Hayseed, the first feature from Toronto novelist/scriptwriter Laura Macdonald and variety producer Martha Keh’e is currently in post, thanks to some timely intervention from Salter Street Films.

With a script penned by This Hour Has 22 Minutes writer Paul Bellini, Steve McKay and Josh Levy, the producers scraped together the $200,000 budget with private financing and a prebuy from Citytv. Some top-notch comic actors including Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall), Scott Thompson (Kids, The Larry Sanders Show), Bruce La Bruce, Daniel McIvor and Jamie Shannon (YTV’s The Grogs) were signed, as were codirectors Levy and Andrew Hayes.

But the producers ran out of cash during the last week of filming. They turned to Salter Street which, in return for gap financing, is taking world distribution rights. The Salter Street investment d’esn’t include any equity in the project.

Macdonald is currently shopping Hayseed among distributors for a theatrical release before the film airs on City.

Macdonald and Keh’e have another comedy in the works, Cigarette?, and the two are currently penning the third draft with development funding from City.

The murder-mystery/gal-pal feature is based on two New Wave wannabees on the club scene vying to get in on the action. But the duo winds up involved in a much bigger mystery when the club’s cigarette girl g’es missing.

Keh’e has been pondering weighty subjects like what it would be like to have male sex organs and favorite fetishes, having just produced 26 eps of The Dish Show, a raunchy women’s locker-room talk show for the September launch of The Comedy Network hosted by radio/TV personality Maureen Holloway and comedian/ Twisted Sheets star Brigitte Gall.

– A kiss is not just a kiss

kissing is also up for some explorationŠ

After sleepless nights agonizing over the possible meanings of those brief first-date goodnight kisses, indie director/producer (and single on the dating scene) Jeanette Loakman decided to do her homework, and with a scholarship from the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, headed to the Summer Institute of Film and Television’s Documentary 101 workshop. A proposal for Slippery Blisses – What’s In A Kiss is the result.

‘Think Good Sex Guide meets dating hell,’ she says of the $200,000 doc, which will weave comedic sketches, stock footage, interviews with sexologists and ethologists, and pop culture elements to examine the historic meanings of kissing in various cultures and explore its continuing emotional and social implications on day-to-day life.

Loakman is looking for development money to get the project in gear. She says Laszlo Barna at Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions is interested in exec producing and plans to take the proposal to Discovery Channel prez Trina McQueen in August. Loakman is also hoping to sell the project to a&e in the u.s. and Channel 4 and the bbc in the u.k.

Loakman, who exec produced The Last Seven Days of Annie Ong, and directed/produced segments for wtn’s Landed: Welcome to Canada series, has also just picked up a broadcast licence from Vision tv for Mothers of Reinvention: Women Reshaping the New South Africa, a doc she is now posting.

Another project on the development slate is On The Menu, a half-hour series of ‘jaunty adventures in eating out.’ Loakman is looking at 13 episodes at $120,000 per, which will take a host into ethnic restaurants, discovering the history of ethnic culture through food.

– Laughter continues to roll at Sphinx Productions

one of those many ctcpf overcommitment letters keeping the post office busy these days landed at the Toronto doorsteps of Sphinx Productions’ Ron Mann, dousing some of the laughter amidst preproduction of his comic docudrama Danger Lurks!

The film takes audiences through the ‘typical day’ in the life of an accident-prone family via recreations and footage from industrial safety movies.

‘You know, the kitchen blows up in the morning, the car is banged up in three accidents on the way to work,’ says Mann, managing a chuckle despite the fact the fall production date is now on hold.

Mann has a world distribution deal from Alliance and a presale from Citytv to help finance the $700,000 feature and was counting on the ctcpf money to green light the project.

Rick Preinger, a collector of industrial/educational films, will make his feature directorial debut on Danger Lurks! and New York band Beck is providing the music.

A fanatical researcher, Mann has finally emerged from a pile of over 300 anti-marijuana movies and – after a year of production – is now in post on Ron Mann’s Grass, a $1.5 million, 90-minute feature doc he wrote, directed and produced using a compilation of drug movies as the medium to take a hilarious romp through the history of anti-marijuana propaganda.

Mann is hoping post won’t take as long as production and he can submit the film in time for the next Sundance Festival and the Berlin Film Festival.

cfp is distributing in North America and Films Transit has the rest of the world. City has prebought for broadcast in the ’98/99 season.

Mann is also talking to Hairspray and Serial Mom director John Waters about developing a $1 million feature called John Waters Live From Boise, which will revolve around Waters’ stand-up comedy routine.

With 17 years’ production experience, Mann is also looking to help emerging filmmakers by stepping up Sphinx’s role as an executive producer.

Mann is currently working with first-time director Jim Shedden and producer Alexa-Francis Shaw on Brakhage, a feature doc profiling experimental filmmaker/godfather of rock video Stan Brakhage. A two-week shoot just wrapped in Boulder, Colorado, with dop Gerald Packer. The film has already presold to Bravo! and Mann is also aiming for a theatrical release. Films Transit is distributing.

– Garden of earthly delight

moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film kicked off its sixth season July 17 with a fundraising party on the terrace of Toronto’s historic Spadina House mansion, where around 55 guests, including Viacom’s Joanne Fraser, former ballerinas Vanessa Harwood and Veronica Tennant and Bravo!fact’s Judy Stone nibbled on shrimp and sushi.

Tennant, host of the evening, has been working on the other side of the camera of late as a performing arts film producer. She is in preproduction on a one-hour special performance tribute to Karen Kain featuring new dance creative.

The shoot is set for November and the program will air in early ’98 in a primetime cbc window. Tennant has also produced Margie Gillis’ Wild Hearts in Strange Times and Salute to Dancers For Life for the cbc.

Dubbed ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights,’ the fundraiser netted around $6,000 for this year’s Moving Pictures Festival, to be staged in partnership with Cinematheque Ontario and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Oct. 9-12. The event provides a forum for performing arts films through curated screenings of Canadian and international films and videos and workshop symposiums. The call for entries is closed and the program for the upcoming festival has not yet been set.

Moving Images will also feature a screening of films from the u.k.’s DV8 Physical Theatre and a $10,000 Cinedance Award for best new Canadian dance film and the Moving Pictures Award for best choreography.

In November, the festival tour stops in Peterborough, Ont., Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

– Upcoming

disney has opened a Toronto production office for Angels and Armadillos, slated to shoot Sept. 8 through mid-November. The feature marks the directorial debut of Grumpy Old Men screenwriter Mark Steven Johnson. No cast and crew have been signed yet.

Dufferin Gate Productions has a hefty August production sked. Goat Christmas for Showtime is shooting Aug. 11 to Sept. 6 and casting and location scouting are currently underway. Producer Patrick Whitley and director Stuart Margolin (Angel from Rockford Files) are looking for rural settings outside Toronto. Post may stay in town.

Other upcoming Dufferin Gate shoots include The J’e Torre Story, Aug. 5-29 in Toronto, with Sturla Gunnarsson directing the script by Philip Rosenberg. Paul Sorvino has the starring role and Norman Twain is producing. Free of Eden for Showtime is next on the list, production runs Aug. 11 to early September, with Leon Ichaso, director of the Wesley Snipes vehicle Sugar Hill, helming and Sidney Poitier and daughter Sydney signed as leads. My Own Country will shoot Aug. 18 to Sept. 17, with Mira Nair directing and Barbara Title producing. Key cast includes Marisa Tomei and Nareen Andrews.

– Correction

my apologies to Bryan Gliserman at Cineplex Odeon. In the last column I stated that Paradark Films’ Edmond Chan showed him an early cut of the feature Garage, however it was Marguerite Pigott at Cineplex who saw the tape. But all worked out well. Chan called to apologize to Gliserman, who asked to see a copy.