Hoban makes a Smart choice,

saying: ‘The script is so darn good’

Steve Hoban, producer of the first Canadian Film Centre Feature Film Project picture, Blood ‘n’ Donuts, has just come on side with coproducer Claire Dunn, writer Judith Thompson and director Patricia Rozema for The Elizabeth Smart Project, a feature-length biopic now moving from its third to final phase of development.

This is an unexpected addition to Hoban’s already full plate, with Blood ‘n’ Donuts in the throws of posting and set for completion by the end of summer. ‘Twenty or 30 scripts were submitted to me (since Hoban left as vice-president of business affairs at Motion Picture Guarantors in August) and I passed on them,’ says Hoban. ‘But I would have been an idiot to pass this one up. The script is so darn good. Also, this is a producer-driven project: Claire (Dunn) chose a subject she liked, got a writer and a director who she thought would be perfect for it; she packaged it.’

fund has just come in for the final draft of The Elizabeth Smart Project and Alliance has expressed interest in distributing the film.

Hoban replaces former coproducer Barbara Tranter, who is currently producing Rozema’s When Night is Falling.

They’ve created a Monster

ottawa animation house Lacewood Productions has signed with mca/Universal to produce a $5.4 million 13-part animated series called Monster House. Lacewood president Sheldon Wiseman says his company approached Universal originally to license their characters for the shows. The deal gives Universal u.s. tv and home video rights and Lacewood is producing.

Each half-hour episode will use hand-painted cel animation on 35mm to tell the story of students who tackle an underground network of monsters led by Dracula.

Producer is Gerald Tripp (For Better or For Worse), Chris Schouten (Happy Birthday Bunnykins) will direct, and the series will be scored by Edmund Eagan. Writers are Mary Crawford, Alan Templeton, Darson Hall, Ken Ross and Patrick Granlese.

The series is slated to premiere on u.s. and Canadian networks this fall. Wiseman says Lacewood is in the ‘final stages of negotiations with a Canadian broadcaster.’

Togetherness

carol Reynolds Productions has announced its first partnership deal, and it’s with Baton Broadcasting. Surprise! Ivan Fecan and Carol Reynolds will be working together again, despite earlier denials of the inevitable. The deal is set to bring Joy Fielding’s screenplay, The Silken Laumann Story, to Baton’s small screens. The mow will follow the Olympic athlete as she struggles to regain strength and control over her career.

Reynolds says of production: ‘Our plan is to produce the movie later this fall, primarily here in Ontario – about 80% here – and, because Silken lives in Victoria, we would like to be able to go out and do the exteriors there.’

Post-production is expected to be completed by early January and the mow should be aired in the 1995 fall season with a repeat in the ’96 spring season, ‘just in time for the Atlanta Olympics,’ she adds.

Reynolds says she chose Fielding – once an aspiring actor who appeared on Gunsmoke, but most notably an accomplished author (Kiss Mommy Goodbye, See Jane Run) – for her ability to ‘show vulnerability but not put the individual in a victim role.’

Casting should be underway by the end of summer, but Ralph Benmurgui (temporary replacement for CBC Radio’s Later the Same Day host Catherine O’Hara) got things off to an early start when he put the question of who should play Laumann to his radio audience. Reynolds thought it was a good prank. ‘I called to tell him that `Tootsie’ is making a comeback and we thought he should play Silken.’ Apparently, her office has been flooded with calls from people asking to play the role and others suggesting names for the lead.

In the works at O’B&D

O’B&D Productions – aka Greg Dummet and Tim O’Brien (Giant Steps) – is busy with one mow and three feature films in development.

Don McKellar (Blue) will be directing his first feature, Four Days, for the company, as well as penning the script about a 12-year-old boy’s experience with some hot loot and its bank-robbing owners. O’Brien says it’s still at the scripting stage, but when production dates are set, it will shoot in the Toronto area.

The Wives of Bath – Susan Swan’s novel – is being adapted for the big screen by Judith Thompson for o’b&d. O’Brien says a director is not confirmed yet and the pic has just completed first draft.

The Boys Club, an Alliance Communications coproduction with recent Canadian Film Centre grads John Fawcett directing and Peter Wellington writing, will shoot this fall in Toronto. O’Brien describes it as ‘the story of what happens when a fugitive invades the secret tree fort of three teenage boys. It’s an action drama.’ Alliance is distributing and coproducing.

The mow Jabob Tutu Meets the Hooded Fang is a cbc coproduction written by Tim Burns, directed by Kelly Makin and set for production in Toronto in the fall.

O’Brien slates all four productions as ‘low to medium budget’.

Still Rude

when coproducer Damon D’Oliveira first read Clement Virgo’s script Rude Boy in 1991, he thought it was ‘a wicked little tight-ass film.’ D’Oliveira says of Rude, wrapping production in an abandoned cbc building in Toronto, ‘it still is.’

The film, which also shot on location in Regent and Alexander Parks – two government-subsidized housing projects in Toronto where director/writer Virgo spent some of his youth – is the first feature for the award-winning filmmaker (Save My Lost Nigga’ Soul) as well as for producers D’Oliveira and Karen King.

The script tells of three personal stories connected through a woman deejay – ‘Rude’ – who makes ‘provocative, illegal’ broadcasts.

At the Film Centre in 1992, Virgo developed the story with script doctors Bruce McDonald and Walter Donohue. ‘But,’ says D’Oliveira, ‘Clement has always had a very clear idea of what the film was going to be and that is what has ultimately driven everyone attached to this project. When you read it, you get a feeling, a heartfelt, truthful instinct. We see a take on the inner-city environment that we haven’t seen before in Canada, or even in this recent splurge of black films – such as Menace II Society and Boyz’n the Hood. In a way, we like to see our film as picking up where those films left off.’

Virgo says he has been developing this film for some time. ‘I have always known this film; it came from my experiences living in the inner city.’

Rude is number two under the Canadian Film Centre Feature Film Project banner. D’Oliveira says they went with the ffp, despite a restrictive budget of $750,000 ($350,000 in cash and about $400,00 in deferrals), because ‘we felt that the quickest way to get the film made would be to go through them. There were some concerns that the scope of the script was too ambitious for the ffp, but we convinced them that we were quite capable of managing the budget. We could not do this without the support of the larger industry – everybody is involved.’

Down the road, the producers are looking at getting an appropriate distributor ‘that can reach mass audiences and is willing to also do the grassroots marketing,’ says King.

They are also looking to the States for interest. ‘After our short film (Save My Lost Nigga’ Soul) did as well as it did at the ’93 Festival of Festivals (it won the best short film award), we got calls from the States and had meetings with some people down there,’ D’Oliveira says.

With no requirement for a distributor on side (part of the ffp package), the producers are hoping for a higher dollar on condition ‘that we accomplish everything we set out to,’ says D’Oliveira.

With three days of production left to go, has this happened? ‘Unbelievably, yes,’ said D’Oliveira in a recent on-set interview. ‘We have had very little compromise. We have a 500-pound lion on set right now and we got our night of turquoise and lavendar rain.’ Sounds extraordinary, but I’m told it’s all true.