if VOD and alternative platforms will match or replace the missing feature funding from conventional broadcasters in Canada, Chalabi says, “Not yet. VOD is more like a traditional DVD [distribu-tor] than a broadcaster.”

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by NANCY LANTHIER

At the 2011 Leo Awards celebrating B.C film and television, the new, scary kids’ series R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour swept the awards in its category, winning best programme, best director, best performance and best editing. In the U.S., it won a coveted Parents’ Choice Award and was nominated by the American Society of Cinematographers for best television series, right up there with Downton Abby and Boardwalk Empire. That The Haunting Hour’s outstanding cinematography, acting and storytelling are achieved with the kind of miniscule budget that would underfund Mad Men’s wardrobe only sweetens the recognition. What’s more, the kids’ thriller is an anthology, the most demanding episodic format; the crew creates an entirely unique show every single episode, with a new cast, locations, production design, even storytelling style. Every show is like a meticulously crafted half-hour film—made for a steal. Helming the ambitious series is Vancouver director Neill Fearn-ley. When I arrive mid-morning on the bustling set of the third season’s first episode, “Grampires,” I spot Fearnley amid a small crowd of crew and extras, on his knees in eye-level conversation with his teenage stars. He stands, peers through the master

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NEILL FEARNLEY

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ing a movie”—but he’s an “actors’ director,” he says. “He loves working with actors, without a doubt. He’s always right there for them.” “I started [out] wanting to be an actor and ended up being a director,” Fearnley admits. “In a way, I think the acting is everything. The actors breathe the life into the work. It’s a still life without them.” Early in his career, the director took a workshop with legendary British filmmaker David Lean (Doctor Zhivago), who gave him some memorable advice—and the reason you will not find Fearnley sitting in a director’s chair staring at monitors on set. “Lean told me when you say ‘Action’ you must say it in the man-ner in which you’d like the scene to be performed. If you’re doing a love scene, you don’t want to yell it, you want to do it quietly. I believe if I’m right there, working with the actors, they feel supported.”

When I ask about his conversation with Chris-topher Lloyd prior to his remarkable dream scene, Fearnley points out that he doesn’t coach actors. More

important is to “cast in the direction you’d like your piece to be. Then you let the actors breathe life into that role, give it their own turn. My guidance is to lis-ten to their questions, not to mold them to a vision I have.” Lloyd, who spent downtime in concentrated com-mune with his cell phone, offers succinct estimation of Fearnley’s direction. “He’s very prepared, works quickly, and at the same time, he’s not uptight. So you feel really comfortable around him.” The Jessie Award–winning Vancouver actress Patti Allan, a key character in “Grampires,” says Fearnley “really helps settle you into the world where you need to be.” Fearnley, who was born and raised in England and went to art college in Liverpool, cites British directors as influences. Ken Russell (The Devils; The Who’s Tom-

my) “told macabre, just fascinating stories.” And the American-born but longtime British resident Stanley Kubrick undoubtedly inspired his fearless genre-hop-ping. “It doesn’t matter which genre that man took on, he reinvented it every time,” Fearnley says of the great director. When Fearnley moved to Canada, he decided to take film and television at Toronto’s Ryerson Polytech-nical Institute—and started watching American films. An immersion in Francis Ford Coppola’s oeuvre taught him the significance and variety of transitions. Fearnley describes the artistry of film as not dissimi-lar to eloquent writing. “With every shot, you think, what am I trying to say, how do I want the audience to feel right now? Some shots are like nouns, and some are verbs and conjunctions, and when you connectthem seamlessly, you get this wonderful feeling, as

though you’ve just read a beautiful sentence. When you get to that place, when the performance is right, when the camera is right, it’s magic.” Always striving for that synchronicity, Fearnley pre-plans every minute of the shoot so that on set he can focus on “setting the right tone. If I’m prepared, fo-cused and passionate, then that trickles down to ev-eryone else on the floor.” During each show’s five-day shoot (budgeted at roughly CAD$650,000), Fearnley spends 10 hours on set and another two to three hours every day poring over scenes at home. “I don’t know where he gets his energy,” says his wife, Karen Bedard, a former script supervisor. “He seems to survive on four, five and six hours’ sleep. Once he decides to do something, his dedication is mind-boggling. He’s extremely disci-plined.” “I come by it naturally,” Fearnley says, “because I so love this craft of filmmaking. As frustrating and crazy as it can get—‘I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time’—it doesn’t take away from the joy. Ultimately you step back from that and look at what it is: it’s play. How fortunate.”

between episodes of Poltergeist and Stargate. He’s directed westerns, romance, mystery, family drama, sci-fi, super heroes, cops, and cyber punks. At various times, producers have pigeonholed him as the “music guy,” “the bio-pic guy,” “the sci-fi guy” and “the hor-ror guy.” “I will try anything,” Fearnley admits. “I want to ex-plore; that’s the creative process. I want to try comedy; I want to try musicals.” For now, The Haunting Hour’s breadth of storytell-ing challenges him more than any other project of his career, he says. His work on the series—and especially the ASC-nominated episode “Brushed with Mad-ness,” which had kids trapped inside a gory comic book—represents a culmination of his strengths as a director. “He brings a skill set that gives him an under-standing of character and the acting side,” says Angel,

“but he’s also gifted on the technical side. Every epi-sode he’s done has a completely different look, com-pletely different style.” “Brushed with Madness” fused graphics with live action to thrilling effect. To pull it off, Fearnley de-signed the dark, film noir–style drawings, hired an art-ist to transform an ongoing supply of stills from the day’s shoot into his comic-book vision, coordinated life-size printing of those drawings, and then super-vised set construction to incorporate the panels into the live action. Michael Balfrey, the DOP nominated for the show’s cinematography award, says, “Fearnley totally nailed it with his pre-production and daily prep.” Having worked on The Haunting Hour since day one, Balfrey notes Fearnley’s technical strengths—“he understands the visual effects, the mechanics of mak-

camera, readies his crew, and says, in a startled whis-per to mimic the actors’ tone in the scene, “Action!” The minute-long take repeats several times, Fearn-ley’s excitable ‘Action!’ as dependable as his stars’ wide-eyed surprise. At 6’3” and sturdily built, Fearnley, 58, adopts a youthful style—his grey hair styled mod, red sweater, red Vans—and his enthusiasm is immedi-ate. He guides his young heroes through the next two scenes as they outsmart a seniors’ centre full of aged vampires. Soon, the stately actor Christopher Lloyd (of Back to the Future and Taxi fame) arrives. Fearnley huddles with him as production readies his scene. Lloyd’s character is about to terrify a young boy, who dreams his grandfather is dying. The lights and cameras are set. Fearnley reviews the scene’s lens ef-fects with his two camera operators and director of photography. And…‘Action!’ On the monitors, Lloyd’s transformation is phenom-enal. He is a giant in the throes of dying. The room tilts, edges blur, lighting is hard. It’s a horrifying and surreal scene, and it looks fantastic. When it finishes, applause erupts. “We knew as soon as we conceived the show we wanted Neill Fearnley,” says executive producer Dan Angel, The Haunting Hour’s co-executive producer, on the phone from L.A. “He has a vast stylistic palette, and he can work with actors. He applies all this energy and effort to make it as strong as possible. He takes it very seriously but he’s also collaborative and fun to work with.” The multi-Emmy Award–winning Angel first en-countered the director when Fearnley submitted his demo reel for Angel’s 2000 television series, The Fear-ing Mind. His work “was a standout,” Angel recalls. “The picture, the quality of the shots—what he’d done was amazing.” The Fearing Mind con-cerned a Stephen King–like horror novelist and the ways his imagination intersects with his life as a dad. Every week, Fearnley produced a hor-ror anthology within a family sitcom: Modern Family meets Twilight Zone. “That took skill,” says Angel, “and he just hit it out of the park. His transitions were amazing. He makes anything possible.” Fearnley would direct two movies and 20 episodes of television for Angel, a tip of a vocation that has seen Fearnley direct 21 TV movies, more than 150 television shows for 45 different series, and dozens of commercials. He started in 1986 with The Beachcomb-ers, directed Johnny Depp in 21 Jump Street, Kevin Spacey in Wiseguy, a young Ryan Gosling in Kung Fu, Billy Ray Cyrus in Christmas in Canaan (a 2009 ratings record-breaker for the Hallmark Channel), and Faye Dunaway in the 2010 movie A Family Thanksgiving. He’s made movies about the Monkees, the Osmond family, and Robin Williams’ brilliant Mork & Mindy,

It may be said that the only challenging part of his job is not doing the job, but rather getting the jobs, which “is just a lot of damned hard work.” When the economy tanked at the same time reality television erupted, around 2008, Fearnley’s steady workflow ebbed considerably. He wrote a couple of scripts (still in the can), and indulged in his hobbies: pencil-and-ink drawings and French pastry-making. He admits that he can be “a bit reclusive,” and he doesn’t network in the industry. “I’m not that guy. I’ve never been. I’m not comfortable in those circumstances.” In a business that’s about building relationships, this side of his otherwise upbeat character can leave him stranded. The dearth of work lasted three years (although IMDB lists five television movies during the period, the brief gigs were flanked by fallow months). The opportunity to move back into episodic with a

show as creative as The Haunting Hour was a tremen-dous relief. And, of course, now that he’s busy, “the work is pretty much all I can think about. I don’t think about the next job, necessarily, or at all.” Which is not to say he doesn’t have feature-film aspi-rations and the ubiquitous feature project up his sleeve. He hopes to produce and direct the film Water’s Edge, about a family coping with terminal disease. He and his partner have nearly scored financing twice, but “it’s a challenging story to get sold, to be honest.” While Angel wouldn’t want to lose him as a di-rector, he says it baffles him that Fearnley has yet to make features. “I just don’t understand why producers haven’t embraced this guy. He deserves to be directing at the highest level.” Yet that’s precisely Fearnley’s achievement. By im-mersing himself so thoroughly and joyfully in the work at hand, he is directing at the highest level. Speak-ing earlier of the magic in film, he recalled a quote by Robert Browning: “’A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what is heaven for?’ If you’re always reach-ing for that heaven, every now and then you get to

zNEILL FEARNLEY’S DIRECTORIAL PROJECTS

Television movies:2011 Christmas Comes Home to Canaan 2010 A Family Thanksgiving 2009 Tales of an Urban Indian 2009 Christmas in Canaan 2009 Encounter with Danger 2008 The Boy Next Door 2008 Daniel’s Daughter 2007 The Bad Son 2007 My Baby Is Missing 2007 A Decent Proposal 2006 I Dream of Murder 2005 Christmas in Boston 2005 Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Mork & Mindy’ 2004 The Clinic 2001 Inside the Osmonds 2000 Daydream Believers: The Monkees’ Story

Television shows: (Shows for which Fearnley directed two or more episodes bold-faced) R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour; Flash Gordon; 1-800-Missing; Stargate: Atlantis; Witchblade; Jeremiah; Cloud Nine; Strange Frequency; A Nero Wolfe Mystery; Hope Island; The Outer Limits; Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy; Pol-tergeist: The Legacy; Escape from Mars; Earth: Final Conflict; The Net; F/X: The Series; Dead Man’s Gun; Johnny 2.0; Kung Fu: The Legend Continues; Flash Forward; Adventures of Sin-bad; Adventures of Shirley Holmes; Highlander; M.A.N.T.I.S.; My Life as a Dog; Hawkeye; Cobra; Black Ice; Girl from Mars; Bordertown; Neon Rider; African Skies; War of the Worlds; 21 Jump Street; Friday the 13th; The Beachcomb-ers; Wiseguy; Danger Bay; J.J. Starbuck; Quest; Hamilton’s Quest.

Director Neill Fearnley on the set of R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour(Canada, 2010)

touch it. It’s what we love about film.” Fearnley’s wife acknowledges that artists like her husband who dedicate themselves to furthering their craft “strive for the best, and in the film world, that’s an Academy Award.” But Bedard adds, “One of the things Neill has come to know is the great feeling of satisfaction from a job well done. If he walks away from a show feeling his vision was realized, I think that’s the top.”

Nancy Lanthier is an entertainment journalist at The Vancouver Sun. She enjoys making short videos.

“I will try anything. I want to explore; that’s the creative process. I want to try comedy; I want to try musicals” —Neill Fearnley

*


LUCKY R13 Image rendering by Sean Moore

Any given art department on any given show in any given lot. The early-morning drive is a standard way of cutting minutes off an unbearable traffic ritual experi-enced by those running on a rookie travel schedule. It allows an assistant art director specializing in graphics to be early enough to accommodate any requests made by production. These graphics have long since evolved from standard static hand-painted signs to standard static digital signage to all of the above with the added kick of movement and 3-D photo-realism. They have also become more and more convoluted and involved when creating and outputting is done properly. As the options increase and the tool set expands, we become entangled in the various stringent standards needed to produce our quota and fulfill our responsibilities to the script. Returning to our ante meridiem [A.M.] scenario, we move into the office and down the hallway to the

art department. The stress of the first day of shoot-ing is palpable. The environment is electric with static caused by deadlines and fractured seconds; the tempo is unforgiving and the checklists turn over and over in your head as the various requests start to file in. We have common applications that we all use that have been updated, upgraded and well received over the years. Being well versed in a typical bitmap editor or really slick with vectors is a fine thing; being meticu-lous and finite with a CAD system is also notable but in a situation where something more is required, that “something more” needs to be available. Smash-cut to frantic POV as the camera flies down the corridors from set into a familiar, artistically inclined work area. A haggard and stressed visage looks up at the snarl of set decorators and such tumbling into the graphics area. Just moments before, a 3-D product design shot on a fictitious magazine cover has been requested to replace a prop that doesn’t want to live

where it is. The group of decorators arrives with the intention of grabbing an array of images for a high-tech set. “We need sexy, we need shiny, we need dangerous-looking. We’re talking guns; we’re talking efficient and sharp-looking. What can we get?” What to do when, according to Booker T, “time is tight”? In my opinion and experience, the best tool in this situation is Maxon’s Cinema 4D. C4D is truly the fastest and most responsive software application ever. Maxon has created a programme that is unparalleled in its interactivity and plug-in range for other pack-ages. They’ve given us a tool that seems to leave out all of the extra baggage and red tape that so often ties up the creative process when designing in 3-D. The fact that C4D functions seamlessly with so many other upper-echelon tools such as Poser, Vue and ZBrush should be an indication of its worth and reliability in a high-stress, high-speed, high-mainte-

nance industry. This is not to say that it doesn’t work well with the more rudimentary apps, because it does. Along with a proven track record exporting and importing between Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Photoshop, it also includes several options for rolling with QuickTime, Flash and most other video output file types. The C4D is well established as a motion-graphic designer’s dream. Although it’s regarded as a reliable standard for such genres of animation, some users of a much more convoluted workflow have deemed it unqualified for full-on animation. In that respect, I believe they are wrong. Now, with the latest version of C4D R13, they could not be more ignorant. At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much dif-ference between R13 and its predecessors. Once you start to work with it, however, it’s like changing from clogs to parade boots: you start to recognize all of the practical upgrades that have been implemented. From the basic controller and user interface to its brand new render engine, the R13 is impressive. The user interface has a much more intuitive way of dealing with objects and manipulation that allows the user to quickly switch back and forth between operations with the press and release of alt keys. The new object-oriented rotation, where you click on any point with the addition of a keystroke, allows you to revolve your camera around your selected point of interest as well as zoom in on and out of what you have chosen. They have increased the already expedi-ent render experience and added the new physical render engine. This is probably one of the biggest

upgrades as it allows you to delve into the world of the SLR photographer. A whole new set of tools becomes available when you choose the physical renderer, F-stops, animated rack focus, true depth of field and motion blur. All become usable in real time as opposed to the traditional post-production work environment. This is perfect for quick approvals and high-speed work scenarios. Add this to the already favourable array of render-ers such as the Sketch and Toon or Cel Renderer (perfect for cartoons, comics and technical drawings) and then, as if this were not enough, put your hands together for the progressive renderer. This allows you to create your scene and set your render options along with a predetermined amount of time. The image itself will continue to improve until the time has run down or you stop it. It’s particularly good for getting a concept down for a quick visual. There are so many good things to say about C4D 13. As we switch focus to its animation prowess, I recall someone saying “it’s good for motion graph-ics…” Well, it was also good for: 2012, Iron Man 2, District 9, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, to name a few, AND a lion’s share of commercial and corporate graphics seen in all facets of media today. The thing about C4D is that it has taken the tedium out of animation. A walk cycle used to be a two-week assignment given in prominent computer-animation schools, amidst cries of drudgery. C4D R13 has a Character Animation tool now. In it, you can take a model that you have built and apply a cycle

from a set of customizable walk presets for your pre-ferred mode of ambulation, from biped to quadruped to Mo-Cap to fish—all in a matter of minutes. This new tool also allows one to rig its character, adding a fully controlled armature/skeleton with either FK or IK restraints in less time than it takes to print off one of those fantastic HD images for your set dressers. As we approach the proverbial magic hour, it needs to be mentioned that this is just the tip of the environmental material–shaded iceberg (also a new addition). Along with the stereoscopic (for 3-D red/green) render tool, these are but a few of the dozens of new items built into R13. More information is sure to follow as we delve deeper and deeper into this user-friendly and extremely rich box of tools. There is no surprise here. I wish I had more than 10/10 to give Maxon for this prize.

Go to www.digitalguild.ca to find out more about C4D R13, Nemetscheks Vectorworks 2012 and how much of an utter and complete letdown Apples implementation of Thunderbolt has proven to be.

Links: www.maxon.nethttp://greyscalegorilla.com/blog

Sean Moore is a DGC member, Sheridan College computer-animation student and soon-to-be father of three.

by SEAN MOORE

It’s 5am on any given morning en route to any given studio. We’ll choose the season to be winter. The predawn sky is reflected in the cold and dangerous sheets of ice that adorn the asphalt. Dark and reflective like black pearl, winking and glinting as vehicles careen or crawl across its surface. A definitive calm creeps over me as I grow ever nearer to my destination.

by SEAN MOORE

It’s 5am on any given morning en route to any given studio. We’ll choose the season to be winter. The predawn sky is reflected in the cold and dangerous sheets of ice that adorn the asphalt. Dark and reflective like black pearl, winking and glinting as vehicles careen or crawl across its surface. A definitive calm creeps over me as I grow ever nearer to my destination.

TECH(W)RECTECH(W)REC

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law

.com Celebrating 50 years

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Pierre Juneau (1912-2012), CanadianBy Marc Glassman How many civil servants have awards named after them? Canada’s music prizes, the Junos, are deservedly named after Pierre Juneau, a close friend of Pierre Trudeau and an exemplary member of a generation of politi-cal activists who passionately believed in Canada. As the first head of the Canadian Radio-television Commission, as the CRTC was called then, Juneau instituted a requirement that all AM radio stations play 30 per cent Canadian music. Derided at the time (the early ’70s), Juneau’s so-called “CanCon” (Canadian Content) policy was a huge success, kickstarting the music industry in this country. Just as important was Juneau’s insistence that Canadians must have a majority share in their broadcast—and eventually, all media—industries. With ownership in Canadian hands, national artists in all media quickly discovered that they had a far greater chance to make work that could be seen and heard across the country and, eventually, internationally. Pierre Juneau spent his life immersed in the culture of Canada. At the NFB from 1949 to 1966, Juneau was a leading advocate for the move of the national office from Ottawa to Montreal. He was the first head of French-language production at the NFB, fostering films by Denys Arcand, Michel Brault, Claude Jutra and many other leading Québécois directors. After his years at the CRTC, Juneau worked with Trudeau’s federal Liberals, mainly in the Ministry of Communications, until he was appointed to the CBC as its president in 1982. Over the next seven years, Juneau increased Canadian content at the national broadcaster to over 95 per cent, strengthened its news department and inaugurated the cable channel Newsworld. In our homage to the Godfather of Canadian Content, Montage offers a Parting Shot of M. Juneau in a typical position, sitting directly in the middle of a group of cultural bureaucrats, enjoying a story—and, likely, coming up with more ideas for brilliant national work.

PART

ING

SHOT Below: In a photo from March

1956, NFB staff members meet with Professor André Ruszkowski in Pierre Juneau’s office on John Street in Ottawa. Left to right: Lucille Bishop, Bernard Dagenais, Pierre Bellefeuille, André Rusz-kowski, Pierre Juneau, Fernand Dansereau, Gilbert Choquette, Jim Anderson and Guy-L. Côté.

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2 MONTAGE fall 2011TAGE fall 2011MONTA2 MO

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Montage Magazine Spring 2012