Start-up for Johnny Mnemonic, a $20 million feature which has Alliance Communications teaming up with TriStar Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox, has been pushed back two weeks to Feb. 14.

Johnny Mnemonic is a futuristic feature based on a script by William Gibson. Robert Longo is directing and Canadian expatriate Keanu Reeves has been signed to play the male lead, a mnemonic character in a futuristic underworld who has sold off a portion of his brain capacity, but what was downloaded into his head is a deadly secret that is wanted by many who are hunting him down to decapitate him.

The distribution map has been split thus: Alliance Releasing has Canadian and some foreign territories, TriStar has the U.S. market and is sharing the remaining foreign territories with Twentieth Century.

Don Carmody, who spent last summer in Montreal and Cape Breton shooting Squanto, Indian Warrior, is producing. Ian McDougall is production manager. The executive producer credits are still being sorted out, but to be sure, Robert Lantos and B.J. Rack will be among them.

Carmody, another born-in-Canada-made-in-l.a. filmmaker, says he hasn’t worked with Lantos before, but adds he and Ivan Reitman were making features in Toronto about the same time Lantos and Victor Loewy were organizing the erotic film festival in Montreal.

Feature front

there are several other features lining up to shoot here this winter. It Happened in Paradise, a Twentieth Century Fox project starring Dana Carvey, Nicolas Cage and Jon Lovitz, with George Gallo directing, is going to camera Jan. 25 for three months. David Coatsworth and Ellen Erwin are coproducing and John Davidson is exec producing. dop is Jack Green.

Apparently a location manager for Gus Van Sant’s latest flick, To Die For, has been sniffing out Toronto.

And Outlaw Productions, the people who brought you Indian Summer, may be heading up this way again to shoot The Santa Clause starring Tim Allen.

Why does everyone groan when I mention Paco Alverez is back shooting a low-budget feature? I guess the sc legacy is just hard to shake. Anyway, it appears Paco is in t.o. to shoot Gladiator Cop, a feature film to be directed by Nick Rotundo. The production company created for the production is Cork Town Films, at least I think it is. The person answering the phone identifies it as Cork Town Films, but claims he has no idea what the company is doing.

MOW from Marilyn

production manager Marilyn Stonehouse has been doing mows back-to-back. Starting Jan. 17, she’s on a tv flick for the USA Network entitled Once a Cop. William Sackheim is producer. The movie stars Edward Woodward and the director signed is Jim Frawley. Bert Dunk is dop.

On the set

the church at Pape and Danforth is condemned. Services are still conducted from a pulpit at the back, but the primary cavern of worship is gutted. Tracks in the wall left by the organ pipes stand in relief against the bare floors. The spiritual levity is retained by the enormous stained glass windows which refract the afternoon light and create a warm glow that belies the actual sub-zero temperature.

The church and catacomb-like rooms in its bowels are eerily perfect for the production offices and sets of the low-budget Canadian Film Centre-driven feature Blood ‘n’ Donuts, a black comedy about a contemporary vampire.

The feature signals the re-entry of director Holly Dale onto the film scene. Dale, known for her powerful documentaries Hookers on Davie and P4W: Prison for Women, had stepped back from directing for personal reasons, although she has been cowriting a book about women directors and directing commercials for Toronto’s Sparks Productions.

When Colin Brunton, executive producer of the project, put out an industry call looking for scripts and talent for four features for the Film Centre’s Feature Film Project, Dale approached him. Brunton teamed her up with producer Steven Hoban, coproducer on the short Half Nelson, which was produced at the centre two years ago with John Fawcett handling directorial duties.

Hoban actually stepped down from his position as vice-president business affairs at Motion Picture Guarantors when Brunton approached him with the project, but says he was planning to leave the job anyway as he was preparing to produce the feature City of Dark with Alex Raffe.

According to Hoban, Brunton was impressed with the production values of Half Nelson. Getting high production values on a tight budget is definitely a priority for Brunton, who only has $325,000 in cash and deferrals of around $325,000 in crew and post-production to make each of the four features.

Although the budget is next to nothing, Hoban has managed to get a good deal on digital transfers from Cinesight, a division of Eastman Kodak, and from Spin Productions, a post facility that wants to break into features. One of the hot effects Spin was able to pull off was an organic transformation of the young male lead from a human into a vampire by using tima – or time machine – for a morphing-type effect.

Hoban has had to cut back somewhat on the special effects, although he is grateful for the extra ‘goodies’ people have been supplying him with.

Dale describes the project as highly art directed, but she is working with a limited palette of colors in an attempt to visually reproduce the dual nature of humanity as represented in the vampire character played by Gordon Currie.

The film also stars Justin Louis and Helene Clarkson, a double of Laura San Giacomo.

Meanwhile, Hoban is looking at producing an mow entitled The Bootlegger’s Ball, written by Brian Morey, and another feature with Fawcett entitled Lord of the Files.