Events director Robertson aiming

for January shoot on next project

Toronto writer/filmmaker Bill Robertson (The Events Leading Up To My Death) has a new feature film on the go. She Lost Her Luggage is in keeping with the quirky, original style of Events and defies a pat description. It’s a screwball comedy, in part about a woman who murders her Barbie Doll and gets away with it (a metaphorical element says Robertson); it’s a female buddie picture with some serious undertones about self-image; and, it’s a road movie without the road.

The original story was conceived by Robertson and sister Susan, who is not involved in the project. Bill is writing the script, now in final draft. Don McKellar is script consultant.

Robertson and coproducer Moira Holmes (Events coproducer and supervising producer of the tv series Ready or Not) are hoping to start production on the $2 million picture in Toronto this January. The shooting schedule has been set at six weeks.

Robertson is not sure at this point, but he may try looking south of the border for some star power to take on one of the two female leads. He is also looking for one actor who will take on five roles in the male lead (or should that be leads?).

Robertson has a domestic distribution deal with Malofilm and says if the project attracts a star, he may seek out American distribution before shooting.

Casting is in the hands of Ross Clydesale.

Development of She Lost Her Luggage has been subsidized by Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Film Development Corporation and the National Film Board. Robertson, who will submit the final draft any day, is hoping all three will come on for production funding (the nfb with cash and services).

Meanwhile, Robertson is steadily at work on a second screenplay and is in regular contact with his agent in Los Angeles, Diane Carins of International Creative Management, who approached him when Events won best screenplay at the 1991 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Casting about

Alliance Communications’ new television series, Taking the Falls, is in the throes of casting for a female lead to play opposite Cynthia Dale. A search is also on for a director.

The 13-episode series, set to start production in mid-October, is about two women (one a detective, one a private eye) in Niagara Falls who are paired to crack criminal cases. Dale is the private eye.

Baton Broadcasting has picked up the series and Alliance is looking for an American broadcaster. Adam Haight and Peter Mohan are producing.

A bloomin’ shame

Director John Greyson (Zero Patience, Urinal) was ready to go into production next month on his latest feature, Lilies, when a $400,000 funding wrench was thrown into the works. Producer Anna Stratton and distributor Alliance Releasing will be shopping at the Toronto International Film Festival for some financing.

The $2.6 million film, based on Michel Mark Bouchard’s play of the same name, has been delayed until next May because the story is set in summer and fall.

Bouchard’s award-winning play is about three teenage boys in the summer of 1912 in Northern Quebec. One boy is murdered, one is accused of the crime and imprisoned, and the third becomes a bishop. The events of the summer are relayed in a hallucination when the bishop and the prisoner meet 40 years later.

Producers are Stratton, Robin Cass and Arnie Gelbart of Galafilm, Montreal. Bouchard wrote the screenplay.

Final casting is underway, says Stratton, who is hoping Francois Seguin will do production design. Other names attached to the project are being withheld until the final portion of financing is in place.

Back to the future

TekWar, Atlantis Communications’ sci-fi tv series, starts up production Sept. 19 with executive producer and guest star William Shatner directing the first of 18 episodes. Shatner, who wrote the books upon which the $1.5 million-per-episode series is based, also directed the first of the four tv movies that acted as pilots.

Shatner was in the captain’s seat on the first movie, making it the most effects-intensive of the four. Stephen Roloff, producer and production designer, says that may once again be the case. ‘When Bill steps behind the camera, you want to give him all the toys you can muster.’

Shooting will take place on the TekWar ‘cosmos’ set in Atlantis’ Cinevillage and on various locations around Toronto. Roloff says they might build another standing set – ‘a bar, hang-out space’ – but that is not his biggest priority for now. Instead, Roloff is feeling the pressure of keeping up with the TekWar movies on a series’ schedule and budget.

The major challenges this time around are twofold, says Roloff. Number one stems from a plot that is framed by an optimistic future, where there is no room for ‘techno-vomit – industrial garbage that looks like Mad Max. (Optimism) means that you can’t say that people are living with the garbage of the past. Instead, they are moving forward,’ says Roloff.

Obstacle number two is maintaining the quality of effects that went with the TekWar movies on the series’ shooting schedule of seven days per episode. A post-production schedule has yet to be set. There will be fewer effects, says Roloff, but the balance is that he has learned ‘it’s a matter of how the effects are integrated into the plot of the show rather than how many are used.’

New to the series are writers/ producers Hans Beimler and Richard Manning, who have worked on the Star Trek, Fame and Beyond Reality series.

Atlantis is returning to Toronto-based Medallion-PFA (The Twilight Zone, Maniac Mansion) for post-production work. Dome Productions and Casablanca handled the bulk of post for the TekWar movies.

The series will air on the CTV Television Network and USA Network, with MCA/Universal handling worldwide releasing.

Flushed with success

Filmmaker Anne Kennard’s documentary on women’s washrooms around the world has nothing to do with toilet humor. Delicately titled The Powder Room, the National Film Board doc promises a sociological, anthropological and scatological look into these spaces. Kennard and nfb producer Michael Allder are going into preproduction planning now.

Labor of Love

Toronto producer Rachel Low (Talkin’ About AIDS) and director Katherine Gilday (The Famine Within) have an ambitious, four-hour documentary in the works that offers tv viewers an alternative view on the true nature of love (i