Atlantis’ latest Vonnegut project

evokes the ’50s – the 2050s, that is

With two productions under their belt and one pledged for early 1995, cult author Kurt Vonnegut and Atlantis Films are becoming a real item.

Vonnegut made a trip to Toronto in early November while project number two, Harrison Bergeron, was in production. The two-hour tv movie, based on Vonnegut’s short story of the same name, has Bruce Pittman (Where the Spirit Lives) at the helm. Sean Astin (Rudy), Miranda de Pencier (Sea of Love) and Christopher Plummer star in this comedy-drama about love and free will in a society that is a bizarre mix of future and past.

The movie’s depiction of technology is apropos to the year 2053, but the look and feel is 1950s. Reason is, the story’s Big Brother government has modeled a futuristic society after the decade it feels was the happiest: the clean, chrome-plated ’50s.

Production designer is Susan Longmire (The Man in the Attic). Cameos include Buck Henry, Eugene Levy, Howie Mandel, Andrea Martin and Deborah Theaker.

Atlantis’ first venture with Vonnegut was the seven-part anthology series Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House, and the third partnership, Welcome to the Monkey House, is a feature film expected to start production in late winter.

Jonathan Hackett (Secret Service, War of the Worlds) is producing Harrison Bergeron for The Movie Network, the CTV Television Network and Superchannel in Canada and for Showtime in the States.

It’s show time!

Speaking of Showtime, the u.s network is still plugging away at the multi-picture promise it made to Toronto in late summer. Numbers five and six on the tv movie slate are Warf Rat and Johnny and Clyde. Both pictures start up Nov. 7 and have four-week shooting schedules.

Warf Rat, a heist caper set in a harbor town, stars Lou Diamond Phillips and Judge Reinhold. Jimmy Huston is directing, Paul Kimatian is producing, Martin Walters is line producer and Armand Leo is production manager.

Johnny and Clyde, a tale of a boy and his dog, falls under the new family umbrella of Showtime. The only member who has been cast to date is Jethro, the bloodhound. Director is Bill Bindley, producer is Brad Jenkel and line producer is Chris Danton.

The Lowe-down

The feature film First Degree, starring Rob Lowe, written by Ron Base, produced by Richard Lowry (To Catch a Killer) and directed by Jeff Woolnough (Betrayal of Silence, North of 60), will shoot Nov. 21 through Dec. 23 in Toronto.

The film-noirish thriller features a deluded homicide detective (Lowe) who murders a prominent businessman in order to snag the dead man’s wife. Naturally, things go terribly wrong.

The $3 million Canadian production is made by Lowry Entertainment Group. Allan Levine is line producer, dop is Glen Macpherson, and production designer is Elaine Smith.

I’ll drink to that

Nicholas Campbell (Stepping Razor – Red X) has just wrapped production on his first dramatic feature, Boozecans. The after-hours look at the underbelly of Toronto, done on a $1 million budget, was shot mainly in the warehouses of the city’s west end.

The list of stars includes Justin Louis (Blood ‘n’ Donuts), Eugene Lipinski, Kenneth Welsh and Stephen Shellen, with cameos by director David Cronenberg, Ranjit Chowdry, Jan Rubes and Leslie Hope.

Sandy Creighton produced, Gerald Packer was dop, Luciano Diane wrote the script, Joan Parkinson handled production design and Alice O’Neal was production manager.

The 35mm film is expected to be ready for delivery by early spring.

$30 million richer

The good news that Due South, Alliance Communications’ top show for cbs, has been extended to a full season means the 22-episode series will inject more than $30 million of direct expenditure into t.o.’s economy, says David Plant of the Toronto Film and Television Office. To boot, he says, it’s more than enough to offset the void created since Robocop was put on hold.

Maid-in voyage

Writers Trina Hancock and partner Melissa Byer, two new graduates from Ryerson Polytechnic University, are working with Lionel Shenken of Visual Productions to put together a pilot for a weekly series starring Mickey Rooney and Estelle Getty. Maid in America is a comedy about a maid (Getty) and a butler (Rooney) who are suddenly in charge of three children when the parents of the household are thrown in jail.

Hancock says she and Byer just completed a rewrite of Romantic Notions, a Paragon Entertainment/Dandelion Distribution/Visual tv movie which has been delayed from a mid-fall start to Nov. 16. Shenken says he will ask Dandelion and Paragon to become involved in Maid in America, if it gets off the ground.

The reworking of Romantic Notions was the first foray into screenwriting for both young scribes, but it has gone so well that Hancock and Byer are also talking to Shenken about writing an original tv movie – at his invitation.

Docs in the house

Elliott Halpern and partner Simcha Jacobovici of Associated Producers (Plague Monkeys) are cooking up a storm on the documentary front.

Northern Justice, codirected and coproduced by Halpern and Jacobovici for tvontario’s A View From Here, is a one-hour examination of the contrast between the Northern Canada court system and its south of 60 counterpart. Halpern says the northern system involves jurors, judges and lawyers getting on a small plane and flying into a village for a day of trials. The movie is in post and will air next spring.

Expulsion and Memory, an account of the descendants of the expelled and converted Jews of 15th century Spain, is also in post-production. Coproduced and codirected by Jacobovici and Roger Pyke for tvo, the doc has so far shot in Spain, Portugal and Israel. More location shooting awaits in New Mexico, where families of these descendants recently found out about their heritage.

For cbc’s Witness series, Halpern and Jacobovici will coproduce and codirect a one-hour doc, Hallelujah on the Nava, in the spring of 1995. To be shot on location in Russia, the documentary follows American missionaries from the South who are converting the Russians to bible-belt Christianity. It all started when Billy Graham was invited over by Gorbachev. The Russians are very receptive to this foreign religion, says Halpern.

Sigsusson’s Roads, an autobiographical account of the Canadian who opened up Canada’s North to fishing, is the basis for a new tv drama in development. Halpern says the story is about how Sigsusson discovered the wealth of fish in the northern lakes and then built a system of ice roads to reach them.

The screenplay, written by William Edwards, follows the story through to the 1970s when the provincial governments began expropriating the road systems. Eventually, they fell into disuse.

Halpern says he and Jacobovici also have a theatrical doc and two tv docs in early stages of development.

Toujours gay

Writer/actor Daniel MacIvor and director Laurie Lynd – the team (with producer Karen Lee Hall) behind the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project House – have just wrapped production on the film and are launching into development on two new projects.

Bad Boy, a feature-length tv movie with Credo Group of Winnipeg and the cbc, is based on the Governor General Award-winning novel by Diana Weiler. The tale of two Prairie boys focuses on how their relationship changes when one boy, who is gay, comes out of the closet.

MacIvor is writing and Lynd will direct the picture. MacIvor says they hope to shoot on location next winter.

A Particular Messiah is a low-budget feature about three days in the life of a gay man – at ages 11, 16 and 35. MacIvor says the project, at the final draft stage, is a combination of It’s A Wonderful Life and Parting Glances, with a dash of An Angel At My Table thrown in.

Lee Hall will produce and Lynd will direct. Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation are subsidizing development.

Name of the game

While the idea of calling Toronto a playground may sound ludicrous, the impending local invasion of games and more games may change all that. Following Paragon Entertainment’s recent live-action shoot for the Sega interactive video game Fahrenheit, Sega Enterprises and Toronto-based Playdium Entertainment have announced plans for a $25 million amusement park in Mississauga, Ont. that would include a huge virtual reality complex.

The first of a slew of theme parks, the 50,000-square-foot Mississauga project is set to open in late 1995. Playdium is also in negotiations for two other locations in Toronto.

Playdium spokesperson Jennifer Rideout says the partners are in the process of finalizing other arrangements, and would not comment on whether there is any local production link down the road.

David Plant of the Toronto Film and Television Office bets there will be: ‘Maybe they won’t announce who is getting contracts, but there is no question they would bring in all the software and production material from out of town when so much exists here.’