Cannell Films gears up several new projects to shoot in B.C.

Vancouver: North Shore Studios will once again be filling up with Cannell Films productions.

Filming got underway Feb. 21 on the mow Dog Hermit. Produced by Karen Moore, Dori Weiss and Stephen J. Cannell and directed by John Power, the film about a hermit wrongly accused of kidnapping a young boy stars Henry Winkler.

Next month production begins on two pilots.

The first is Profit, written by l.a.-based David Greenwalt and John McNamara and directed by Robert Iscove. The film stars Adrian Pasdar (Carlito’s Way) as a young executive who stops at nothing in his quest to reach the top.

The other, Two, which sounds a bit like Twins meets The Fugitive, is about a young university professor who is falsely accused of killing his wife. While trying to find the real killer, he discovers he has an identical evil twin brother who was adopted at birth into less fortunate circumstances but who is now dying of lung cancer.

The series, if it makes it that far, will, in true Fugitive fashion, follow the young professor in his search to find his twin brother before he dies. Whew!

Written by Charles Grant Craig, a director and cast have yet to be finalized.

Scouting flurry

Over at the B.C. Film Commission, requests for location scouts and more information about shooting in the province have escalated in the last few weeks in anticipation of the expiry of the Screen Actors Guild contract in June. It seems u.s. producers are hustling to get their projects into productionÉjust in case.

Among those in town was producer Martha De Laurentiis of Dino De Laurentiis Communications, who was scouting the feature Unforgettable, to be helmed by hot director John Dahl, with Ray Liotta starring.

The film, described as Altered States with a murder mystery woven in, follows a forensic cop whose wife is bludgeoned to death in their house. The cop, of course, is arrested, tried and subsequently acquitted because of insufficient evidence. He then links up with a dna researcher to find the real killer and clear his name.

And producer Bill Fay (The Hunted) was looking around for studio locations to shoot yet another remake of the 1930s thriller The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. To be directed by Mick Garris, the special effects- and construction-intensive film lucked out in its timing for use of the John Thomas Special Effects Stage at the The Bridge Studios; the TriStar feature Jumanji will just be wrapping.

As yuk would have it

Speaking of Jumanji, actor/comedian Robin Williams, who stars in the film, was turning heads in town earlier this month, not only on the Jumanji set but at Punchlines Comedy Club in Gastown where he showed up for a few hours of improv with the local No Name Players, evidently just to keep his funny bones limber.

Williams’ visit to Punchlines caught the owners – not to mention fans who had been camped out at the night spot the previous week hoping to catch an impromtu visit from the star – totally by surprise. On the night of his appearance, the club was less than half full – a table of local casting agents and publicists – but he still lit up the house with his usual warp-speed humor.

Word has it Williams was also a last-minute surprise guest at none other than Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s birthday party. The former pm was in town to celebrate with colleagues at the local offices of his Montreal-based law firm, Heenan Blaikie, and no doubt to take in a few runs at Whistler.

Williams just happened to be dining with his family in the same restaurant when pet sent over a message saying he was a big fan and wanted to meet the star. Next thing you know, Williams was regaling guests with a half-hour of off-the-cuff sit-down standup.

The Janitor’s cleaning up

Vanessa Schwartz, an l.a.-based animator formerly of Vancouver, has been fielding so many calls since being nominated earlier this month for an Academy Award her phone has started to echo.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but even the phone company called to ask if I need more services now,’ says the rather exhausted 25-year-old.

Her short film The Janitor was completed during her final year of studies at the California Institute of Arts. It won a student Academy Award last year and attracted a lot of attention at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Then it made the Oscar qualifications, the short list, and now the short short list of nominees.

Schwartz was back in Vancouver last summer working as an assistant animator at International Rocketship doing the grunt work of animation, in-betweening. Even though she loved working for Rocketship, she’d naturally prefer to work on her own films.

To that end, she’s back in l.a. working on The Guard (working title), a short about a lifeguard, and getting set to direct her first tv commercial.

‘If the job opportunities exist it would be great to come back to Vancouver to work, but I’m hoping if anything comes out of this nomination that it will allow me to escape the grunt work,’ says Schwartz.

Temp service

Another piece of the infrastructure is arriving in town. A temp service dedicated to serving the entertainment industry has been established by CPT Corporate Professional Temporaries, a division of Vancouver-based Corporate Recruiters.

The recruiting and support services operation, headed by Caesi Levasseur who ran a similar type of company in l.a. prior to moving to Canada, plans to fill a broad range of production positions – from computer animators, cartoonists and scriptwriters to construction, prop painters and mold makers.

Why use the service? ‘To save time,’ says Levasseur. ‘We’re a third party, neutral on union and hiring issues, and if there’s someone new around who’s great but hasn’t met the 90-day union requirements, chances are we’ll know about them first.’