montreal: Max Films producer Roger Frappier says he really appreciates the support from cast and crew on director Pierre Gang’s period drama Le Sous-sol, but the producer of Declin de l’empire americain and Un zoo la nuit says making movies at home is harder than ever.

‘It’s tough for everyone,’ he says. ‘But it is a tour de force to do a period film on a budget of $2 million. It’s exactly the same budget I had nine years ago to do Un zoo la nuit, and that was a contemporary movie.’

Financing quality French-language feature films is problematic at best, but unlike in Ontario, Frappier says high-content Quebec films are always shot under union conditions. He says Le Sous-sol could not have been made if many of the top artisans on the shoot hadn’t turned down better paying offers this summer and agreed to work for scale.

Le Sous-sol (working title) is a psychological drama set in the mid and late ’60s. In this story, written by Gang (J’te demande pas le ciel, La ruee vers l’art), an adolescent called Rene (played by Richard Moffatt) undergoes a deeply disturbing experience when one night he sees shadowy reflections of his parents making love. When he discovers his father has died during the night, he believes his dearly beloved mother, played by Louise Portal, has committed murder.

With the arrival of a new boyfriend, Patrick Godin, the devastated child turns his fears and emotions to the newly arrived upstairs neighbor, played by French actress Isabelle Pasco.

Frappier says he is especially touched by childhood stories, ‘because everything is precious, absolute and bigger than life.’ He says actors and their emotions are at the heart of the ‘crazy and fantastic’ business of filmmaking.

Which probably explains how young Moffatt won the role of Rene. Apparently, he saw the audition ad in a newspaper and immediately told his father he wanted the part. Never mind that the kid hadn’t appeared in a film before, he showed up three times at casting director’s Louise Boisvert’s office and persisted until he had the job.

Selected craft credits on Le Sous-sol go to cinematographer Pierre Mignot (Pret-a-Porter), sound recordist Serge Beauchemin (L’Enfant d’eau), art director Fracois Laplante (Le Confessionnal) and costume designer Suzanne Harel (La Petite Vie, Ding et Dong, le film).

Investors include Telefilm Canada ($975,000), SODEC – Quebec ($400,000), Max Films ($131,731) a minimum guarantee from the distributor, the Quebec tax credit program ($374,400), and the federal tax credit ($23,864).

Les Films Tonic, Pierre Latour’s new distribution company, has Canadian and world rights. Shooting wraps Sept. 8 with a spring ’96 release in view.

Lamothe’s big screen adventure

production continues for two more weeks through to Sept. 1 on Le Silence des fusils (Silencing the Guns), a $3.1 million Canada/ France feature film from veteran documentary director Arthur Lamothe.

Produced by Rock Demers of Productions La Fete and Jeanine L. Glandier of Pathe Television, Le Silence is a suspense mow and part of a major, five-year package that will see La Fete and Pathe produce two feature films for adults, five new films in the Contes Pour Tous/Tales For All collection, as well as four television series.

Set in the summer of 1985 on the Maliotenam Reserve on the Nabessipi River in northern Quebec, Le Silence is the story of Jean-Pierre, a visiting French marine biologist played by Jacques Perrin (Cinema Paradiso). Obliged to set aside his investigation of whales for a search for justice following two suspicious drownings, the biologist is pulled into a moral and physical maelstrom, down river to his own heart of darkness.

Leading players include Michele Audette in the role of a beautiful Montagnais woman, Gabriel Gaston as a Catholic missionary devoted to the people of the North, Louise Richer, Louisette Dussault, Marco Bacon, Rejean Lefrancois, Jean Harvey, Matthieu Perrin, and Jean-Luc Vollant as the disturbingly passive band chief.

The film is being shot in French with additional Montagnais dialogue.

Craft credits go to dop Roger Moride, art director Fernand Durand, editor Jean-Marie Drot and costume designer Suzanne Ferland. The screenplay, based on an original idea from Lamothe, the first recipient of the Prix Albert-Tessier in 1980, was written by Michel Leviant (La Fille de d’Artagnan) and Lamothe.

Investors in the 70% Canadian coproduction include Telefilm Canada ($700,000), SODEC – Quebec, La Fete, Distribution La Fete, Pathe Television, Les Ateliers audio-visuels du Quebec, Lamothe’s company, and the Quebec tax credit program.

Broadcasters are Super Ecran, Television Quatre Saisons, cfcf-tv for the English version, and France 3.

World sales outside of France are being handled by Distribution La Fete.

Dubbing with a difference

rose Films producer Marie-Josee Raymond, says Global Television’s primetime broadcast of Jalna is the first time a versioned French-track television series has been broadcast on a private Canadian tv network.

The Canadian producer on the $17 million, 16-hour historical saga says because the dubbing job was done right, the people at Global seem pleased with the results.

She says Global responded positively to the French-track rushes, and bought in despite the lack of locally recognized stars. ‘It had nothing to do with the kind of political arming-twisting you have at cbc,’ she says.

To get the English version right, Raymond says it meant responding to Global’s request that the heavy up-front dialogue approach used in Europe be set aside, and the m&e track be turned up, American-style.

Raymond says Toronto doesn’t have the technical expertise for high-quality dubbing, but the city has the best English talent pool in the country. She personally supervised the dubbing at Optimum Productions, done at a cost of $26,000 per episode, hired English-speaking stage actors, and alternated electronic looping and rhythmoband techniques ‘so the actors would act out the dialogue, and not read it.’

Raymond says Quebec can’t compete in big-budget drama unless ‘very reluctant’ broadcasters like Radio-Canada open the door wider to coproduction. Then, she says, it’s up to the producer to ensure the dubbed version works for the client and the program has a fair shot at a sale in English Canada.

A visit from Commissaire Massard

it’s a wrap after four and a half weeks of shooting on Dernier cri, a $2 million murder mystery/ mow coproduced by Montreal’s Productions Pixart, its first film project, and France’s giant public production/service house, SFP Productions.

Dernier cri is the latest entry in the long-running French police series Les Cinq Dernieres Minutes. And it’s the first time the series’ central character, Commissaire Julien Massard, played by Pierre Santini, gets caught up in action outside of l’Hexagon.

In this story, directed by Jean-Marie Comeau, Massard is on a visit to Quebec when he becomes involved in an investigation following the mysterious death of a prison inmate and a prominent pharmacologist who has developed a powerful law enforcement drug that turns tough guys into sweeties.

During the inquiry, Massard locks horns with his local counterpart, chief inspector Rousseau, played by the affable Remy Girard.

Quebec talent includes Luc Guerin, veteran actress Janine Sutto, Yves Jacques in the role of the pharmacologist, and Jean-Marie Moncelet.

Pixart co-executive producer Andre Barro says Comeau became involved after former sfp executive Philippe Laik, now with France 2’s drama department, expressed a desire to modernize the series, and liked Comeau’s production efforts on the Cinar Films series Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Louise Ranger is producing for Pixart. Jean-Claude Benoist and Serge Bany are sfp’s producers and Jacquelin Bouchard is co-executive producer.

Investors include Radio-Quebec, Super Ecran, which has the first window, Telefilm Canada ($100,000), SODEC – Quebec and France 2. Radio-Quebec has purchased a 13-film package of Les Cinq Dernieres Minutes, including Dernier cri.

Lundgren’s deadly aim

shooting is into its third week on the $15 million Canada/u.k. coproduction The Algonquin Goodbye, a thriller starring Swedish-born action hero Dolph Lundgren (Johnny Mnemonic) and British actress Gina Bellman (Leon the Pig Farmer).

In this story, directed by Russell Mulcahy (The Shadow, Highlander I & II), Lundgren and Bellman are cast as professional snipers obliged to fend off competing killers during a dangerous assassination assignment from the top of the abandoned Algonquin skyscraper. Conrad Dunn and Chris Heyerdahl also star.

Producers are Silvio Muraglia of London’s Algonquin Productions and Nicholas Clermont of Filmline International. Conquistador Entertainment is handling international distribution, and the spring ’96 release and financing is by Newmarket Capital Group, L.P.

Craft credits go to supervising producer Stewart Harding, line producer/pm Irene Litinsky, dop David Franco, production designer Gilles Aird and head set decorator Paul Hotte.

In the past nine months, Clermont has shot two features in Montreal, Sydney J. Furie’s Hollow Point, an $11 million underworld action film, and the $11 million high-definition feature Rainbow, directed by Bob Hoskins and coproduced by Winchester Pictures in the u.k.

Clermont says Filmline is expanding its television horizons in ’95 with the production of a new family adventure series, Salty the Sea Lion.

Sure to give the slippery Flipper a run for his money, Salty is a revival of the popular 1970s series broadcast on abc and cbc. Twenty-six half-hour episodes begin prepping in St. Martin in the Caribbean in November on a budget of us$12 million. The series is a coproduction with France and will be distributed in world markets by Michael J. Solomon International.

Clermont says combined film and tv budgets for Filmline International in ’94/95 are $70 million.