‘If I could get the money, I’d love to make it a feature,’ says writer/director Sandy Greer, ‘it’s cinematic materialÉ’

The dulcet tones of Tantoo Cardinal gracing the v/o track, another of those among the circle of friends and admirers of the subject of Soop on Wheels, will no doubt add to the theatrical potential of the doc being developed as a one-hour tv project.

Toronto’s Two Wheel Productions is shopping for foreign broadcasters and distribution at tiff for its chronicleof Blackfoot political cartoonist Everett Soop, whose body of work spanned over 20 years. The southern Albertan is the only aboriginal artist included in the National Archives caricature collection.

Greer, who is coproducing with dop Joan Hutton, has Bravo! on board as first window, as well as commitments from Canadian broadcasters Vision tv, Knowledge Network and Access, and funding from Heritage Canada.

Greer thinks it will be an attractive property given its distinctiveness: ‘I’ve never seen a doc that focuses on aboriginal humor.’

There is an urgency to top up the budget (around $170,000) and roll camera, as funding secured from the cifvf comes with a time limit, and Soop, who has had Muscular Dystrophy since he was 17, is now in an advanced stage of the disease.

McNabb and Connolly is the domestic distributor.

*Reservoir Dogs meets Punch Line

Five comics want to open a club but lack the dough. Naturally, when the pitch is ‘Dog Day Afternoon meets Quick Change,’ plan a is to rob a bank, but when they show up for the stickup, somebody is already beating them to the vault. And then things get weird in Stand Up Guys.

Steel City Productions, as is the route for many a Canadian flick on the road to theatrical release, is trying to nail a Canadian b’caster (thereby triggering all manner of funding mechanisms that are the backbone of prod budgets). Things went well in a meet with wic yesterday, and a script has been requested, which writer/director/producer Michael Cameron is happy to supply. Cameron and producer/partner Kirk Johnson are looking for an ep, distrib and money for Stand Up Guys, and to that end have meetings skedded with Strand and Paragon.

The Steel duo successfully pitched Seven Year Itch last year at the fest, which is now on the slate of Toronto prodco Producers Network Associates.

*Moore’s next big one

Michael Moore says he gets pitched all the time but maintains that his own story about a prostitute that becomes a nun is the wildest pitch going. Moore is in attendance at tiff this year with his documentary The Big One that chronicles the author’s 1996 media tour to promote his book Downsize This.

Moore has been on a tour of sorts at this year’s festival, making appearances at all the right parties and participating in the Playback-sponsored symposium on documentary making.

One American distributor interested in The Big One told Playback his company has withdrawn from bidding for the film as Moore was in the final stages of negotiating a u.s. distribution deal, most likely with Columbia TriStar.

Moore’s fondness for tiff and all things Canadian arises from his formative years in Michigan where he was able to receive the cbc radio and television signals that floated across the river to his home in Flint. The 1989 Toronto festival was instrumental in launching his first documentary Roger and Me, as it won the People’s Choice Award and went on to become the highest-grossing documentary of all time.

Moore continued his examination of Canada with his feature debut Canadian Bacon. A wry satire of American political maneuvering that saw the Great White North become a target for a public relations-inspired military invasion, Canadian Bacon received more notice here than in Moore’s homeland.

Moore is busy working on his new television show Michael Moore’s World that the 43-year-old director says ‘is exactly like TV Nation except it will have a broader worldwide focus.’ The show is a coproduction between Moore’s company Dog Eat Dog and David Mortimer of the bbc, and is distributed by Mayfair Entertainment.

Not satisfied to just concentrate on documentaries, Moore is working on a feature script as a followup to Canadian Bacon. He spent the summer writing the fiction feature and Columbia TriStar, which has a first-look deal with Moore, may produce.

Apparently the film’s based on recent events in Russia, so he’s going to be treading that fine line between fact and fiction that was discussed at the symposium. Moore mentioned he’s had some philosophical problems writing the script because some or most of the real-life characters are still alive. Hopefully it’s not that hooker/nun story.

*NFB Alum Pitch

Award-winning director/writer Tim Southam, who has the nfb/ Michael Allder produced Drowning In Dreams screening at this year’s festival, is continuing to explore themes of obsession and memory with his next script titled Labrador Tea.

Set in a clearcut, Southam says the new script is reminiscent of his 1994 Grammy-nominated, Rhombus Media-produced drama/performance film Satie and Suzanne.

‘Labrador Tea explores the nexus between love and opportunism, and my interest in salespeople,’ says Southam, who is looking for financing and development money for the feature.

Meanwhile, veteran producer Greg Klymkiw, who has Bruno Pacheco’s City of Dark (nfb/ October Films) here this year, is looking for finishing money for his feature-length documentary Vinyl, coproduced with Alan Zweig.

Exploring people’s fascination and obsessions with recordings on the quickly disappearing, yet superior-sounding plastic, the film includes appearances from director Guy Maddin, who owns one of the largest 78 collections in Canada, and columnist Geoff Pevere, who reenacts the time he threw out 2,000 records when he was moving.

Vinyl was shot over the last two years on a variety of formats and Klymkiw says the final film promises to be a ‘strange epic.’