Pebblehut Productions has a full slate of productions for this spring and summer.

Meryl Streep will be in Toronto in early September to star in an mow, First Do No Harm. The production, which has Michael Jaffe as exec producer and Jim Abrahams directing, was slated to begin production in June, but was delayed due to a conflict in Streep’s schedule.

Pebblehut is not divulging any other details about the production, and says Streep is making a rare tv movie appearance, ‘because this is a special case.’

Pebblehut is also getting ready to shoot Undue Influence, a miniseries for cbs with Bruce Pittman directing and Christine Sacani producing. Filming is set to start June 17.

Currently in production, Pebblehut has Dogmatic, a tv movie for abc, with director Neill Fearnley and producer Susan Murdoch, and Talk to Me, another tv movie, with director Graeme Campbell and producer Marilyn Stonehouse.

Fanning fires

You know you’re not dealing with an average filmmaker wannabe when you phone his voice mail and are blasted with a male voice doing a Carly Simon impersonation, complete with musical backup: ‘You’re so vain, you prob’ly think this message is for you. You’re so vain, you prob’ly think this message is for you, don’t you, don’t you?’

When scriptwriter Roger King calls back, speaking now rather than singing, he tells me about his international fan club with l.a.-based partner Zach Tate. He admits they haven’t made a dent into the Hollywood scene or sold a word of their scripts. However, the fan club they launched two years ago is a thriving success. But isn’t launching a fan club for your as yet-to-be-extraordinary self rather unusual? Maybe even rather vain?

‘We’re the first people who have done nothing and have our own fan club,’ boasts Toronto-based King, 27. ‘It’s never too early for publicity. Our attitude is don’t take yourself too seriously and don’t take not taking yourself too seriously too seriously.’

The pair has written two scripts, neither of which have received any takers so far. A couple of years ago, they decided to launch the newsletter that would chart their successes and failures as they tried to make inroads into Tinseltown.

‘We have fans from all over the world who read our newsletter and write us letters now,’ says King. The newsletter chronicles the scriptwriters’ efforts to sell their scripts and even includes rejection letters they’ve received.

‘When you read about people who are successful in show business, there’s always this brief reference to the lean years. We wanted to record what it’s really like.’

King, who does voice work (besides on his voice mail) to keep the wolves from the door, says their company, Foztark (Friends of Zach Tate and Roger King) Films, is currently flogging Raves, a comedy about a disgruntled movie director who forces film critics onto an airplane and won’t land the aircraft until they all give him good reviews. The duo have no takers so far for the script, but King is hopeful they’ll have a buyer by the fall.

For those who want to support these underdogs, write: Foztark, c/o 7775 Sunset Blvd., Suite 209, Hollywood, Calif. 90046.

King warns: ‘We aren’t taking any new members once we make our films.’

Flying Ghosts

Toronto-based Donald Martin Enterprises and Calgary-based HBW Film Corporation have joined forces to produce Flying Ghosts, a one-hour mow based on the novel of the same name by Alberta author Shirlee Smith Matheson.

The project is currently in development and u.s. producer Michael Maschio has come on board. Vic Sarin (Cold Comfort, Trial at Fortitude Bay) will direct.

Family Channel, which Donald Martin says ‘contributed a significant amount of development funds,’ is the Canadian broadcaster, along with Edmonton’s cfrn-tv.

The film is a coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy who, says Martin, ‘literally flies into adulthood at the controls of an airplane.’ The backdrop for the film is the 1942 construction of the Alaska highway, co-ordinated by the u.s. and Canadian governments.

Martin feels, based on the theme, the project is well-suited for airing south of the border, and he is currently in negotiation with a u.s. broadcaster. Martin is also negotiating for ‘a big star’ to play the adult lead.

‘We’re looking at a November shoot,’ says Martin. ‘We will shoot somewhere in Northern Canada, because we need snow and mountains.’

Martin, who says he was ‘seriously considering moving if the new Ontario tax credit didn’t go through,’ was planning for most of the film to be made in northern Alberta or b.c., but says now with the new tax credit some of the shooting and all the post-production will likely be done in Ontario.

AP doc shoot

At the end of this month, Associated Producers heads into principal photography on Hollywoodism, in New York, of course, where it all began. Broadcasters in the $1.3 million two-hour doc equation are Channel 4, a&e and cbc, with Malofilm adding a distribution advance to the kitty.

Based on the book An Empire of Our Own, the premise is that Jewish founding fathers of Hollywood invented the American dream – blonde bombshells and white picket fences – and how this assimilationist strategy backfired when they were later put on trial for anti-Americanism.

Simcha Jacobovici is directing, and Stuart Samuels (Visions of Light) is on board as a consultant. Delivery is slated for January ’97.

Life is hard and then you make a film

Norstar Entertainment has signed John L’Ecuyer (Curtis’ Charm) to direct its next feature, a dark urban drama entitled Men With Guns. Now in preproduction, principal photography will commence in June. Ilanna Frank (Cold Comfort) is producing, with Sandra Cunningham acting as line producer.

‘Men with Guns deals with characters living on the edge of society,’ says Frank. ‘Life is hard. the future is bleak. Though dark, the story is exhilarating, and we are confident John can tell the story with energy and style.’

Prescient piece

When Breakthrough Films & Television’s Peter Williamson picked up Menz to read the Ken Kostick piece (Kostick co-hosts the cooking show What’s For Dinner?), he was intrigued to see a second Breakthrough project (slated for release next spring) mentioned in another profile, in a sentence chronicling Graham Greene’s career: ‘Soon he was wading through scripts and his Midas touch led to many great Hollywood movies – Die Hard iii, Dudley the Dragon and Dances with Wolves.

As a screenplay for a Dudley movie is now being written – Breakthrough just received development money from Telefilm Canada – Williamson is hoping Menz knows something: ‘It’s nice to see Dudley is a hit movie.’

Meanwhile, in addition to Kostick’s What’s For Dinner? cookbook making bestseller noise, the show is ringing in sales: to HBO Middle East and tvnz at mip-tv. The Adventures of Dudley the Dragon (the series) also completed tv distribution and merchandising rights deals in France, Spain and Portugal, working with vip tv, and in Germany, with EM-Entertainment. Other deals are in the works for Japan, Australia, Italy, the u.k. and Israel.

What’s up DAWC?

The Directing, Acting and Writing for Camera Workshop celebrated its 15th anniversary with a gala screening of its new films and special guest and dawc alumnus Atom Egoyan.

dawc is a non-profit organization involved in training Canadian scriptwriters, directors and actors, often with stage experience, in the ways of film work. Over the years, the workshops, which are conducted at night so participants can have day jobs, have produced 100 short films.

Egoyan attended the workshop in 1984, a few months before he began work on his first feature film, Next of Kin. Egoyan accepted an award from dawc founder and actress Maruska Stankova, saying, ‘The workshop was a tremendous experience for me. The success of my first feature film, Next of Kin, was in no small part due to the techniques and methods of working with actors that I learned from Ms. Stankova.’

Awards of appreciation were also given out to longtime dawc sound specialist John Denniston, story editor Steve Lucas and directorial advisor Jane Thompson.

Stankova was warmly welcomed by the more than 200 in attendance for the screening, and received an award of appreciation from writer Medora Sale for ’15 years of being muse and mentor.’