in Nova

Scotia

Montreal: The fallout from a botched feature film project mounted in late 1994 by Los Angeles-based producers intent on accessing Nova Scotia funding has high-level government officials in the province hopping mad.

A complex story of a location deal gone sour and impacting negatively on domestic production, the details came into focus in mid-November when prepping had started on Adam and Smoke, a coproduction project between one or more l.a.-based producers and Halifax-based Screen Star Group.

Two weeks into the preproduction, Screen Star producer Tony Foster pulled the plug on the $3.2 million feature he had planned to coproduce with l.a.-based Schafer-Miller and Kushner-Locke, which had agreed to bankroll the deal.

Foster says when representatives of the l.a. producers turned up in Nova Scotia in early November and ‘I discovered they had no star, didn’t have the rights to the film, and had no cashÉit was a Chinese fire drill.’ He took immediate action to shut down the shoot and alerted Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation chairman Roman Bittman ‘the production was a wank.’

The experience left an unpaid debt of $42,000 claimed by local craft people affiliated with the Nova Scotia Council of the Directors Guild of Canada and the Nova Scotia Technicians Association of Cinema and Television, and eventually triggered a controversial and seemingly strange decision by the board of directors of the nsfdc to cancel funding on a major homegrown feature film project, Bluenose.

As a result of the fiasco on Adam and Smoke, Foster says the nsfdc has refused to fund Bluenose, which Foster had planned to shoot in Nova Scotia this summer.

The refusal by the nsfdc’s board is attracting high-level opposition in the province.

In a letter to Foster dated March 16, Guy Brown, Nova Scotia minister of labor, expresses strong opposition to the nsfdc decision ‘that has allowed the production of a film about the symbol of our province to transfer to Ontario.’

Brown has asked Bittman for a full report on the board’s role and decision.

Obliged to seek alternative financing, Foster plans to shoot Bluenose with Toronto-based producer Gerry Arbeid. The $5 million film will be shot in Massachusetts this September, says Foster.

Meanwhile, the dgc and nstact have asked Ross Mitchell, director of the Nova Scotia Labor Standards Board, to formally identify the actual producer behind Adam and Smoke. If that matter is resolved, legal action may be taken by the dgc.

The craft associations claim the producers owe $42,000 in unpaid wages and benefits, and have named five companies acting as common employers in the complaint – Adamand Film Productions, the Nova Scotia shell company set up to acquire provincial production incentives, Screen Star, Kushner-Locke, Schafer-Miller and Westcom Entertainment, Vancouver.

‘Assurances were given to employees and local services that everyone would be paid,’ says Fortner Anderson, dgc business agent for both the Nova Scotia and Quebec region.

According to Anderson, Foster had no decision-making authority and the real producer behind Adam and Smoke is Kushner-Locke, which other sources say has had similar problems Stateside in the past.

Foster says the nsfdc was ready to invest $375,000 in Adam and Smoke and Westcom had put up $20,000.

Westcom got out of the deal after the budget was changed from $2.4 million to $3.2 million, says Foster.

He says the intrigue was further complicated because the rights to Adam and Smoke, held by Schafer-Miller, were due to expire in late December. He says it later become apparent Kushner-Locke never intended to proceed with the shoot in Nova Scotia, but was motivated to acquire all rights to the Karl Schiffman screenplay. When the deal was first hatched, Schiffman was Schafer’s partner.

Other parties became interested when it was announced Alex Cox (Repo Man) would direct and Republic Pictures in the u.s. had acquired theatrical rights.

After the shoot was shut down, Foster obtained a six-week window on the rights from Schiffman. He says he told Bittman he would pay the $42,000 in outstanding salaries and remount the production with new financing, but the nsfdc refused the offer.

The dgc has asked Mitchell’s office for a fast turnaround, but a decision could take up to three months, says Anderson.