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. Crack at the Title Shot _ . Memos to the Producer: Agenc | erview with George Bloomfield
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April 1979 Number 54
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CONTENTS
Cover: ane a Richard Gabourie aims at the big time as he
co-stars with Tony Curtis in Title Shot. Win- ner of an Etrog last year for Best Canadian Actor, Gabourie is executive producer of the film
4 Introducing
4 André Collette 6 Maruska Stankova
9 Spotlight: George Bloomfield
Larry Moore 14. A Shot at the Big Time
Anthony Hall 18 Julius Kohanyi: A Portrait
Leila Basen 23 Memo to the Producer
Michael Asti-Rose 27 The Loneliness of the Short Subject
Filmmaker: Bruce Pittman
31 Tech News by Rodger J. Ross Film Post Production on Video 3
33 Bookshelf by George L. George
34 Bookreviews A Guide to Film and TV Courses in Canada 1978-79 by Charlotte Hussey
34 Movies as Social Criticism by I.C. Jarvie
38 Short Film Reviews
Cinema Canada/3
INTRODUCING... andré collette
a born entrepreneur
He used to operate bowling alleys.
Now he operates a film laboratory.
André Collette is president and gen- eral manager of Bellevue Pathé, Mont- réal.
Collette’s reputation has grown over the years. When he gives his word, it has credibility and respect in the industry.
When he was young, Collette wanted to be a salesman. First he worked as a hardware clerk, then he graduated to the paint business, then to Brunswick of Canada as national sales manager in the bowling and billiard business.
Finally; as assistant director of Ex- po’s “Man and the City” pavilion, he met Harold Greenberg, current pres- ident and chairman of the board of Astral-Bellevue Pathé.
After Expo, Collette became a sales representative on the road for Green- berg. He was selling services for a small company called Ciné Lab. The motion picture/photo finishing laboratory only had one reversal processor and a couple of printers. But expansion was planned. Greenberg had already bought out the Humphrey-Pathé Laboratory in Toron- to. In 1968 he also purchased the Trans- Canada Laboratory of Vancouver.
Collette’s job was to approach would-be customers.
“TI told them that I didn’t know any- thing about the film business, but that we had fantastic services. My frankness with the people in the industry must have made them accept me.”
Instead of opening a big Montreal lab as planned, Greenberg bought out A.S.I. (Associated Screen Industries) from Du Art in New York. Collette be- came the representative for A.S.I. By 1971 he was general manager.
“To learn the business internally I got involved with different film projects and followed them through the lab. I discovered problems with films and filmmakers which gave me insight into the technical problems of running the business, but I avoided becoming over- technical.
4/Cinema Canada
photo: Lois Siegel _
André Collette doing business on the phone
**All I had to do was know a little bit more than the filmmakers because most filmmakers don’t know too much about the technical aspects of the laboratory. And most film producers are so in- volved with their own problems that they don’t really want to know about the technical problems. They don’t need complications. All they want to know is when they are going to get their film.
“It would help if they knew more, but if they did know more, they would have to accept the problems the labora- tory has, so subconsciously they don’t want to know.”
Collette set up a system of service people who were there to provide in- formation and to work with producers and filmmakers to make them aware of the laboratory’s problems.
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“A filmmaker is basically a creative person rather than a technical person. Our service and sales department pro- vided a link between the customer and our production people who actually did the physical work. We based our sales on quality and service and especially consistency of quality because all labs in the world have technical problems.
“Part of our marketing approach has been to help the young filmmaker. We are open-minded enough to realize that today’s beginning filmmaker is tomor- row’s customer. To assist them, we have deferred payments, we've advanced money even to those who have never paid us, we haven’t pushed for pay- ments and we’ve invested our money in the feature film business, sometimes to our great regret and sometimes to our advantage.”
In 1977, Collette became president of Bellevue Pathé Laboratory which em- ploys about 75 people.
‘We are twice as big as any labora- tory in the city, but we don’t worry about other labs, we worry about our- selves. A laboratory is always expand- ing. Each year, there is $100,000-
6/Cinema Canada
INTRODUCING...
$200,000 for either new equipment or modernization of old equipment which is capital investment.
“In the film business, we have to train people ourselves. Each department has its own training program because it’s hard to take a person off the street to become, for example, a timer. A timer has to know about the other technical processes in the laboratory. It takes 2-3 years. He is concerned with standards of colors and what happens to emulsion when it is being treated and what hap- pens to the red and blue when you take the green out. It takes one or two years to become a proficient printer and 6 months to a year to be a processor.”
Collette finds young people to be very different than his older employees.
“It’s not easy to motivate them or to keep them. You have to give them in- teresting jobs, pride in their work, and financial rewards. But perhaps that will change when they discover that they have to get involved to accomplish something.”
“The problem with film students is that everyone wants to be a director. Everyone wants to be creative. No one wants to be a technician.”
“If someone wants to stay in the in- dustry, he will have to diversify himself. How many good directors can we have? A director needs certain talents. One has to realize that he can be something else.”
Collette regards himself as a born en- trepreneur.
“IT learned to wheel and deal in my young days. I do enjoy movies, but un- fortunately I don’t have time to see them. I’m like the shoemaker who has holes in his shoes. I go to the odd pre- miére. I mainly look at films when there is a problem with them. I don’t see 10,000 feet of film in a year. I see a roll here or there but rarely an entire feature. When I go to movies, I pay like anybody else — 2 to 3 times a year. I like action stuff.”
The days of a film laboratory presi- dent are long. During his first five years, Collette used to start at 7:30 a.m. and end his day between 9-12 at night. Now his day begins at 9 in the morning, but he often doesn’t exit until 7-10 p.m.
“During the day I deal with internal administration problems and speak to filmmakers. Bellevue Pathé processes and works on close to 50 million feet of film a year and the cost of these opera- tions is astronomical.
Collette also works as director of the Association des Producteurs de Films du Québec, as director of the Association de Maisons de Service technique du Québec and is a member of SMPTE (So- ciety of Motion Picture and Television Engineers).
“After Expo at the age of 43, [hada heart attack and my doctors told me that I should go into an easy-type busi- ness for the rest of my life. Let me tell you, film hasn’t been the easiest busi- ness — but unfortunately I love it. I love my work, I love the people.”
Lois Siegel
maruska
Stankova
a creative curiosity
Maruska Stankova is an _ actress who doesn’t like to limit herself. “I can not stay in one place. I love to travel. Before I came to Canada I acted in about 12 countries, and in about 8 different languages. This is
such a pleasure... because all the time it is something new, something un- expected and you are enriching your- self enormously.”
Maruska has enriched herself by guest-starring (with a Greek accent) on King of Kensington, playing Mata Hari in the Witness to Yesterday series and Eva Clarisse in the French soap opera Les Bergers. Before coming to Canada she enriched the stage by per- forming in Laterna Magika the famous
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INTRODUCING...
Maruska Stankova’s face changes from role to role
Czech ensemble that combines a live actor and his film image. In her native Czechoslavakia, Maruska worked with directors Ivan Passer, Jan Kadar and Milos Forman. In 1975, the actress’ 3000th stage performance was cele- brated in Canada, where she has per- formed on both the French an English stage.
Maruska branched out into films in 1973, acting as a go-go dancer turned farm wife in Et Du Fils directed by Raymond Garceau. Later, Maruska read the script of John Howe’s Strangers at the Door. “I knew it was absolutely perfect for me, but nobody would give it to me because the character is very plain, véry peasant. Nobody
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could imagine that I would be able to play it. People when they see me and don’t know me they think I am this
urban lady, glamorous. Before the audition they were not sure...,” but Maruska got the part.
Maruska had a similar experience when auditioning for a part in Quin- tet, Robert Altman’s latest film, shot on the site of Montreal’s Expo. “When I played Jaspera in Quintet — she’s a woman at the end of her resources — Robert Altman saw me, he looked at me and said ‘My God — I do not know you simply don’t look like that’. I said, ‘Well, it depends on the role which I am playing, I simply do things according to the meaning of the role.’ He said
‘O.K.’ and invited me for the screen test to see how my face would look with the make-up because he wanted to make me much older. And when I had the make-up on I looked at myself and I really looked pitiful. Altman came in and I said “I look so terrible’, and he said ‘You look so beautiful’ and I got the role.”
Maruska found working with Altman tremendously stimulating. “He creates an atmosphere of freedom. He lets you really think that you can do what ever you want to and he lets you do it if you go according to his intention. But if you don’t, he gently puts you back, so you do not feel he is cutting off your creativity.
“T think on one side he really inspires your creativity, how you bring your character along. On the other side he has a very strong image of what the character does, what the character will do, how the character develops and what the character finally will look like, what the character’s position is in the film. He is very, very precise.”
When she is not busy filming, Ma- ruska teaches acting in the Drama De- velopment Program of the National Film Board and at Concordia Univer- sity in Montreal. Maruska re-shapes her classes according to the people she is working with: student or profes- sional directors, actors or scriptwriters. “I’m trying to teach them what an actor needs to perform, that every actor is different. I try to make my students more aware, I try to point out the sincerity of approach and ex- pression of their feelings. First they should try to find those feelings and if they have those feelings, it shows in their eyes. If the feelings are not there, if they are trying to pretend they have them, their eyes are com- pletely blind. Some students when they read a script for the first time start to act already, someone they do not know, so I ask them just to read it flatly and first understand what is going on. If you start falsely, if you start doing things for an effect — it is phony.”
Maruska’s plans for the future include the major role in an as yet untitled film shooting in Sweden this summer. Maruska said with characteris- tic enthusiasm, “If there was a film anywhere in the world, I would go there for the sheer curiousity, for the plea- sure and for the excitement.”
Carole Zucker
George Bloomfield posing with Double Negative’s two stars Susan Clark and Michael Sarrazin
SPOT LIGHT... ON by Robert Werthenner
george bloomfield
The ever versatile George Bloomfield still wants to learn more, experience more and ex- pand his many talents. He talks with Bob Wert- heimer about his committment to creating a universal film industry.
photo: Rick Porter
ee ——
Cinema Canada: You entered projects with the motive of working with cer- tain artists. Kate Reid and Susan Clark come to mind. Do you consider yourself an ‘actor’s director’ or do you derive more satisfaction from technical filmmaking?
George Bloomfield: I’m going through
a phase now where I’m becoming more
and more fascinated with the tech- nique of filmmaking. Yet, I think I am an actor’s director, or so actors feel. I love working with actors. That was my beginning, I started as an ac- tor, and I feel that is where it all ends for an audience. If the audience is looking at the technique, you haven’t done anything. If they are looking at people on that screen and getting
involved in their lives, then you have really succeeded.
Directing is my love right now because it gets me close to actors, close to an aréa I really envy. My wife is a painter, and I watch her hold a brush, choose a color, splash it on a canvas and work it around. Now, I envy her, and she can’t understand that, because she thinks that I’m earning
Cinema Canada/9
SPOT LIGHT...
more money than her. Yet, what she is doing is putting her feelings right there, directly onto a canvas. The colors are there and the feelings are there.
For me, an actor is able to do that. An actor through his voice, through his body, through his whole means of expression, is able to interpret a life, in- terpret a soul, express it, and it comes right out of him. I watch them, and the really good ones seem to have it oozing right out of their pores.
You’ve experienced T.V., film and theatre. You’ve written and directed. Which do you prefer and feel more confident in?
Film. I’m starting to feel frustrated by the confines of a television studio. We did Double Negative entirely on location, and that was a very exciting experience because we were able to use the city, explore the freedom of the camera, and have the whole world to shoot instead of the confines of a set. I don’t think we ever chose a lo- cation where you couldn’t see the out- side. Everything had depth, and there was layer and layer of life visible.
Your relationship with Susan Clark goes back many years. You're both planning moves to Los Angeles. Is there a future collaboration in the works?
That’s inevitable because we love working together. We are from the early stages of the industry in this country, and have been trying to make a film industry work, having gone through all those pains and aches and frustrations of trying to make some- thing work and have not seen it happen.
So, we’ve worked with people who are really good, and some who are not experienced enough, and some of whom are not very pleasant to work with. We feel that if you find a group of people to work with that you can enjoy and love, and that can share the creative process — because the work is so hard — those are the people you should stick with through life.
God knows, it is easy to be doing something other than making films. If they don’t give you pleasure in the process of making them, it is about
Bob Wertheimer who received a B.A. in Communication Studies at Loyola in Montreal is presently working as a freelance film technician in Toronto.
10/Cinema Canada
2
the toughest thing you can do. If you enjoy the people, then it is beautiful and stimulating. But if you work with a bunch of people you do not like, it has to be the ugliest experience you can have. You are in a position to be humiliated in so many ways with selfish people who are on ego trips. They do not give a damn about other human beings and do not belong in this busi- ness.
Double Negative is a mystery, Riel a historical adventure, and Second City all comedy. Which do you feel more comfortable working in?
It is hard for me to say, because for me the process is exactly the same.
Bloomfield taking a bead for the Double Negative shoot
:
photo: Rick Porter
The reason I do Second City is because I have tremendous respect for the talent involved in that show. The fact that it is comedy, well, comedy is drama with far more precise timing, precise shooting, interpretation and un- derstanding. Visual interpretation of comedy is far more precise than drama. If the camera isn’t in the right place it is not funny.
’ | think directing is the ability to be a great audience more than once to the same material. If you can be a spon- taneous audience to the same material, over and over again, then you have the main qualities of a good director.
Most of the actors I work with are beyond needing instruction on how to
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act. They are in need of selection, help to channel inventive outpourings that are so extravagant, that one must select those inventions from them that help feed the material that you are directing. That is the process. It is not instruction or flaunting my ego or mak- ing them do it my way, because if they did it my way, at best they would only be as good as me! And that would hardly be satisfying, because if being as good as me was what I was after, I would probably have remained an actor.
Did you enjoy the making of Double Negative ?
Well, I made the precise picture I set out to make, that is no comment on if it is a great picture. I don’t know. Nobody knows. We all hope. I do feel it is better than what we started out with. And if it were not, it would not have been just my failure, but every- body’s. That is the excitement about film. It has got to be better than any one of us. Better than Jerome Simon, better than George Bloomfield, bet- ter than Susan or Tony, better than any one of us. That is when you get it
all together, it is all of us. I enjoyed René Verzier and his camera crew, and the great production crew we had all the way down the line. The best crew I have ever had in this country...
A non-union crew?
Yes, a non-union crew, which is an interesting observation. It is not because the people in unions are not as good as the Toronto non-union communi- ty, I think it has to do with attitude. I have worked with a lot of union crews and as individuals, they are su- perb, some of the best individuals in this business. It is just that there is something about their collective atti- tude. That happens with every union.
Are you a member of the Directors Guild of Canada or the Directors Guild of America?
I am a member of DGA, and I’m contesting my membership in DGC. When I say contesting, it is because I’ve been having battles with DGC from the time I realized that they were a rather useless organization. I have gone to their meetings and always
a
SPOT LIGHT...
felt that it was like going to a bowling club! I do not have time for that.
I’ve worked in this country as a director a long time, and I have seen a lot of my shows being repeated and re-run. So, I sit back and see all the creative people, the actors and the writers all getting residuals for the extra showing. Every other country pays directors residuals, not this one! Now, that is Directors Guild. If they were going to establish themselves, it seems to me that that should be about the first thing they should ac- complish. Otherwise, for me, it doesn’t exist.
Don’t you feel that the organizers and the Executive would beg to differ?
Listen, the members of the Execu- tive are people I know very well. They are the ones, as well as myself, that want to do what I am talking about. The reason they have not is because of the membership. The membership is made up of people trying to find a job who are too afraid to upset any- one by taking a joint stand. lt might mean that they all go out of work for
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photo Rick Porter
Bloomfield (third from right) oversees the Double Negative crew
a while, but they are too frightened. They do not think they are good enough, and that is a Canadian thing! They do not think highly enough of themselves to demand respect as ar- tists. Right now I am talking about the membership of the Directors Guild a lot more respectfully than they think about themselves! I’m saying that they are good enough, and that they are needed, and have the right to demand that respect. We all want to earn a liv- ing in this profession and that is what I am talking about!
You have said you enjoy the freedom and variety of working in Canada, yet you plan on leaving for the U.S. Is America still the Land Of Oppor- tunity for you?
Yes, it is essential at this point. I want to go there to learn more, ex- perience more, share more, and I want to be working with people who are better than me, who have had more experience than me. I have been around this country for a long time, and I figure I have seen and done just about as much as anyone.
At this point, I can make a pretty good living up here, so that is not the motivating factor, just to expand my- self. I have no illusions or hang-ups about Hollywood... it is a place to make movies.
With your leaving, do you have any advice or suggestions to the governors and producers in Canada?
I would open the doors to Ameri- can producers and creative people. I believe American co-productions have positive aspects. It would bring to this country what I am leaving to find. And not just from the U.S., but from everywhere in the world. We are all too nationalistic. Here we are today, excited about the Egypt/Israeli peace pact, the separation of two nations coming to an end, but we are ignoring the true leaders in the world, and that is the artists! We have to get together. I am not interested in Canadian film... I am interested in film.
What about the U.S. domination of available Canadian investment, with big budget ‘Sure Thing’ projects squeez- ing out Canadian ones. Do you think that is a possibility ?
No, I think it is bullshit. It is inse- curity from lack of confidence and know-how. A. very Canadian idea, pure paranoia. The ones who are not good enough will be affected, but those who are won’t be stopped. We have to move away from being ama- teurs and try to be as good as the best.
J POT LIGHT...
the annual
How does this apply to feeding on the CBC that is shielded by government funding. How would you improve the CBC?
I have a long relationship with the CBC. I’m talking family. It is special. They gave me a hell of a lot. I would hate to suggest any change that might deny that same opportunity for some- one else. I have a positive feeling about
the CBC.
They are sitting ducks for criticism, as they have that government civil servant lable. Yet, they have done things that the private sector could not take the time to do. A lot of people have had bad experiences with the CBC. But, if you are in the private sector you say you have had a bad time with John Doe or Adam Smith. To say you had a bad experience with the CBC has a different meaning. If you attack a general government con- cept you feel courageous. That is all bullshit. The CBC overall provided me with a great deal, they offered me the opportunity to learn my craft.
What’s ahead for George Bloomfield?
Work in several different places. Mobility. Thriving on receiving as well as giving back. To open the U.S. and Europe and experience. To perpetuate my craft across borders, helping to create a universal industry. The obses- sion with the Canadian industry as solely Canadian is absurd.
Cinema Canada/13
a shot at the big time
Eager to produce films with entertaining and international appeal, the same creative trium- virate that gave us Three Card Monte is at it again. This time producers Rob Iveson and Richard Gabourie and director Les Kose aim for the major leagues with their new film Title
Shot.
by Larry Moore
It’s a bitterly cold January morning, as a young man walks anxiously toward the Toronto Trust and Deposit on the corner of Dundas and Spadina Streets. He nervously enters the bank and demands all the money from one of the tellers. Over at police headquarters an alarm goes off and of- ficers Black and Dunlop are dispatched to the scene. In the ensuing chase the suspect is cornered in a lane behind city hall. Dectective Blake tries to reason with him, but the kid panics and turns to fire. Just then a matte box falls from a camera overhead and narrowly grazes the performer. “Cut... cut... let’s do that again.” Later the fake blood to be used on the matching close-ups has frozen solid in its cup. “This di- recting is not all it’s cracked up to be,” muses director Les Rose.
Executive producer-actor Richard Gabourie discusses his role as Blake with director Les Rose
“Give me a good chase scene and a happy ending
and I’m in heaven”’ Les Rose
The picture is Title Shot, the latest from Regenthall Pro- ductions. The film is produced by Rob Iveson, Richard Gabouris and directed by Les Rose, the triumvirate that gave us Three Card Monte last year. The next day on loca- tion at a pinball arcade on Yonge Street, Les comments on that first day of shooting. “It’s a lot like football,” he says wearing his ever present football jersey, “You have to hit someone to know that you are in the game. Now that our hands are dirty everything seems a little less fragile.” Title Shot, Les Rose’s second feature film as a director, is a story about the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. The idea for Title Shot came to Richard Gabouries, who stars as Blake opposite Tony Curtis, and is also the film’s executive producer, as he was watching the fights at home.
i a Maa
14/Cinema Canada
“I’ve always loved boxing and was sitting on the couch and though I’d like to write something about a shot at the title. It started as that simple idea. I’ve also always been fascinated by the Kennedy assassinations,” so Title Shot has a unique twist that adds an interesting element of suspense to the plot.
The picture was made possible by a 1.4 million dollar bud- get that came from private sources, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Film Development Corp. Three Card Monte has been made on a budget of $300,000, so it was quite a step up for those concerned. A healthy chunk of that money went to Tony Curtis for his role of Renzetti, a fight promoter who uses his mafia connections and extensive computer net- work to weight the betting on the championship. Richard Ga- bourie bargained for over eight months with Curtis’ manager Swifty Lazar before a contract was finally secured. For his two and half week stint as Renzetti, Curtis received over half the entire Three Card Monte budget. Both Les and the producers seemed very happy with the results.
Although there were some minor communication problems between the star and head office, the performance he turned in was exceptional. When producer Rob Iveson was questioned about dealing with the slightly temperamental star he simply replied, “Look at the rushes. They speak for themselves.” After all, Curtis has been in show business for thirty years
and has made over a hundred films in that time. He made his*
first picture when director Rose was only one year old. Les said that “working with Tony was a valuable learning exper- ience. It was a give and take situation. We developed a rapport that took us through the whole picture. It was a fifty-fifty pro- position.” He also stressed the importance of getting off to a good start with a performer of Curtis’ calibre, “You have to get off on the right foot; a fish stinks from the head. You have to have the ability to make decisions. My margin of error is 80 percent correct, 10 percent correctable, 5 percent work- able, 2 percent changeable and 3 percent no way. If I’m good it’s because I know when to shut up. Tony is a lot like a fine sports car. If you treat it well it will perform better than any- thing in the field.”
Rob Iveson, who defines his job as “the person who can fire the director,” has a tremendous amount of respect for Les. “He’s a blue collar cowboy and the performances reflect the character of the director.” Les himself says that he puts a lot of his personality into his work. “I like to be unpredictable, pull a punch here when you expect it there. If you don’t like the picture, you probably wouldn’t like me. I’ve tried to do something a little different with the pacing. The actions scenes has been kep short and plentiful, while the character scenes are longer and a bit drawn out. That way the action will keep you interested, while you get to know the people in the story. The plot of Title Shot is a little bit implausable, so I’ve made the characters a lot more realistic to compensate. I think that ninety percent of directing is casting. This director yelling and screaming thing is bullshit. You typecast and then you tell your actors when they are going off. You have to trust the ac- tors’ instinct.”
Les was particularly happy with the performance of Robert (Bo) Delbert, an actor from New York, who was chosen to
LL
Larry Moore is a free-lance actor, director and writer living in Toronto.
play Rufus Taylor, the aging heavyweight champion. “Out of the seventeen people that we auditioned in New York, Bo was the one who came across most like a champion. When I saw his rushes I was very happy. Anyone could make him look good in the editing room, but I was concerned with whether or not he
- could act.” Delbert’s role wasn’t very easy either. He had to do
extensive boxing training in order to do the fight sequences with his challenger, who was played by Damiano Pellegrino, a trained Toronto boxer. After the fight was filmed Delbert was left with a few healthy bruises — souvenirs from his stay in Ca- nada. Less feels that this was the best cast he had ever had to work with. Beisdes Tony Curtis and Robert Delbert, Canadi- ans Allan Royal, Sean McCann, Richard Gabourie, Natsuko Ohama, Tabby Johnson, Susan Hogan, Jack Duffy and Vince Marino has principal roles.
Taylor ready to come out fighting
Title Shot was a new stage for Iveson, Gabourie and Rose. Richard Gabourie says that he mickey-moused both pictures and that Three Card Monte couldn’t be made today. Rob Ive- son feels that dealing with the bank posed one of the most interesting problems. The Royal Bank gambled on investing its own money for the first time on a major motion picture. The bank executives apparently didn’t understand the necessity to be firm and speedy with their financial commitment. Conse- quently there were a few tense moments when it became appar: ent that the producers might lose Curtis because some of his guarantee wasn’t available when it was needed. Iveson says that new ground was being broken every day at the bank dur- ing that time, until they finally released the money that was needed. Mr. Curtis, much to everyone’s relief, arrived only a few days later than scheduled.
The jump in budget ($300,000 to $1.4 million) allowed the producers and director a little more latitude than they had had on Three Card Monte. Besides being able to hire an interna- tionally recognizable star, they were able to use a wider range of locations, including the Kitchener Memorial Arena where
Cinema Canada/15
the championship bout was fought. In order to give the fight a realistic flair, over two thousand extras were brought in to see the action and fill the stands.
Les was also pleased with the kind and number of special effects that the budget allowed him to incorporate. These in- cluded the rolling and subsequent destruction of a police car and numerous bullet hits and gunshot wounds that were ex- cellently executed by special effect whiz, Martin Malivoire. It wasn’t always simple. A number of times during the shoot, scenes has to be carried in order to avoid costly overtime. This, unfortunately, would break the flow of an action or a scene. Once when Les was cautioned for using too many blanks to get his opening and title sequences, he quipped “I forgot. Just put one bullet in the gun. This is a Canadian production.” The tight production schedule also presented its problems to Director of Photography, Henry Fiks and camera- man Fred Guthe. On numerous occasions they were forced to make the best of a poor or newly chosen location on very short notice. Shooting in the Canadian winter certainly has its disadvantages, when it came to trying to match scenes. When the picture changed from union to non-union status due to a disagreement with IATSE, they lost half the crew that they had been accustomed to working with. It all made for a ra- ther tenuous beginning. However, you couldn’t tell by the final product. Fred Guthe was so proficient with his hand held camera work that he was nicknamed Freddy Cam. Some of the camera work, particularly in a hockey sequence and during the fight, is superb. One of the crew members com- mented after the first screening that the rushes were the best that he had ever seen. The comment wasn’t an empty one.
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Henri Fiks takes a light reading
Tony Curtis stars as Renzetti, a fight promoter
Each scene has some particular quirk that makes the charac- ters extremely realistic and believable. Les likes to have his people stumble, stutter, miss-pronounce, make mistakes or not be able to express themselves at all. He is very quick to change dialogue and would rather have a performer say something that he is comfortable with. Consequently, much of the script was reworked or tightened in the rehearsals prior to each scene. This is one of the reasons why Rick Gabourie enjoys working with Les and has had him direct both his pic- tures. Part of the freedom comes from Rose’s early exper- ience as a scriptwriter.
Les Rose co-wrote Paperback Hero with Barry Perason and recently has completed the first draft of a new script The Circumcision of Issac Littlefeather. Paperback Hero was where Rob Iveson, who was the second assistant director, and Les originally met. On Iveson’s recommendation. Les directed Ga- bourie’s first project Three Card Monte. As a result, Gabourie walked away from the Canadian Film Awards with the best actor and achievement awards last year. Small wonder that Richard appreciates Rose’s ability and style of directing.
Together, Gabourie, Iveson and Rose are creating new chap-
Rufus Taylor (Robert Bo Delbert) resting on the ropes
ters in Canadian film history. Title Shot is an important ven- ture for all of them and represents their own individual shot at the big time. None of them have a specific kind of picture they want to work on, but all appear eager to progress and produce good entertaining stories that have an international appeal. Les
likes the type of film where you can experience a wide emo- —
tional range and come out uplifted. The King of Hearts and Small Change are two of his favourites. Rocky is also up there somewhere close. He confesses to having a “motherlode of cornyness” that is reflected in the personalities of the charac- ters he puts on film. “Give me a good chase scene and a happy ending,” he laughs, “and I’m in heaven.” Up until the comple- tion of principal photography, editor Ron Lizman had been responsible for cutting those performances into a cohesive feature film. Recently though, Lizman left for another pro- ject and was replaced by Ron Sanders. Rose wants to keep the pace moving through the 140 scenes. “In Europe the pace is a little slower, but here the television generation is used to an image change every fifteen seconds. The cutting should reflect : the phrenetic pace of our everyday life.” He jokingly admits that “you want to have people in and out of the cinema, be- fore they know that they have seen a bad picture.” He doesn’t have to worry about that with Title Shot. Although only his second feature, the wide variety of talent and expertise have combined to make it a fine motion picture. All those involved, are being pushed a little closer to the goals that they are all striving for. Rose in particular seems a bit like a newborn colt. The legs are a little shakey, but confidence is growing witl every stride. That he has the potential to run with the best of them is more than apparent. ;
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julius kohanvi a portrait
by Anthony Hall
photo: Rose Pelc
Julius Kohanyi looking at a new location for a shoot
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Film survivor Julius Kohanyi fought for three years to sell the idea for Summer’s Children. Now that the film - a dramatization of an inces- tuous love - is finished, he is taking it to the marketplace at Cannes, confident that the first reactions to private screening promise a warm reception.
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In the busy frenzy of last year’s feature film activity, a quiet little crew working on a love story about a brother and sister was hardly noticed. But even during this era of sexual anarchy, a movie dealing with the ancient taboo of incest can- not remain unnoticed for long. Now that it’s in the can, Sum- mer’s Children is beginning to make waves. The attention is coming not because the filmmakers have exploited the sen- sationalism of their subject matter; rather they have approach- ed their theme with integrity and sensitivity, producing a work of art aimed not at the groin, but at the soul.
Due to the fine eye of cinematographer Joe Seckeresh, the film has a European look with shades of California, although it is set in contemporary Toronto. Jim Osborn’s script takes us backwards and forwards in time, as we scour the city’s under- world with male lead Thomas Hauff who is searching for his suicidal sister. This role in insightfully handled by newcomer Paully Jardine, who haunts the screen with the raw force of her unusually androgynous magnetism.
Hanff and Jardin, stars of Summer’s Children
The director of Summer’s Children is Julius Kohanyi, a sur- vivor of almost two decades of independent filmmaking in Canada. For him the feature’s completion represents the hap- py ending of a long hard struggle. To sell the idea, he says, “it took three and an half years of incredible turndowns and in- sults and mental rapes. Before I knew we were going to make
the picture I felt like a wasted old whore. Now I’m laughing |
all the way,” he continues, exclaiming: “The so-called ex- perts who looked at the script and said it was nothing. Now it’s so sweet to prove them wrong.”
Kohanyi’s elation is perhaps premature, but not without foundation judging from the feedback he has received after previewing Summer’s Children to a small group of film in- siders. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at once made a substantial offer for the television rights, while Variety praised the work (29 November, 1978), comparing it favourably to Outrageous. Sid Adilman of the Toronto Star reserved simi- - lar comments (23 November, 1978), hailing Summer’s Child- ren as “the most unusual movie yet made in Canada.” “No- body thought the film would get made,” says Linda Beath, manager of New Cinema Enterprises, which will probably handle Summer’s Children in Canada. “Now that its done,” she continues, “everyone can see that Julius has pulled it off against tremendous adds.”
Already Kohanyi’s achievement in Summer’s Children is bringing him offers to direct other features. One of these comes from producer Bill Marshall, the brains behind the Fes- tival of Festivals. He calls Summer’s Children “the best calling card” for a first-time feature director that he has ever seen. This judgement is shared by Michael McCabe, the man at the
Anthony Hall is a teaching assistant working on his doctorate in Canadian history at the University of Toronto.
Canadian Film Development Corporation who gave S' & Children the go-ahead after his predecessors had t
down three times. “We certainly would like to be in
Julius’ next feature,” says McCabe.
What is really wowing the money men like Marshall and Mc- Cabe is the production quality that Kohanyi has been able to get on the screen with his limited budget. Summer’s Chilren was made in 35mm for less than $200,000 with a shooting ra- tio of five and a half to one. (Most feature filmmakers expose about fifteen units of stock for every one that appears in the final release.) To achieve such efficient production, Kohanyi did his homework. For example, he painstakingly walked and photographed every possible angle of his locations long before his crew was assembled. But the depth of Kohanyi’s prepara- tion for Summer’s Children goes far deeper than this. He has devoted the best part of his thirty-nine years to a growing love affair with film. “I would have liked to have had a wife and children by now,” he says, “but I have never been able to find, a woman who can overcome the jealousy created by my all- consuming passions for my art.”
Kohanyi’s marrigae to film has not always been an easy one. But then truly dynamic relationships never are. The bad experiences have left some deep wounds in a vulnerable man who has learned to fight back. Beneath his acquired street- wise cynicism, beats the vital heart of an incurable romantic, still in the clutches of his first crush. Kohanyi refuses to grow up, and his films at their best reflect the wide-eyed openness of the little boy in him.
Born the son of a hydro engineer in Kelowna, British Col- umbia, Kohanyi was taken by his parents to their native Hun-
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gary shortly after he was born. They arrived just in time for the Second World War, and it was not until 1947, when Jul- jus was ten, that he and his sister could return to Canada. By the time he was seventeen Kohanyi’s growing interest in film took him to Hollywood, where he met Stanley Kramer while taking evening film classes at the University of Southern Cali- fornia. “If you want to make films, don’t complain about not getting a job,” he was told by Kramer. “If you want to make movies just get yourself a camera and do it.” Back in Toronto several years later, Kohanyi became ready to follow Kramer’s ad- vice. Working as an usher at the Uptown Theatre helped con- vince him to take the plunge. He recalls: “When you witness a film five times every day, and you learn every line, eventually you say, ‘I would have done it differently.’ ”
Kohanyi bought his first used 16mm camera with $150 borrowed from a girl friend and proceeded to make Requiem for a City Block in 1962. “This was so technically inept,” he says, “that I would not allow it to be shown in public,” Two years later he was ready to try again, and this time he came up with a winner that is something of a classic. Herring Belt is his intensely personal statement about the organic wholeness of life in Toronto’s ethnically diverse Kensington Market. Here we get a sense of Kohanyi, the displaced per- son, harkening back to the more intimate way of life he had left behind in Europe.
During these early years Kohanyi supported his film habit by running his own tiny auto body shop. He was just barely able to make ends meet. Says Kohanyi, “When every $20 you spend on buying and developing a 100 ft. roll means that you might have to miss your supper, you soon learn to correct any technical mistakes which waste film.”
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ohanyi watches Henry Moore sculpt
By 1967 Kohanyi had mastered the basics of his craft. That: year he directed two works, Teddy and Henry Moore, which began to win an international reputation for him on the film festival circuit. In Teddy the pattern was set for many of his later works — including Summer’s Children — which deal with they joys and frustrations of youth. He explains, “The boy in my films is always confused, He doesn‘t know how to grow up. Like me in my childhood, he can’t decide whether to re- late to this or that culture. The alienation of Teddy towards his parents is an example of this.”
Kohanyi has built the film around the trauma that Teddy experiences when he rips his pants. As in most of his subse- quent works, Kohanyi seeks his drama not on the physical plane, but rather in the interior spaces of the emotional uni- verse. “If I were dead my parents would be sorry,” says Teddy as he passes through the bicycle wheel of life into his dream world. In Games, made in 1975, there is a similar pilgrammage into the aroused imagination of a young boy locked over night in the Royal Ontario Museum. With I’m Alive, his 1976 docu- mentary on autistic children, Kohanyi takes the viewer deeper yet into the miracle of youthful perception.
Henry Moore, the other film made in 1967, reveals an add- ed dimensions of Kohanyi’s talent. As he was to do later in a picture called Rodin, the filmmaker uses his craft to penetrate the meaning behind the work of a major artist. The structure of the earlier picture revolves around Kohanyi’s engagingly intimate interview with Moore. Interspersed throughout these scenes are powerful cinematic forays around and through the organic mass of the great man’s sculptures. In Kohany’s super- lative study of space and form, Moore himself becomes a sculptured shape seemingly carved on the celluloid by the deft movements of cinematographer Nick Knowland.
Kohanyi claims that the singe-minded pursuit by Moore of an artistic concept served as an inspiration for him to keep go- ing through some of the darker days ahead. And the influence did not stay there, for Moore’s concern with the abstract is reflected in another aspect of Kohanyi’s work. This is most readily apparent in Images, which he made with Eli Kassner in 1970. Kohanyi calls the film a “cosmic orgasm,” a phrase heavy with the ambiance of the era during which it was con- ceived. To make the picture, still photographs were taken through a microscope of crystals being bombarded by acid. There were set in motion on the animation board through a variety of ingenious techniques. The effect produced is dis- turbing, as throbbing twisting images assault the senses in a pandemonium of red. The emulsion literally burns with the pulsating passion of Kohanyi caressing his craft.
photo: Ron Watts
Paully Jardin, a raw androgynous energy
But Julius Kohanyi does not alwasy live in the ethereal spaces of high art. When he needs release, he gets it through cycling and tennis. In his work, responsibilities have come with the success. He has been an executive member of the Directors Guild of Canada and seved on the pre-selection jury for the Festivals Office of the Secretary of State. More re- cently, he acted as Chairman of the Canadian Film Awards, but he gave up this position fearing that his work directing features constituted a conflict of interests.
One of the most interesting appointments received by Kohanyi was when he was chosen by ex-CBC drama chief John Hirsch to be the producer of the show Sprockets. The series, which ran from 1974 to 1976, was an all-too-rare
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Wayne Best as a young and alienated Bob
showcase for the works of Canada’s independent filmmakers. As usual, Kohanyi took up the challenge with zest, turning out 26 lively programs at the incredibly low price of $5,5000 each. He achieved this without sacrificing production quality, and the impact of Sprockets was so strong that it often re- ceived over 700 letters a day. At the end of his contract, Kohanyi was able to return $43,000 of the originally alloca- ted budget to the Corporation. “For me it was an ego trip,” he says. “I wanted to show that outside filmmakers are so good, that they can afford to give money back and still get the job done well and on time.”
Kohanyi maintains that Sprockets was taken off the air, because its low cost and high popularity were an embarrass-
Cinema Canada/21
ment in in-house CBC producers with their bloated budgets. On the topic he becomes adamant, reserving kind words only for the underfunded CBC officers in the Program Purchasing Department who nurtured his career during the early years by buying his shorts. States Kohanyi, “The CBC is not for all the people. It is only for CBC people who care more about se- curity and their homes in Rosedale than they do about making good television. They’re a frightened, incestuous group.” His solution , “Scrap the CBC as a production outfit. Keep them only as broadcasters of work handed out to private people.
That way you'll have guarantees with contracts firmly limit- ing budgets and production schedules.”
Kohanyi sees the problem at the CBC as part of a broader Canadian malaise. He explains this diagnosis through a dis- cussion of the distribution strategy for Summer’s Children: “We plan to open at Cannes and then New York in front of the best critics. I don’t want to open my picture here be- cause in this country it will be kicked as being Canadian. But if you bring a movie in after somebody else has approved it, like they did with Outrageous, then Canadians will applaud. Canadians approve what Americans approve. This comes from insecurity, which in turn comes from the fact that we sold off our timber and our oil and our real estate. The country is like a giant orange being squeezed drier and drier by a small group of hucksters. It’s fast becoming a temporary bus stop for everyone.”
In conversation Julius Kohanyi speaks his mind with re- freshing frankness. But in his films he employs a different, more subtle mode of communication. Often it is the thing left unsaid, or the action happening off screen, which most forcefully arouses curiosity. Here lies Kohanyi’s secret, for he understands that by being too explicit one limits imagination. And he knows that it is in the interior world of the mind’s eye, not the exterior one of the camera’s, where great movies are
22/Cinema Canada
an incestuous affair between brother (Tom Hanff) and sister (Paully Jardin)
$}]#M UOY :ojoyd
$1]B@M UOY :o,0Y4d
Don Franks, having a serious drink
really made. With Summer’s Children, Kohanyi hones his sharp talent for stimulating an audience through innuendo and indirect reference. The only hint of the physical presence of the lovers’ parents, for instance, is the father’s cough at the beginning of the film. By the end of the picture, however, every viewer’s imagination has been induced to create mental images of the strange parental pressures which underlie this unorthodox bond between brother and sister.
Just as some dramatic relationships are better left unde- fined, so it is with the nature of the forces which animate Julius Kohanyi’s passion for his art. All we can say is that with the successful completion of Summer’s Children, this tested love affair could well be passing into a beautiful new phase.
from Leila Basen
Producer Robert Lantos and Assistant producer Leila Basen
The following are a series of memos to Robert Lantos from his assistant, Leila Basen, during the shooting of Agency, an RSL Films Pro- duction directed by George Kaczender from December 1, 1979 to February 5, 1979. The names haven’t been changed. Basen was the only innocent...
Cinema Canada/23
“Executive assistant to the producer, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know but it sounds impressive.”
“Nobody leaves Toronto to go to Montreal.”
“Yeah, the traffic should be good once I’m past Osh-
99
awa.
After the standard CTV lunch in a medium-priced
downtown restaurant; after the presentation of the regu- lation goodbye gift, a pewter mug with name and date en- graved, a tribute to many early mornings and many unin- teresting interviews from a producer who thought I was making a big mistake; I got into my car and drove to Montreal, to work in feature films for people I had met only once, on a film that I knew nothing about. On Canada AM, I learned there was a good answer to every question; except for the question, “what will you do in Montreal?”’. What will I do ? Nobody knows what I do. They still don’t.
Dear Mr. Lantos,
In regards to your 8:00 a.m. squash game with Lee Ma- jors; stop trying to get out of it, the exercise is good for you, 8:00 a.m. is better than 7:00 a.m. and I am unable to assist you in this area.
In addition to not playing squash, I also cannot take dic- tation, I don’t touch-type or operate a telex machine and I have no idea how to organize the filing system. Regards,
Leila (the girl from Toronto)
Yes, I can drive a standard shift. No, I will not pick up your jeep at the garage.
Dear Robert,
A xerox copy of the interview with Lee Majors from this morning’s Gazette is on your desk. (Yes, I know how to use a xerox machine.) I have underlined the part where Lee is quoted as saying, “I don’t consider myself a great actor.”
Before reading the article, keep in mind that old adage — I don’t care what they say, as long as they spell my name right.
They spelled his name right.
Leila Basen received a BFA in film from York in 1976 and worked as editor and sound recordist on Anguilla, a documentary about the West Indies. In 1977 she sold a script to King of Kensington. She has also worked as production assistant at CFTO Nightbeat and then at
Canada AM where she was promoted to story editor and then to writer. In December 1979 she became exe- cutive assistant to producer Robert Lantos at RSL in Montreal.
24/Cinema Canada
Regards,
Leila
The keys to your jeep are in your desk. I parked it on the street.
Dear Robert,
Last night, during an episode of Mary Tyler Moore, I no- ticed that Mary Richards brings Lou Grant coffee and makes his phone calls and she is the associate producer and he is the producer. Maybe all producers have prob- lems dialing the phone. I was hoping you might have missed that episode.
Regards,
Leila
The girls in the office called in sick. They’ve been throw- ing up all morning. Possible flu or pregnancy epidemic. An occupational hazard.
Dear Robert,
Received a frantic call from Murray Hill Limousines — wanted to cancel our account. The reason given was ridiculous. Check out this story. . . Lee Majors hijacked the Rolls Royce assigned to pick up Robert Mitchum at the airport. Majors alleviated the chauffeur of his duties and drove Mitchum to a hotel in one of the seedier areas of town
Not a bad story, it has all the elements. Maybe we could use it in our next film.
Regards,
Leila
There were no phone calls and no mail, but everybody around here still likes you.
Dear Robert,
Nothing special today.
— Bad snowstorm in Senneville — totalled a car on the way to the location — let’s move to L.A. and avoid this aggravation
— Valerie Perrine’s boyfriend arrived on set — looks like a surfer from Central Casting
— Lee went to Schwartz’ for dinner last night — didn’t like the service, the smoked meat or the fact that no- body recognized him
— one of the actors spent three hours at the airport waiting for someone to pick him up — guess they don’t teach them how to take taxis at the National Theater School. Regards,
Leila
Rushes at Sonolab at 8:30. They still haven’t fixed the projector and Lee is bringing the beer.
Dear Robert,
Re: conventions and practices for television
Called all the national networks and came up with the following:
— you can use “damn” three times during the film but not “god damn,” “oh my god,” “Jesus,” “Christ” or “Jesus Christ.” (somebody should have told that to Cecil B. DeMille)
— “shit” and “bullshit” are definitely out
— “bull” is okay in some contexts (if you are making a western)
—“frigging” cannot replace “fucking” (hey baby, you want to frig?)
— “hell” is okay (if you are Billy Graham) but “‘crap”’ is questionable
I just spent an hour on the phone saying obscene things to bureaucrats at NBC, CBS, CBC and CTV. A way of combining business with pleasure for a girl who spent three years in television.
Regards,
Leila
Sonolab is on strike. That could be funny if it was happening to somebody else.
Dear Robert,
Saw a nice shirt at Holt’s today. Could replace the one you lost playing poker with Lee last night.
Regards,
Leila
Having lunch at the Ritz with an American journalist. If you need me I'll be in 915. (Nobody believes that it’s only lunch)
Dear Robert,
Some lunch. The phone in the room never stopped ring- ing. I felt like Faye Dunaway in Network. I must have impressed the pants off of the journalist. (figuratively speaking)
Called Noel about the re-write. He’s skiing in Vermont and his room doesn’t have a phone. (He has the right idea.) Called me back from a phone booth. Didn’t have a pen so he carved the scene changes in a snowbank. (Let’s hope it doesn’t snow.) Will call in with the new material. Wanted to know where I’d be in the morning. Said that the phone number I gave him sounds suspiciously like the number at the Ritz. (I told him it was just a coin- cidence.)
Regards,
Leila
Valerie swears that the syringes she wanted are for her B-12 shots.
Dear Robert,
Called Lenny baby in L.A. (Sales department, Avco Em- bassy, on leave from the mailroom) Gave me a 20 min- ute pitch on the good job he is doing with “In Praise”’
in the States. “Cut the crap,” I told him, “just give me the figures.” Says he loves the way I do business, wants to know what sign I am and is locking forward to meet- ing me. (No airplane ticket to L.A. was forthcoming.) Lined up a screening for Tom Berenger. Spoke to the guy from Avco in New York. (another mailroom grad- uate) Says that “In Praise’ opens in New York this weekend. Thinks you should fly me down. Told him, don’t -hold your breath. Said he’ll see what he can do. (No airplane ticket was forthcoming.)
For a girl who doesn’t know what she’s missing, I seem to be missing a lot.
Do L.A. and New York really exist or are they just area codes on a long distance phone call?
Regards, 3
Leila
Lee refuses to leave his dressing room until the reporter from the National Enquirer leaves the set. (I think it’s an excuse to finish watching the football game.) Any- way, it’s in his contract.
Dear Robert,
Your mother called. Wanted to know how you were and if the crew likes the cheese buns from her baker. In this case, nepotism is forgivable.
Wendy is on her way with the per diem cheques. They have to be signed and on set by 3:00. She told me to get touch with you. I said it would be a pleasure.
Saw your guest list for the New Year’s Eve Party. I didn’t
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know it was an all girls party. Are you planning to attend?
Wexler called — definitely will have his script to you by tonight. (That line — “will have script by tonight” — somehow I’ve heard that one before — better call the company analyst —reoccuring dreams can be signifi- cant.)
Regards,
Leila
(on loan from the real world)
Dear Robert,
This is the stuff that dreams are made of:
Moses Middlemarch called from New York, New York — says you know him (doesn’t everybody) — says he’s a big movie producer (isn’t everybody) — wants you to call him.
Moses has a hot property — about religious cults — very big now but will it pass the koolaid acid test in a year from now — dying to do this film with you — two pub- lishers are willing to kill for the rights to the novel from the screenplay — and, as if that wasn’t enough, he’s got a completion bond for half the money (whatever that means) — sending up the script — can’t wait to hear from you.
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Tommy Schnurmacher called — says he saw me last night at dance. (Didn’t bother to tell him I stayed home last night, illusions are hard to find.) Wants me to tell him everything. I told him nothing.
Says that you tell him everything eventually. He knew more than me. I need a briefing session. He’s got per- suasion down to a fine art and I’m a complete pushover. Regards,
your faithless assistant
Why does the gossip columnist from the Gazette know more than I do about the company that I work for? It’s enough to make a girl very insecure.
Dear Robert,
Clare Walker has an actress she says you’re going to love. (I told her that might come later.) The actress will be in town tomorrow and I have arranged a meeting. Her C.V. was on your desk yerterday, but has since left for that nether world known as our filing system, where things. go, never to be heard from again.
Regards,
Leila
Lee says he loves my haircut. He ought to know. He’s married to the most expensive haricut in America. Can’t wait to tell my hairdresser.
Dear Robert,
Valerie partied all night and was sick all morning. Sent flowers to her dressing room on your behalf. The card read — “The Show Must Go On” Subtle. . .eh?
your accomplice,
Leila
TELEX TO TAHITI
RE: Problems in Paradise
A.V. called. Says T.L.J. wants too much money. Sug- gest going with your second choice. Needs your O.K. to proceed. Please telex immediately. (How do you say Telex in Tahitian)
Can I hand deliver the next message?
Dear Robert, AGENCY promo reel in the can, SUZANNE posters ready, all ads in place and yacht in Cannes confirmed.
Very glamorous business, this business. . . and lots of work.
Some of us get the glamour and some of us do the work. With envy,
Leila
Don’t forget to take lots of pictures. I'll be living vicariously until you return.
the lonliness of the short subject filmmaker |
Short subject filmmakers need persistence and stamina, especially those like Bruce Pittman who make few compromises. Mi- chael Asti-Rose likens Pittman to a long- distance runner on a winning streak. Last year, he completed two half-hour dramas, Hailey’s
Gift and Magic Man.
by Michael Asti-Rose
photo: Brigette Nielsen
Magic Man begins with a child’s boredom
Cinema Canada/27
“I sit alone a lot,” says Bruce Pittman, 29. In his tweed cap and navy-blue overcoat, sitting on a park bench in Toronto’s High Park, the joggers could well be disdaining of his thoughtful repose. The long-distance runners, however they might regard this post-war baby, now grown to full filmmaker-hood, are unlikely to guess that Bruce Pittman’s marathon run for the big break is as rigorous and as strenuous:as theirs.
Pittman is just as religious as jogging fanatics in his dedication to the long, lonely pursuit of powerful short films that strive to be unflawed and usually achieve that end, “A short film doesn’t have time to recover from a mistake. You blow it once and you blow the film,” says Pittman, who looks unlikely as a perfectionist with his stringy hair, his diffident manner and his steel-gray eyes that might be those of dreamy Gibran or visionary William Blake. For firstly Bruce Pittman is a poet: perhaps Etobicoke’s only poet.
He is certainly the only Canadian poet since the era when versifiers were com- missioned to write poems to order, who is readily able to attract backers and in- vestors who are not seeking a tax loss, but hoping for profits and a tax problem. Pittman’s films sell. They find their way into schools and onto national televi- tion, and they attract the sort of money that is not usually associated with Cana- dion non-theatrical films.
The early films which Pittman shot, wrote and edited were products of a spring-wound Bolex. Saturating the track with Vaughan William’s Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis, the first classic was nine-minute Form, Beauty, Mo- tion. Ostensibly a filler for television, it is evidently more than fill and has gone on to sell over 40 prints. The film has a hard-edge, butterfly lighting that trans- forms a pubescent girl gymnast into an apparition of Dali protoplasm, and slow- motion that metamorphoses the mechanics of eurhythmics into cinematic ballet more exquisite than Karen Kain could dance live. It innovates with jump cuts
and double-edits that begin where Eisenstein started, but leave off where mon- tage and music are such close bedfellows that the dynamism zaps the viewer; he or she becomes the filmmaker and the gymnast.
But a filmmaker who is prepared to take risks in his exploration of the med- ium is bound to fail from time to time: Fable of The Body is the Pittman film that represents the first experimental animal that did not survive vivesection. An
Michael Asti-Rose is a filmmaker, writer, publisher and lecturer whose comedy Silent Movie received the Etrog Special Jury Award in 1975. At present he is completing editing of The Voyage of the Nylund which was shot during a year- long voyage on a 54’ schooner in the vicinity of England and France.
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pittman on film
On the Rules of Filmmaking
“After ‘don’t bore,’ my second rule is to follow the Oxford Dictionary defini- tion of the word simplicity. What’s the story? Do it simply. At every phase of production, do it simply.”
On the Subtleties of Filmmaking “It’s like the guy who has a blind date — and it turns out that the girl he’s taking out for the evening is blind. And he starts looking up her dress, until he real- ises that her ‘blindness’ is only an act.”
On Holding Your Audience
‘T like what Lean said, ‘My aim with Lawrence was that they ll never get that first cigarette lighted in three-and-a-half hours.”
On the Best Kind of Film ‘If you get a really good film that’s funny, it’s the best kind of film.”
On Editing Your Own Films
“It’s the best part of doing the film. I’ve often heard the argument that you're too close to it. The only people who can make a feeling film are close to it. And I can be pretty ruthless with my own work.”
On Films That Hurt
“Tf you're having problems, make sure they're problems with what the film’s all about. But, ultimately, if you don’t have fun making the film, I don’t think there’s much point in making it.”
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photo: Brigette Nielsen
Uncle Ambrose’s slight of hand
attempt to evoke the dualism of the cat as both demon and domestic angel pres- ence, this mis-judged homage to Bosch and Doré etchings, comes across like a sel- ection of cat-food commercials interspliced with Kenneth Clark outtakes from Civilization.
“The film doesn’t work.” says Pittman, who is honest enough to recognize failure, “but it has its moments.”
Exploring the medium futher, Pittman took the theme of the solitary indivi- dual in the world of athletics, making an improbably Kierkegaard of an Argo football player up again in another existential film poem, this time shot at Tor- onto’s Canadian National Exhibition during an exhibition game. In Line of Scrimmage (1974) once again Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia provides the musical basis: the slow-motion movements of hulking jock-strappers recalls simu- lations of dinosaurs mating in Hollywood B-films of the 1960’s, but the stretched frame-cross of cheerleaders and a uniformed band evokes shades of re- ligious extravaganzas as does the musical peak-out at touch-down. “Man Alone,” however, remains the message of the first frame and the Iast where the shoulder- padded pyrotechnicist of ball-play huddled like Rodin’s Thinker, a muscular existential question brewing.
“Tam, ” and “I am who?” are the alternating frame and frame-line of Bruce Pittman’s filmography. And in two sensitive half-hour drama completed in the last year, Hailey’s Gift and Magic Man, Pittman has revealed that hs is more than a virtuoso practitioner of the swm laudem student film.
Moving slowly into work with actors, walking when you sense he could really run, Pittman’s lucent grey eyes give the secret away before you see a frame of his dramas. He has an uncanny ability to discover and select actors, direct them and choose locations suited to a wide dynamic range. In fact Hailey’s Gift was a story that mushroomed out of the discovery of a small town dominated by a huge swing-bridge and a large fairgound. Its rotting Upper Canada mansions made ideal material for intimations of a haunting, and by the time he was famil- iar with this place, Pittman’s film had virtually written itself. Kate Parr at nine produces the definitive interpretation of a woman-child who gets to the heart of a man, in this case a tramp entrepreneur, Hailey McMoon, played sensitively by Barry Morse. McMoon is the town’s legendary carnival operator as well as the ec-
On Film’s Kinship to Literature
“T think film has a lot more to do with music and dance than it has with liter- ature.”’
On Being an Auteur Filmmaker
“IT have become an auteur director out of protection. Nobody’s going to hand me the films I want to make. I have to generate them.”
On Parents
“The conversation always evaporates quickly when we get onto my career. But they always let me blunder into things and make mistakes, ‘Give it a try,’ they always said, which is the biggest gift parents can give to a child, the go-ahead to risk something.”’
On the Rush to Direct Features “Kubrick made three films before Paths of Glory. It’s a little known fact because Kubrick’s bought up ail the prints. I make a point of seeing the great direc- tor’s first films. And even those are a cautionary no to anyone in a rush to direct features.”
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centric dragon sitting on a horde of Victorian collectibles that turn out to be as much a part of the collective unconscious of a small Ontario town as the carni- val itself.
Pittman’s sentimental and enigmatic answer to the girl’s question “Who am 12” is articulated when the freckled Jenny, in her plaits and awkwardness, makes a gift to Hailey B. McMoon of a small Victorian amulet on which a Jenny wren is painted. The amulet is her treasure and the wren is her private totem. As she turns her smouldering eyes away from McMoon and the camera, Pittman reveals his master-stroke, which is to have Hailey pull a small Victorian amulet box out of his pocket. Inside the tiny box, the velvet form is contoured in the exact shape of the wren amulet. As he closes the led, hands trembling with emotion, we see that on the lid is enamelled — a wren.
This symbol of reciprocity between the generations baffles adult viewers, says Pittman. “Though an 8-year-old in a creative writing class who saw the film ex- plained the riddle this way: ‘Hailey gave the wren pendent to Jenny’s grandmo- ther, and he returns every generation to take it back. Then he gives it away again.’ I was staggered to hear this come from a kid when adults had repeatedly siad, ‘I don’t get it,’ ” says Pittman, who values children as arbiters of taste only second to himself. “One of my three rules of filmmaking is, ‘I’m making this film only to please myself.’ I’ve asked Altman, I’ve asked Peckinpah. They say pretty much the same. There’s a danger in playing too hard to the market and ending up with a film that pleases no one, least of all yourself.”
But this does not constitute license for indulgent films when you take the “I-clause” along with Pittman’s two other rules:
Never bore, and keep it simple.
Some would say that Pittman’s latest film, Magic Man, is not simple. The half- hour drama premiéred in January at a Toronto reception studded with moneyed guests who were lavishly courted with plate after plate of sandwiches and a per- petually replenished punch bowl that could easily hold all the film cans of Pitt- man’s entire oeuvre.
In fact boredom is the starting point of Magic Man. Nicholas, Magic Man’s child star, is a bored first grader who wants to be like Uncle Ambrose, who is an amateur magician and as sentimental at heart as Pittman himslf. The film goes all the way out into space and back to show that Nicholas’ daydreams of being an astronaut, like Uncle Ambrose’s sleight of hand, will take perseverance and hard work. A simple notion to build a film around, but in Pittman’s hands the realisation verges on the baroque. Nevertheless, the film works: for Pittman’s simplicity rule has been applied religiously to the tempo, the framing, the light- ing and the consistent earth colors of the film’s design. We forgive the comatose Copland that waxes orgasmic and threatens to swamp us in emotion. The narra- tive thread, however tenuous, does hold us, because we are convinced that some- one who can handle the medium with such a strong sense of inner structure won’t let us down. Magic Man ends with a bang, and no whimper. It works — though one is not quite sure why.
Pittman is serious about the look of his films. He works with the same cam- eraman, Mark Irwin, whever possible and sketches out complete visual scenarios with as much dedication as a Sefferelli. The decisive camera movements, the in- spired cuts and the ease of the transitions owe a heavy debt to the readiness to compose the moving picture as carefully as one does the film score.
The only artistic compromise that Pittman seems ready to make is to the ty- ranny of marketing factors. He reckons that a film of his has succeeded when print sales to the educational market reach 100 sold in Canada and 650 in the U.S.A. and elsewhere. And that means a film can’t exceed 18 minutes. “Schools won’t even screen a film that runs four minutes over that,” says Pittman. And he was forced to lop eleven minutes off Hailey’s Gift for the analogous market de- mand of T.V. time slots, with their rigid segmenting of viewer consciousness.
But Bruce Pittman is not the sort to be discouraged easily by the tyranny of the market. He is a long distance filmmaker, obstacles notwithstanding. Though in lugging films around to screenings in a hessian bag he may occasionally moan, “The problem with film is it’s too heavy,” if Pittman can keep his light touch as a director with that wieghty sense of substance in his work, success will prob- ably allow him someone else to cart around the ten-reelers when that day arrives.
30/Cinema Canada
Bruce Pittman, Etobicoke’s only poet
On Actors
“They are strange and wonderful peo- ple. 90 percent of a movie is made in the casting. My only acting experience was playing a corpse: that I did well.”
On Auditioning Actors
“Are we going to get along? When we look eyeball to eyeball and talk, I make the decision. I trust my instincts on that as we talk and talk. I don’t use auditions and set pieces: I think they're unfair.”
On Children
“IT don’t ever remember thinking of my- self asa child. I thought of myself as a person. So I made that film Magic Man forme. I knowI'm still that kid.”
On Tax Clauses for Backers
‘7 never sell a film as a tax loss. I go in- to it because I believe it will be a suc- cess. And I sell it to backers as a poten- tial tax problem.”
TEd4d NEWS
FLYING SPOT SCANNERS FILM POST-PRODUCTION ON VIDEOTAPE 3
In England and Europe, as well as some other parts of the world, the television system operates at 25 frames (50 fields) per second, instead of 30 frames (60 fields) as in North America. The use of this lower frame rate greatly simplifies the scanning of motion picture film. Existing films shot at the standard rate of 24 frames/sec. can be speeded up slightly in the telecine transport to match the television scanning frequency, while films being made specially for television can be shot at 25 frames/sec. and then played back in telecine at the same rate.
The ability to reproduce films in the television system without the need for frame rate conversion enabled equipment manufacturers in England and Europe to take an entirely dif- ferent approach in designing telecines, as compared with the North American practice. The outcome was the de- velopment of what is known as the flying spot scanner.
Cathode Ray Tube as Light Source
In the flying spot scanner a cathode ray tube (CRT) is used as the light source, instead of a tungsten lamp as in motion picture projectors. The ca- thode ray tube is similar in most re- spects to a small television picture tube, in that an electron beam is driven back and forth inside the tube, exciting a phosphor layer coated on the inner surface of the flat face plate, and pro- ducing a uniformly illuminated raster. A lens focuses the rapidly moving spot of light on the tube face at the plane of the film in the gate of the film transport mechanism. The light passing through the film is collected in an opti- cal system which makes the red, green and blue separation, and then directs these three light beams into photo- multiplier tubes where the video sig- nals are generated.
If the eye could act quickly enough it would see a tiny, rapidly moving spot of light sweeping back and forth across the face of the CRT, but as the entire frame scan takes place in one twenty-fifth of a second, the eye sees what appears to be a uniformly illu- minated rectangle. Since the television system must react very quickly in
order to trace out picture information, the system “sees” the rapidly moving spot of light. When film is being held stationary in the gate of the telecine, a picture frame is actually scanned by the spot of light from side to side and top to bottom.
From this brief description it should be easy to see that the color and in- tensity of the spot of light will be mo- dified (modulated) by the film image as it passes through the film. Then, in the following optical system, after color separation has taken place, the output signal/levels from the three photomultiplier tubes will rise and fall in relation to the intensity of the light modulations.
Two Television Fields from Each Film Frame.
This method of reproducing film in the television system is basically much simpler than the North American
practice of projecting films into a.
television camera. But in practice it is not possible just to scan the film frames one by one, because the tele- cine output must be in the form of two interlaced fields for each film frame. Rank Cintel in England has been making flying spot scanners for many years, utilizing a continuous film transport and a twin-lens optical system in which the scanning for two consecutive fields on the face of the CRT is imaged on the film at two different positions in its travel. The continuous motion of the film contributes about half of the required height of vertical scanning, and a rotating shutter allows light to pass through alternate optical paths. This most ingenious system has been utilized most successfully by broad- casters in England and Europe, giving excellent picture quality.
The flying spot scanner has a num- ber of important advantages. First and foremost, color separation takes place after the film images have been scanned, thus eliminating altogether any possi- bility of color misregistration and the annoying color fringes sometimes seen in pictures from _ vidicon telecines. The pictures from film obtained in flying spot scanners wére for a long time so much better than the pictures
by Rodger J. Ross
from live television cameras that an entirely different approach to film re- production was taken in _ television centres operating on the 25-frame scanning standard. For the most part, manual operation of telecines has been the normal practice, although in recent years some European broadcasters have gone over to automatic signal level control to save operating costs and some have been installing camera- type telecines to take advantage of the greater programming flexibility and lower equipment costs that multiplex- ed telecine chains offer.
The Flying Spot Scanner in the United States and Canada
Many attempts. have been made by equipment manufacturers to adapt the flying spot scanner principle for use by television stations operating at 30 frames/sec. but without noticeable success. North American broadcasters have become so much attached to the camera-type telecine, valuing especially its versatility and flexibility and its ease of operation with automatic signal level control, that. any other system for reproducing film had little chance of adoption. Those who saw in the flying spot scanner the possi- bility of producing much better tele- vision pictures from film were con- fronted with the additional handicap of frame rate conversion — it turned out to be very difficult to devise a prac- tical system for obtaining 60 interlaced television fields per second from film running at 24 frames/sec. Rank Cintel adopted a method in their flying spot scanner known as “jump scan”. With this method the scanned portion of the raster on the CRT was shifted electronically into five different posi- tions for every two film frames, to obtain the necessary five television fields, or 2 1/2 fields per film frame, But it was ver difficult to entirely sup- press the 12-cycle flicker that resulted from slight differences in the brightness of the raster in the different positions on the face of the CRT.
Digiscan System of
Frame Rate Conversion All of these problems have been
Cinema Canada/31
TECd NEWS
eliminated by the development recently of Rank Cintel’s Digiscan system of frame rate conversion. This develop- ment has made the flying spot scanner very attractive for North American service, and a considerable number of post production companies have already installed or are planning to acquire this new film reproducing equipment.
With the Digiscan system, scanning takes place at the film frame rate — 24 frames/sec. — and the required number of television lines are generated to make up two complete television fields for each film frame. The odd and even television lines are “written” into different computer memories or stores. The odd lines are then read out of the memory for the first television field, while the even lines are read out to produce the interlaced field. As the Digiscan system stores the luminance and chrominance information (bright- ness and color) separately, two fields of storage are needed for each, or four altogether. The operation of the system is completely automatic. The system can also scan out still frames when the film transport is stopped.
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Multi-Format Telecine Operation
The Rank Cintel Mk II flying spot scanner is designed in such a way that a change-over from 16mm to 35mm film can be effected by simply inter- changing the unit containing the film gate and transport mechanism. This is a big advantage in a post-production operation where clients may bring in either or both film formats to be trans- ferred to videotape. To accommodate the two film formats a camera type telecine chain would have to include a separate projector for each format to give the same degree of flexibility.
The flying spot scanner was develop- ed in a television environment where manual adjustment of the video con- trols was the normal method of opera- tion, the objective being to obtain the best possible television pictures from film. This type of equipment is fitted with a more comprehensive range of controls as compared with camera- type telecines commonly found in North American television stations. For example, controls are available to alter the gammas of the three color output signals. With this type of control it is possible to completely change the appearance of the television pictures by raising or lowering the signal levels from the picture middletones relative to the highlights or shadows. Gamma correction is particularly helpful in reproducing films in which the images in all three layers have not been exposed in the same portion of their charac- teristic curves, or when these relation- ships have been disturbed by faulty processing of the color film.
Post Production Operations with TOPSY
Available also with the Rank Cintel Mk III flying spot scanner is a device known as “Topsy”. With this device corrections of the telecine controls made during previewing of a film can be stored in a memory (floppy disc), and recovered later on, automatically, scene-by-scene, during the transfer of the film to videotape. This enables preparation of the transfers to tape to be carried out in much the same way as color film negatives are prepared for printing in the motion picture la- boratory. However, during a film pre- view in telecine, the change in picture appearance produced by a given shift in the setting of a telecine video con- trol can be seen as the change is being made, by observing the television pic- ture monitor display. If the desired
improvement in picture appearance is not obtained with this particular setting of the telecine control, the film can be rewound and the scene can be run through again with a different control setting. Stopping, rewinding and re- starting of the film transport can be accomplished much more easily and quickly and with far less risk of film damage, aS compared with an inter- mittent pull-down film projector.
Advantages and Disadvantages
From this brief and rather sketchy description it can be seen that the flying spot scanner is quite different than the more familiar camera-type telecine. The biggest difference is that film projectors are not used — instead, the film transport is an integral part of the /scanning system, and the film is moved continuously through the gate where the images aré scanned by a moving spot of light. A television camera is not used in the flying spot scanner — the light passing through the film images is collected in photo- multiplier tubes to generate the video signals. These devices are basically similar to the photocells used in generat- ing sound in a film projector, except that the output signals are amplified many times within the tubes, as the name suggests.
It would be misleading to leave the impression that the flying spot scanner is inherently superior to the vidicon telecine insofar as the ability of these devices to generate high quality pic- tures from film. But anyone who has had the task of lining up a vidicon telecine would almost certainly agree that a great deal of time, effort, skill and determination is needed to achieve a condition of film reproduction accept- able to filmmakers. From what has been seen so far it appears that such a condition is easier to achieve in the flying spot scanner operating with the Digiscan system.
Long time Supervisor of Technical Film Operations at the programming centre of the CBC, Mr. Ross is the author of two books, Television Film Engineering and Color Film for Color Television, has won the Agfa-Gevaert Gold Medal awarded by the Society of Motion Pic- ture and Television Engineers, and is presently Chairman of the SMPTE
Board of Editors.
The Films of Don Shebib
by Piers Handling
Ottawa: The Canadian Film Institute, 1978, 148 pages, $5.95.
Richard Leiterman
by Alison Reid and P.M. Evanchuck Ottawa: The Canadian Film Institute, 1978, 120 pages, $5.50.
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' Film historian Kevin Bownlow’s The War, The West, and The Wilderness celebrates pioneer filmmakers who tra- veled all over the world to shoot fea- tures, documentaries and newsreels in authentic locations. Extensively re- searched and abundantly illustrated, this massive volume brings to life little known facts of historic significance. (Knopf $27.50).
Bosley Crowther, the distinquished former critic whose New York Times’ reviews were marked with uncommon perceptiveness and taste, presents in Reruns: 50 Memorable Movies his choice of 50 outstanding films of all times. Each selection is thoroughly appraised in its historic, artistic and social context with brilliantly evocative visual recall (Putnam $17.50/7.95).
Marking the half-century anniversary of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Robert Osborne’s 50 Golden Years of Oscar is a splendid, richly illustrated, large format compil- ation of winners and nominees in all categories, including notable acceptance speeches and highlights of award cere- monies (ESE, 509 N. Harbor Blvd., La Habra, CA 90361; $24.95/12.95).
Two volumes have been added to the
Academy Award winning George L. George is a film director who does film book reviews in Canada, France and the U.S.
ISOOK<SIFELF
series, New York Times Film Reviews, covering reviews of movies published in 1973-74 and 1975-76, updating this comprehensive and indispensable source of authoritative information on the pro- gress of cinema as assessed by N.Y. Times critics (Arno Press $60 ea.).
A perceptive film critic, Andrew Sar- ris has assembled in Politics and Cinema a striking selection of his weekly co- umns from New York’s Village Voice. His outspoken and often controversial views of movies with political or social content abound in shrewd observations
and stimulating pronouncements (Col- —
umbia U. Press $12.95).
The 1979 edition of Peter Cowie’s International Film Guide provides pri- marily an authoritative and thorough perspective on theatrical movie produc- tion in 55 countries. Additional sections cover non-theatrical and sponsored films, animation, video (by Diane Ja- cobs) and other relevant areas (Barnes $6.95). :
Digesting the mass of published ma- terial about movies, William R. Meyer, in The Film Buff’s Catalog, has judic- iously compiled an extensive selection of sources dealing with film books and magazines, film appreciation of various genres and national origins, famous directors and many other relevant data (Arlington $18.95).
An impressive study of the film in- dustry’s notable non-conformists, Crea- tive Differences: Profiles of Holly- wood Dissidents by David Talbot and Barabara Zheutlin, reports on the lives and activities of progressives who work, or have worked, in the Hollywood film establishment. Writers Albert Maltz and Lee Phillips, directors Abraham Polon- sky and Michael Schultz, cameraman Haskell Wexler, actress Jane Fonda and many others who fought to maintain the integrity of their social and artistic views against often insurmountable odds are included (South End Press, Box 68, Astoria Sta., Boston, MA 02123; $12/5.40).
Recent French Books
Published simultaneously in Paris and Quebec under the editorship of Pierre Véronneau, Les cinémas canadiens af- ford a broad look at the multifaceted ac- tivities, personalities, themes and tech- niques of Canada’s national film indus- try, growing in relation to (or in spite of, according to the point of view) its dominant American neighbor. This
by George L. George
dependence has dictated the historic development of the Canadian industry, except perhaps in the production of government sponsoreg films. With this reality in mind, it is heartening to read the book’s essays on the contri- bution of Canadian filmmakers’ cin- ematic inventiveness, ingenious finan- cing, awareness of history, and inter- national recognition (Lherminier; F39 Cinémathéque Québécoise $9.55).
According to Maurice Drouzy’s Louis Bunuel Architecte du Réve, dreams and reality combine in his films to become life itself. This synthesis requires extra- ordinary mastery of cinematic concep- tion and technique, which Drouzy examines in the context of 8 of Bun- uel’s films that particularly exemplify the director’s surrealist approach to art (Lherminier F64).
As an update to his classical Les cinémas africains en 1972, Guy Henne- belle has researched in Cinéastes d’ Afri- que Noire (written with Catherine Ruelle) the current trends in that conti- nent’s slowly expanding film production. Their interviews with outstanding Afri- can filmmakers reflect technical prob- lems, isolation from film production elsewhere, difficulties with their own governments, obstacles to exporting and above all their confidence and dedica- tion to often elusive pursuits (L’ Afrique Littéraire et Artistique F30).
Masters of the Craft
Three notable additions to GK. Hall’s Theatical Arts Series, Alain Res- nais and Fritz Land, both by. John Francis Kreidl, and Nicolas Roeg by Neil Feineman: scholarly, informative and insightful, these studies offer per- ceptive analyses of their films, with notes and references, bibliography, film- ography and index. Each volume is pre- faced by Warren French the series’ ed- itor, with appropriate comments about the director’s cinematic contribution and artistic concerns ($9.95 ea.).
John Russell Taylor’s engrossing bio- graphy, Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, for which he had the director’s full cooperation, focuses on the man rather than his work. Hitch- cock’s family life, his early years in British films, his relationship with per- formers and his work methods add up to the portrait of a shy person whose private emotions are expressed in his movies (Pantheon $10).
Cinema Canada/33
BOOK REVIEWS
A Guide to Film and Television Courses in Canada 1978-79/ Un guide des cours de cinéma et de télévision offerts au Canada 1978- 79
Edited and compiled by Marie-Claude Hecquet and David McNicoll
Ottawa: The Canadian Film Institute, 1978, 167 pages, $6.95.
LE
Serving as a.reference tool for stu- dents, Marie-Claude Hecquet’s and David McNicoll’s A Guide to Film and Television Courses in Canada 1978-79/ Un guide des cours de cinéma et de télévision offerts au Canada 1978-79 achieves what it sets out to do by offer- ing, in a direct and accessible manner, information on film and_ television courses from over seventy universities, colleges and junior colleges.
The Guide is reasonably organized with schools arranged alphabetically by province. Such organization allows pro- spective students to consider the geo- graphic location of schools and their proximity to film and media centres. The format, with the provincial shields used to introduce each geographic sec- tion, is crisp and simple.
One of the problems of such a hand- book is having to organize information that differs from school to school, as each department has a unique program and set of course offerings. Any means of standardizing this information, then, makes for ease of both communication and comparison, enabling the prospec- _ tive student to better assess what the different programs have to offer. Hec- quet and McNicoll do this by introduc-
for
ing the majority of schools with a pre- liminary paragraph or two that describes the particular orientation of their cur- riculum and also by indicating whether they are degree, diploma or certificate programs. This is followed, in most cases, by a brief description of the courses.
The main weakness of the Guide is that it does not take this standardiza- tion of information far enough; for ex- ample, it does not indicate the number of courses required for a specific degree. Nor does it consistently point out the exact courses of study that students must follow to obtain their chosen de- gree. There is also a need to better spec- ify which courses are required, which are electives and which are the necessary prerequisites for entering advanced courses. In certain instances, such as with Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, charts are well used as visual aides to indicate the possible avenues of study leading to the different degrees given by the Institute. Statements of the objec- tives for each year of study, as were given by Algonquin College, are valuable in explaining why students are expected to take what appears to be, an over- whelming number of courses (11) during their first semester.
Although nothing was stated, one as- sumes that course descriptions written in French imply that French is the only language to be used in these programs and that descriptions written in English mean that English is the only language to be used. What is not taken into con- sideration is that some schools, such as
Charlotte Hussey works in Montreal as assistant to the editorat Cinema Canada.
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McGill University, allow Francophones to write papers and take exams in French. If this is the case with a speci- fic school, then it should be indicated in the Guide; it is an important consider- ation for students planning to take up a
course of study that is not offered in their mother tongue.
Finally, the addresses, phone num- bers and names of program heads and co-ordinators are readily available at the beginning of each school’s description. And it is this directness and accessibility that, in the end, makes the Guide a valuable reference tool, enabling the stu- dent to assess the orientation and curri- culum of each program and to ascertain what degrees are offered. A Guide to Film and Television Courses in Canada 1978-79 allows the student, from his arm chair, as it were, to weed out unlike- ly programs and go on to make the next important step: contacting the depart- ment of his choice to set up interviews and make arrangements to see these schools for himself.
Charlotte Hussey
Movies as Social Criticism by L.C. Jarvie
225 pages, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1978, $11.95
In the last ten years, books about film have increased tremendously in vol- ume and popularity, but not necessarily in scholarship. The themes of said tomes vary from biographic popularizations of film stars and filmmakers, to dialectic dissections of films and filmmakers. Where to place Ian Jarvie and his new book, Movies as Social Criticism? He’s not a film theoretician, a semiologist, a neo-auteurist, nor genre-easte. By pro- fession, Jarvie is Professor of Philosophy at York University; his book suggests he is an informed film enthusiast, an intel- lectual god-son of Siegfried Kracauer (From Caligari to Hitler), a writer whose view of film and the film-going experi- ence is positive, romantic in a 1965 liberal sense, and sociological.
Jarvie is part of the intellectual pen- dulum that swings between the study of the content of films and their impact on audiences and the aestheticians who study the art, often independent of con- tent. Jarvie is no Don Quixote; he is part of a larger, ongoing academic exam- ination studying the infrastructure of film, the industry (Balio’s The American Film Industry), the mass communica- tions implications of the art (Jowett’s Film, the Democratic Art), and the so- ciology of popular culture (Gans’ Pop- ular Culture and High Culture).
The focal point of these studies has, in the past decade, been television, but thanks to the work of Jarvie and his spiritual colleagues, questions are again being asked about the social-psycholog- ical implications of film.
Jarvie focuses his attention on the Hollywood film. He provides us with a historical perspective to the socio-psy- chological approach to film.
Are films good or evil? Are they pro- paganda? What are their effect on child- ren? His chapter “The Social Psychol- ogy of Movies” provides an intelligent and intelligible analysis of the literature of the last fifty years. Jarvie is particu- larly valuable in his separation of the pro-censorship group of social psychol- ogists from the pro-media people (“‘the catharsis school’’), and, in turn, from the blend of the two, i.e. Paul Lazarfield and Elihu Katz, who, in their book, Per- sonal Influence, feel that it is the opin- ion leaders within peer groups, or so- ciety, that are influential, rather than the media.
As to Jarvie’s position, he seems to lean toward the view that film is an im- portant reflection of the society’s psyche at any particular time. “For the moment, then, America’s movies are critically self-aware. It is an uncom- fortable state, but one never ceases to be surprised by America’s capacity to experiment.” American film, accord- ing to Harvie, is an ongoing self-explor- ation and an integral part of the so- ciety’s maturing process.
Jarvie is an admirer of American film, and the book itself speaks to American films and the society. But his insights go beyond the forty-ninth par- allel. When he comments on the courage of the Hollywood film industry, he is speaking of its diverse subject matter, ranging from Our Daily Bread to The Manchurian Candidate. The question arises, what issues do we in Canada deal
with in our films? Are we leaders or followers in the cultural articulation of society’s goals and fears? _
Jarvie’s book has shortcomings, but before I deal with them, I should like to mention two other insights. Neither are startling, but they do add to a current understanding of the nature of the film medium.
Firstly, Jarvie is one of the few writ- ers on mass media who acknowledges that the film industry has broken down and evolved away from the studio sy- stem and its product. The industry now services, not one large mass, but numer- ous and varied sub-cultures. And films are made in 1979 to cater to a sub-cul- ture. Does film remain a mass medium? Or is it going the way of magazines, where there are one to two mass circula- tion titles, but the majority moves to- ward more and more specialization?
Secondly, Jarvie differentiates film from television by highlighting the group experience in the film theatre, i.e. the excitement of a shared experience, as opposed to the fragmented and us- ually more isolated television exper-\ ience. Other writers have suggested film- viewing is different (Hugo Mauerhofer and Siegfried Kracauer), but their em- phasis has been more psychological. They have dwelt on the escapist possi- bilities of film, the dream-like quality, the illusion of reality. Jarvie tries to ex- plain or justify escapism as a positive experience:
Might it not be that there is a human need to fantasize in the same way that there is a need to sleep, or a need to dream; that coping with real- ity can only go on if occasionally there is a respite from it, a respite where we imagine a world with other problems, or no problems, and where the childish fantasy or omnipotence can prevail? What we do is then to act out the problems of real life in an unreal way. That they work out at all may release tension, as dreams are thought to do. More importantly, the world of movies, unlike dreams, is one where resolution comes no mat- ter what we do. Thus we are able to rehearse emotional and intellectual reactions to something that happens beyond our control. What happens in movies has, however, a shape and perhaps a meaning.
The book is not without its weak- nesses. Jarvie spends a great deal of time
justifying his approach and the serious- ness and importance of his examination of film. He doesn’t have to. Although the thrust of film study has been toward a more subtle film aesthetic, no one in this era would seriously question looking at film from any perspective. Ian Jarvie and Christian Metz can co-exist.
Jarvie is drawn to re-examine the li- beral themes of post-world War II film — racism, marital breakdown, anti- authoritarianism. All these themes have rational roots in the society, but they have been dealt with fully by black writers, or feminist writers, with a per- spective that is less voyeuristic and more interior. Consequently Jarvie’s insights on these themes are distant and less re- vealing.
Jarvie also mistakes commercial de- cisions for content decisions in the pro- duction of many American films. Otto Preminger did not make Such Good Friends or Anatomy of a Murder, for that matter, for any other reason than their commercial potential. Jarvie also gives weight to commercial and artistic failures, Marriage of a Young Stock- broker, for example, a film that hardly would have been seen by a fraction of the people who saw Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice.
Finally Jarvie seems to rely on the “Middle-brow” film as his yardstick. Frequently these films are revealing of on-going social themes and concerns, but more often it is the “art film,” even within the Hollywood system, that makes the myths concrete, reiterates society’s archetypes and has a powerful impact on the public imagination. These artistic advances are not the same and some recognition must be given those films.
I understand that “art” and “elitism” have become equally unpalatable terms for the student of popular culture, but surely without the artistic advances film would be nothing more than tele- vision on a larger screen.
Kenneth Dancyger
Kenneth Dancyger is a lecturer in film at York University and has taught film in the U.S. and Canada since 1968. His film The Class of ‘75 won Best First Film at the International Experimen- tal Film Festival in Buffalo, and he has since worked ona number of film pro- jects as director, producer, production manager and scriptwriter.
Cinema Canada/35
FILM REVIEWS
THE CANADIAN CONNECTION: THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
d. Harry Rasky, sc. Harry Rasky, ph. Kenneth Gregg, asst. ph. John Maxwell, ed. Arla Saare, sd. Erik Hoppe, p. Harry Rasky, p.c. Canadian Broadcasting Com- pany (1978), col. 16mm, running time, 60 minutes, dist. Canadian Broadcasting Company.
As in his award winning Homage to Chagall, Harry Rasky turns his attention to an important cultural influence of the century in this, his latest interview- profile. This time he faces a greater chal- lenge in presenting his subject visually, for the people he deals with here have devoted their lives to ideas: in particu- lar, to the study of mankind and the les- sons that history teaches. They are Will and Ariel Durant.
Born in Massachusetts in 1885 of French Canadian parents, Will Durant anticipated the Quiet Revolution by al- most sixty years. Rebelling against his conservative and Catholic heritage, he became both an atheist and a radical. By 1914 he was a teacher at the Ferrer In- stitute in New York, one of those immi- grant and workingmen’s school-cum-soc- ial-and political institutions that sprang up before the First World War. There he met a brilliant young Russian-born girl named Chaya Appel, who married him at the age of fourteen, and whom he named Ariel after the sprite in The Tem- pest.
Will Durant wrote a series of inex- pensive (5 cents) booklets for the work- ing people and immigrants for whom he lectured on philosophy at the Labor Temple. Out of these came his first ma- jor work, The Story of Philosophy, perhaps one of the first modern at- tempts to explain this complex subject
36/Cinema Canada
Will and Ariel Durant — husband and wife collaborators on some of the
most widely read books ever published
for the layman. His interest in history came naturally from his dissatisfaction with philosophy’s inability to provide him with the answers to his questions. He became convinced that history’s re- cord was of supreme importance to the present and future of mankind. So he began the travels and research that was to lead to his monumental work, The Story of Civilization. From the begin- ning Ariel’s contributions were impor- tant, first as Will’s primary researcher, and then as his co-author. Though she says little in the film, compared with her husband, her sharp comments — when she does make them — show how well she has lived up to her name.
In dealing with two people whose contributions are difficult to realize in cinematic terms, Rasky falls back on the tried and true methods of montage. Un- like John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty, the visuals do not de- tract from the intellectual content. Rasky is content to let the Durants’
eloquence speak for itself. Although now rather frail in his 90’s, Will Dur- ant’s mind remains as sharp as ever. The clear and concise analyses that Rasky draws from him, with some pointed interjections from Ariel, show clearly the breadth of their knowledge, and also why their achievements have been slighted by a somewhat jealous academic community. The public has not, however, slighted them. The Story of Civilization is one of the great best sellers, but unfortunately, it is not likely to be extended into the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries, as Will Durant originally hoped. Since the world will probably not see the likes of the Durants again in the near future, at least not in America (it is ironic that they live in that least hu- mane of American cities, Los Angeles), Harry Rasky has performed another signal service by capturing their hu- manity on film.
J. Paul Costabile
COMING AND GOING
d. David Cherniack, sc. asst. Kay Nagao, ph. Vic Sarin, ed. Arla Saare, sd. Gerry King, sd. ed. Paul Coombe, m. Patrick Godfrey, exec. p. Nancy Archibald, p. David Cherniack, p.c. Canadian Broad- casting Company (1977), col. 16mm, running time 58 minutes, dist. Cana- dian Broadcasting Company.
One doesn’t expect to find much in the way of moving, enlightening film on television. The medium often lives down to one’s expectations. David Cherniack’s Coming and Going, which aired Febru- ary 7 on CBC’s The Nature of Things, is an exception.
Coming and Going is a sensitive treat- ment of a serious problem, one that we all will face; dying. Because we hide from the process of dying and limit our contact with death, when we are forced
to confront it, we approach death with -
a mixture of fear and disgust almost as
though it were contagious. This attitude
causes unnecessary grief and anguish to
those who are dying, as well as to those *
around them. Cherniack attempts to shed some light on the process, to show that dying is a natural phenomenon, and that understanding can help people cope with this difficult time of life.
This cinéma verité was shot in a ter- minal care ward in St. Boniface Hospi- tal, Winnipeg. It is one of a handful of such wards in Canada, where every ef- fort is made to ease the physical and mental pain of dying. The crew — Cherniack, cameraman Vic Sarin and sound man Gerry King — spent a month on the ward, as participants in this pro- cess. Only the last two weeks were spent shooting any footage. Their involvement in the lives of the people on the ward is obvious in the final film treatment of the subject. They were more than ob- servers. They were not grabbing a few shots. They were recording some part of the world in which they, and we, live.
There is a sense of our common hu- manity which comes from this film. A sense that what is happening on the screen is part of all our lives, and that
at St. Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg
we will have to help each other get through it. The only disturbing note is that the helpers are almost all women, but in our society, this comes as no sur- prise.
JHORT FILM REVIEUL
Coming and Going is a film about people. The images are images of peo- ple, occasionally alone, but most often in company. Images of hands, mouths, faces and eyes, revealing emotions. It is the faces of the dying that tell their stories. They change, they wither, they dry up. Even in a few days, Jack Pren- dergast’s face becomes dry and shrunk- en. When he finally dies, his face is nothing more than a layer of translu- cent parchment over bone.
Some may be offended by this. We see Jack Prendergast die. He did not get up when the take was finished. He was not nameless. He was not alone. We watch Jack Prendergast die. When his wife leaned over, pressed her face to his and said “I love you so,” I cried.
To get inside this situation is quite an accomplishment for both Director Cherniack and Cameraman Sarin. In or- der to minimize the intrusion of the camera crew, the film was shot almost entirely in available light and radio mi- crophones were used to record sound. Arla Saare’s sensitive editing preserves this mood.
But the quality of the film cannot be attributed to mere technical innova- tions. Coming and Going is an intimate film. We are close to the people, their hands and their faces. It is a film of peo- ple helping and crying for each other at a very difficult time of life. The images of hands holding hands, hands clasping shoulders, and the faces — pensive, cry- ing, laughing — will live with me fora long time.
Charles Lazer
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Cinema Canada/37
AHORT FILM REVIEWS
EXPLODING THE MYTH
d.. Rick Maden, sc.Stan Shibinsky, Ste- phen Dewar, Dennis Winchar, ph. Fritz Spiess, Les George, Paul Van Derlinden, Harold Ortonburger, ed. Richard Unruh, sd. Richard Unruh, tech. advisor Henry Botchford, m. Corlynn and Miles Ram- say composed theme song, “Give Me a Chance,” exec. p. Stan Shibinsky, p. Harve Sherman, exec. prog. dir. Henry Botchford, p.c. Bob Schulz Productions Inc., col. 35mm, (year) 1978, running time 28 minutes, 50 seconds.
There is a myth that anyone who is different, whose looks and behaviour deviate from ours, who belongs to any group that cannot clearly be labeled as us, immediately becomes them, and loses title to status as a human being.
That myth is exploded with the force of a missile, in Exploding the Myth, a fine little film produced by Harve Sher- man and directed by Rick Maden, both of Bob Schulz Productions. Them in this case are the mentally retarded, and in making that statement, I myself have phrased another myth: that retardation is mental. It is not. Retardation is a learning handicap. The damage is done to the brain, a physical entity, not to the mind. Retardation is not mental ill- ness. |
Eight such myths in all are exploded as the film exposes an issue society, for the most part, would prefer to avoid. The myths are that retarded people are 1) dangerous 2) should always be segregat- ed 3) that institutions are the best place for them 4) that they should not mix with normal children 5) that they will always be deperident 6) that group homes bring property values down 7) that they are strictly limited in their scope and 8) that only normal people should have full rights. The beauty of the film’s crafting lies in its confronta- tion of each myth, and its direct annihi- lation of that myth. This is the myth — not true —this is the fact.
Perhaps the hardest thing for “nor- mal” people to accept about retardation is its direct assault on the idea of man as intellectual animal. Our brain is our
38/Cinema Canada
proudest possession and the one thing which holds us above all other animals. Retarded people are an embarrassing re- minder that this symbol of superiority is in fact at the mercy of nature’s whims. Any number of tiny flaws before deliv- ery of a child and — wham — intelli- gence is wiped out.
The film’s uniqueness is that it brings retarded people actively into the pic- ture. They are interviewed and offer opinions on themselves and their social conditions with astounding clarity and insight. They are not viewed as distant entities, and social workers and care- takers don’t stand around shrugging their shoulders and sighing, “What can we do with them?” They participate and offer suggestions, and they make perfectly good sense. They are treated as individuals with a handicap no differ- ent than handicaps of any sort. They take longer to learn, and they don’t learn as much — that’s all that’s wrong with them.
They have a lower IQ of course, but within that IQ is the same range of abil- ities, talents, hopes, dreams as anyone with a higher IQ, and when they are en- couraged for their abilities instead of put down for their weaknesses, their achievements are remarkable. For in-
Todd Smith, age 7, appears in Exploding The Myth
stance, the Famous People Players, a Las Vegas professional puppet show, is manned by retarded people. Also there is the case of the Pocock Family of Tor- onto and their daughter Teresa. The Po- cocks were told that Teresa was so sev- erely retarded she would never be able to speak. They decided to keep her, work with her, and now she is fluent in both English and French and can read and write legibly and articulately.
Bob Schulz Productions is mostly a commercial advertising production house, and some might say that there is still much evidence of this in the film. The final scene of teary-eyed, slow-mo- tion running and jumping through parks, while a theme is belted out in the background, is a trite too cloying and sentimental. Also, in many ways, the film has a certain commercial flavour in that its message is hammered home and its points doubly underlined. But then explosions. were never meant to be sub- tle. And sometimes that is what is need- ed to get through the caked-on layers of human prejudice.
The film works. It awakens. Perhaps the selling of awareness should be no different than the selling of any pro- duct.
Krystyna Hunt
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40/Cinema Canada
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In the recently published March issue (no. 15):
—Brokers predict double volume of film production in 1979
_Creation of the Association of Canadian Film Craftsmen is sign of new times, new attitudes
—Film policy revisions in Quebec as minister of Communications consults industry
—Susan Clark speaks out on Canada’s attitude toward the stars
—Distributors meet with the Canadian Film Development Corporation about Canadian distribution rights
—Quebecois directors call for CFDC’s executives resignations; commercial sectors come to CFDC’s defense
—Nelson Smith C.A. talks about leverage in film finance
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