decry

Telefilm

rejection

Vancouver: Be Fabulous Or Die is the title of a new film that was scheduled to begin production earlier this month in Edmonton. It’s also an apt description of the producers’ sentiments about Telefilm Canada, which opted not to fund the teen comedy/musical feature when it was already well into preproduction.

Unlike some producers who have been rebuffed by funding agencies at the last minute, Be Fabulous Or Die producers Norm Fassbender and Kate Holowach are not taking this on the mat; they’ve come out swinging.

And Edmonton Liberal mp David Kilgour has joined the fray. In a letter to interim executive director of Telefilm Peter Katadotis protesting the funding agency’s decision, Kilgour says: ‘The whole thing is odd when you look at the movies Telefilm sponsors in Quebec and Ontario and the talent involved in this production.’

The script is penned by Brad Fraser (Love and Human Remains) and is based on his stage play Prom Night Of The Living Dead. Retitled Be Fabulous Or Die, the film was to star Quebec pop singer Mitsou with music produced and performed by Paul Janz.

The film was scheduled to start shooting in an Edmonton high school on Aug. 16. The producers had already raised $900,000 of the film’s $1.6 million budget and had signed a distribution deal with Toronto distributor Cinema Esperanca.

Fassbender and Holowach claim John Taylor, director of operations for Telefilm’s Western office in Vancouver, had been encouraging the production for two to three years, and then, at the last minute, rejected funding because the ‘creative component was just not outstanding enough.’ They say Taylor had not voiced any serious creative concerns about the project to that point.

Taylor says while his office had invested in the film’s development over several years, he also needed a certain amount of lead time to assess the picture. He says the application for production funding was only received by his office on July 18, and in order to trigger the fund the producers needed a signed commitment from a distributor, and that was only secured on July 29.

‘The producers were being unrealistic to expect that we could turn the project around in the time frame they had in mind, and there was no guarantee that the answer would be positive,’ says Taylor. ‘The producers chose to proceed anyhow at their own risk.’

Taylor says he reviewed the creative reports – two of which were ‘marginally positive’ and one that was ‘strongly negative’ – and decided there was just not a strong enough case to recommend the project. ‘I think they were trying to move too soon and I suggested that they postpone their production until spring.’

Retorts Fassbender: ‘Taylor knew the time constraints we were under, that we had a high school to shoot in that would be unavailable in September when school started, and we were using 50 teenage actors who needed to be back in school or go onto other projects by fall. And we’d been through the postpone routine with Telefilm before on this project. How many times can you keep on putting it off?’

As for the possibility of waiting until spring, Fassbender says in an Aug. 4 telephone conversation with Taylor, Taylor said he would not support this script, ‘not now, not ever.’

Taylor denies making this comment.

Holowach, who coproduced the award-winning film Two Brothers, A Girl and A Gun, says: ‘I think we were encouraged by Telefilm because they had no confidence that we would ever get this project off the ground. But we did. We got a private offering together, raised the financing, found a distributor with an advance that could trigger the Feature Fund.’

Adds Fassbender: ‘We were put in a Catch-22 position and constantly told to `prove it,’ saying there was no way to produce a 50-person musical on a low budget. So the only way was to go ahead and start doing it by spending two months in rehearsals. We knew it was our risk but we don’t think there was ever a mind to fund this at all – it was just another Telefilm funding charade.’

For Fraser, the critically acclaimed playwright who recently signed a writer’s contract with Disney/Touchstone Pictures in l.a., this marks his second run-in with government funding fiascoes.

In 1992, his controversial film Love and Human Remains, based on his play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love and directed by Denys Arcand, met with a similar fate when the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation opted not to fund the feature in Alberta. The picture was moved to Quebec at the last minute instead.

In an Aug. 16 reply to Kilgour’s letter, Katadotis declined the mp’s request to reconsider the funding decision, stating that the producers are ‘entitled to resubmit their application but the creative concerns must be addressed first.’

Says Fassbender: ‘We have never received any written specific, creative or business concerns from Telefilm. If we resubmit our application we can’t help but wonder to what avail. We need assurances that we will receive a fair hearing and that next time what he (Taylor) says verbally will be the same as what he does.’

The producers are now pursuing private financing options in the hope of resurrecting their film production later this year.