The British Columbia Film Commission is twenty years old this year. Long before it was created, British Columbia, with its majestic scenery, was a magnet for American film producers such as Louis B. Mayer, who shot scenes for his 1936 musical, Rose Marie, in Vancouver.

In the late 1960’s Robert Altman brought his movies, A Cold Day in the Park and McCabe & Mrs. Miller to Vancouver; Mike Nichols came to shoot scenes for his 1971 film, Carnal Knowledge. In those days, producers brought up much of their own crew, but by the 1960’s, several locals had been trained in the ways of film, and began to miss the work when it seemed to be disappearing by the mid-1970’s.

By 1975, the province had gone five years without a Hollywood picture being shot here. There had been a few days of shooting locally, ten days here, twenty days there, and a few commercials, but not an entire film. The small group of trained film workers were either out of work or travelling out-of-province to find jobs in the industry. In those days, various people – tourism reps and park commissioners functioned as film commissioners – but there had never been a Film Commission in BC.

At the time there were only three Film Commissions in North America. One of the three was in Alberta, which was attracting films, and Vancouverites (both cast and crew) had begun travelling there to find work. Finally, in 1977, a film commission was set up in Vancouver, but had a rather brief and embarrassing start. The office was opened and its first director left, unhappily, after six months; Vancouver film production manager Bob Gray, a former CBC producer, offered to helm for six months until a permanent director could be found.

In June of 1978, late Hollywood producer George Schaefer brought his film, Orchard Children, to film in BC. Justis Greene, a Vancouver accountant who had been acting as business agent for the union IATSE local 891, got a job on the movie.

On the last day of shooting Orchard Children, the unit was on location at a Georgia Street hotel in Vancouver; Greene recalls one day that then Deputy Premier and Minister of Tourism, Grace McCarthy pulled up to the hotel. The two went inside to the restaurant while the cast and crew were shooting to talk about Greene taking over the Commission as director.

Sitting down at a table, McCarthy said, ‘Look, Justis, I don’t know you from Adam, and you don’t know me from Adam, but here’s the deal: The first time it didn’t work, and I hold you guys to blame. If you have a plan, I’d like to hear about it, because if we do this, we’re going to try it for six months and we’ll have to see results. By that I mean jobs.’

On July 1st 1978, Greene set up shop in a government office at 12th and Cambie (with a half-time assistant in Victoria) and the Film Commission as we know it today was born.

‘We were only competing with three other film commissions in those days,’ says Greene, ‘and in the first six weeks or so we managed to bring a picture here – John Frankenheimer’s The Prophecy. John was at his peak then, and they needed a pulp mill location. No pulp mills in the US wanted them, so we put forward a mill and got them here. After five years of no film business at all, BC went from no business to production spending of $17.5 million.’

In early 1979, the half-time assistant moved to Vancouver and the two set up office in the new government buildings at 800 Hornby.

1979 was a good year, too. Production spending soared from $17.5 million to $37.5.

Next came the year of Rambo. Justis Greene was in Los Angeles one day, visiting movie producer Buzz Feitshans in Andy Vajna’s office in Beverly Hills. ‘Why do you have all these pictures of BC on your walls?’ queried Greene. ‘No, that’s Mexico,’ replied Feitshans. ‘Looks like BC to me,’ says Greene.

Vajna: ‘You’re kidding.’ Greene: ‘I’m not kidding.’ Then Feitshans went on to explain to Greene how much his star, Sylvester Stallone, hated Mexico and didn’t want to shoot in Mexico. Greene explained that every one of the locations in the photos was available in BC. ‘And I was sorta right,’ laughs Greene today. Next thing they knew, First Blood director Ted Kotcheff was on a plane to Vancouver, and the rest is history. The film shot in Golden Ears Park, Hope, Pitt Lake and Pitt Meadows and employed scores of British Columbians.

The following year production spending zoomed from $37.5 million to $55 million; things were heating up and Greene began looking for help in the office. The first person to come to mind was Dianne Neufeld, a former schoolteacher and script assistant from BCTV who’d recently begun working in the film industry on commercials and as assistant director on films in Alberta. In 1980, Neufeld came in on a six-month contract to handle location services. And they continued their work, taking Greene’s initial contacts and building on them; when filmmakers left town with a positive impression, Greene and his merry band would follow up, keeping in touch with producers, production designers, and directors. ‘They became our hit list,’ he laughs. ‘In those days if you were relatively successful, chances are you had a studio deal. The studio would house you, so we actually got on the lots that way. And we could figure out who was prepping what by looking in the trades. You could knock on doors. We used the success we had and built on it, and we did it just like we were selling milk or ice cream. We didn’t use tourism slogans – saying our trees were greener or our rivers were wider. And once they got here, Grace McCarthy was unbelievably supportive. We initially had no co-operation within the government at all. The provincial government agencies thought we were a huge pain in the ass. But Grace just cut through at the highest level, at the cabinet level. If we had a bureaucrat we couldn’t get past, I’d call her and she’d say, `What does it mean?’ and I’d say `It means $250,000 directly into jobs going into Stewart, BC.’ And she’d say `Fine.’ Then I’d have the deputy minister of highways on the phone saying `Okay, now what do we do?”

‘She was absolutely amazing; there was literally nothing that we couldn’t approach her on and nothing that she wouldn’t follow through on. It was fabulous, and she remained supportive of the industry. We were just lucky, and I have to say that’s probably been one of the best things that’s ever happened to the industry – we’ve been lucky to have people who saw what it was.’

When Justis Greene (who has since worked as unit production manager and co-producer on the films Children of a Lesser God, Agnes of God and Mr. Magoo) left to get married, and to work on director Fred Schepisi’s Iceman, shooting in Stewart, BC, Neufeld took over, volunteering to answer and respond to Greene’s burgeoning pile of phone messages. But after six months, Neufeld wanted out. When the job of film commissioner was posted she was strongly encouraged to apply – reluctantly, she did, and got the job.

By Christmas that year, after working with only volunteers, and typing and answering phones, Neufeld says, ‘I sent a phony suicide note to Victoria – and suddenly I got a secretary.’ Neufeld travelled to Hollywood to knock on doors many times in the early days; some of her experiences sound not unsimilar to scenes from a movie – the Turkish inquisition scenes in Midnight Express come to mind.

‘I can remember being asked into rooms and they’d put you in a chair in the middle of the room and there would be several people, some of them not in front of you and they’d ask about Teamsters and this and that, and whatever rumors they’d heard, and can we get free and this and that. After one of those sessions in LA, I remember walking out of the building to my rented car and looking down at my blouse – it was a darkish silk – and I was totally soaked all the way from my arms to my waist.

‘I’d go over to Cannell and do my routine and they’d say `Well you seem like a nice lady, but we like to see the stuff blow up right outside the window, so we won’t be going to Canada,’ so you’d go away, and you’d just keep wearing them down.’

Neufeld tells another funny story about ‘taking a meeting’ in LA. ‘I’m chatting away with a producer who’d never been to BC and I’m sitting there saying `Blah, blah, blah, Charlton Heston, BC, yakety yak’; I didn’t realize he had a partnership with Heston’s son, Fraser. So it kind of shocked me when he said `Well, anybody can come in here and say wonderful things about where they come from and throw in a few stars’ names, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’ Then he says, `Forgive me,’ and he picks up the phone and he calls Charlton Heston, who was his friend’s dad, but I didn’t know that. `I’ve got this woman in my office, her name’s Dianne, she’s from BC.’ And the rest of the conversation is him going `Oh. Oh, really? Oh, that’s good, oh great!’ (Heston shot Mother Lode in BC in 1980.) At the other end, I guess Mr. Heston is just going on and on. When the producer hung up the phone he was a different guy.’

Neufeld says that now that there are 260 Film Commissions in North America, their affiliation has helped increase the standards of the profession and made it easier to help one another qualify people as well. ‘When somebody shows up on the Film Commission’s doorstep,’ says Neufeld, ‘and says, `I’m Mr. Screwball Producer, and I come from Colorado,’ I can call up Colorado and say, `I just had Mr. Screwball Producer in my office here’ and they can say, `Yes, tell him thanks for sharing.”

When Dianne Neufeld left the Film Commission in 1995 to pursue other interests, Peter Mitchell was brought in as her replacement. Mitchell had been business agent for IATSE local 669 and was running his own company, Compass Research Group, which handled business affairs for American producers dealing with the Film Commission and the unions. As director of the Film Commission in 1998, he has his work cut out for him.

‘It seems to me,’ says Mitchell, ‘that over the last few years we’ve gone from a cottage industry to a mainstream industry, with all the benefits and drawbacks of a real industry. It has a heavy duty infrastructure and has phenomenal prospects. I think the overriding thing now is that the change in the exchange rate has been so dramatic over the past few months. I see that as a systemic change; it’s going to take a long time to recover. At 72 cents we were the low cost here in North America. So you put together a new exchange rate, plus the tax incentives and the lid is literally going to blow off this industry. So where does that put the Film Commission, but stretched to the max like we always are. One of the roles we have is trying to facilitate filming in parks and cities and we’re going to have to hustle to keep up with that.’

The Film Commission now has ten full-time employees and six to ten contracted location scouts on a regular basis. Another frustration is that these scouts consistently find full-time jobs in the industry; trying to keep up is a real juggling act.

‘Ideally,’ says Mitchell, ‘given the projections we have for the industry, the business is going to double in the next seven years and I think that’s conservative. We’re going to need a commensurate number of people to keep up with the scouting activities. They’re directly correlated to the amount of business that’s here, and the amount of work we have to do to attract it.’

In terms of the industry, Mitchell sees three major challenges for the future: qualified people, sound stages and congestion. At the present time there are 44 stages (including many converted warehouses) in BC.

In 1997 twenty TV series/mini-series were shot in the province. If British Columbia’s future seems to be in episodic television, Justis Greene credits producer Patrick Hasburgh, who brought 21 Jump Street to Vancouver in 1987. ‘That was the beginning,’ says Greene, ‘I give him absolute credit for it, that was the beginning of television recognizing that you could actually shoot an episodic series here. (Hasburgh is back in Vancouver this year, shooting The Net, his new series for Columbia/TriStar.) It was Patrick standing up, not Stephen J. Cannell, saying this is what should happen. They made it happen for their own reason, but what it did was put us on the map. So consequently, the stages got filled and now they’re really filled – so much so that I can’t find a place to put my movie!’

Tom Crowe, Manager of Community Affairs at the Film Commission since 1995, began as a contractor with the Commission, as Assistant Manager Production Location Services in 1992. The community services area was one that they felt needed attention with the growth of the industry. ‘There was going to be a decline in the amount of hospitality that BC had to offer,’ says Crowe.

Like real estate, he says, it became an over-heated market very quickly and with the good exchange rate and fantastic infrastructure it was felt that some of the benefits of coming here were being offset by some of the community concerns, at every level, from homeowners, to businesses to administrators of municipalities, BC Parks and BC Ferries. ‘It was fun at first,’ laughs Crowe, ‘but now it just doesn’t want to go away.’

The community liaison was Neufeld’s idea, originally, but Mitchell got it going by putting together a group of four major unions and eight key businesses that rely on the film industry – William F. White, Heenan Blaikie, Ellis Foster, Rainmaker, The Bridge Studios, Lions Gate Studios, Cannell Production Services, Televector Ent., the unions – IATSE 891, 669, and Teamsters 155 – and the Directors Guild of Canada. They sit monthly to oversee Crowe’s position and contribute half his salary – the other half comes from The Ministry of Tourism, Small Business and Culture. And it works.

Says Crowe, ‘My success has been in creating process. From the filmmakers’ point of view, they feel that there’s somebody out there setting guidelines and parameters they can work within and successfully shoot their film. From the community point of view, whether a homemaker, a business or an administrator, they feel that there’s now at least a process for them to protect themselves, so they have a comfort level with filming coming to their community.’

One of the major issues that arises in successful filmmaking cities is what in the past has been called ‘location burning,’ but more recently areas suffering from over-use are called ‘sensitive’. Crowe’s guidelines include early notification of neighborhoods so that residents or businesses can air their concerns prior to filming. And if remuneration is to be negotiated, it is done before the fact. Parking can also be a huge concern – in a city as small as Vancouver, it must be managed in a manner deemed fair by all concerned. Ad hoc committees of administrators from several municipalities and BC Parks now meet every two months to discuss film concerns.

Each year there are 1250 applications from filmmakers to the City of Vancouver and 40 ongoing files at any one time. ‘If Vancouver gets saturated, market costs may drive them out and hopefully, they’ll begin looking at Kamloops, Victoria, Surrey or Mission before thinking about Pittsburgh or Philadelphia,’ says Crowe.

Brent Karl Clackson, now a producer on the MGM series, The Outer Limits, worked at the film commission from 1984 to 1986. He says, ‘The film industry is a three-quarters of a billion dollar industry that employs lots of people, it’s non-polluting, we don’t take any natural resources out of the country, people have learned trades and skills and artistic endeavors that they never dreamed they’d learn in this country.

‘The Film Commission’s role has changed; when I was there it was there to try to lure Hollywood here. Now that the industry is built there’s as much energy needed to maintain it. Now we have so many films here that we suffer from a million problems every day. When we phone the Film Commission now, we’re usually looking for them to deal with all kinds of different issues that relate to safety problems, government problems, bureaucracy problems, people problems, union problems, and crewing problems. They spend a lot of time on damage control. I have to say that Glen Clark has been great for the movie industry; he’s totally knowledgeable of the film business, he’s totally in sync with with it – he’s the first premier that really knows the business – he’s gone to LA and met with all the people, everybody here has either met with him or his deputies many times, the government has really gone out of its way to find out who how this industry works and who are the players.’

So many producers, both local and foreign have nothing but praise for the Film Commission. Colleen Nystedt, of Vancouver’s New City Productions, began her dealings with the BC Film Commission in 1984 when she began location scouting for the Film Commission on Vancouver Island. ‘I had a fabulous working experience with Dianne Neufeld, then Brent Clackson and eventually Mark DesRochers and Pete Mitchell,’ she says. ‘Over the years I found the Film Commission to have performed exemplary service above and beyond the call, not just in bringing the work into the province but also in helping the productions already established here in solving almost insurmountable problems. They really have acted as a catalyst for the industry here because they were the ones who could go down to LA and put on events like the Friends of BC receptions, which allowed a focus for those of us from up here to go down there and meet people. As we’ve grown as an industry we’ve been able to do that more and more on our own. But it was really the Film Commission that acted as a focus and a catalyst for the industry and those among us that have moved forward with it.’

Dennis Brown, Vice-President, ABC Pictures, says ‘The first project I did in Vancouver was before it was in the `in’ thing to do, well over 20 years ago, I believe, and I’ve worked there quite a bit over the years. I’ve had some terrific experiences, I think it’s a wonderful city and I’ve made some very close friends up there. The Film Commission, starting back with Dianne Neufeld when I began working there, was most helpful, and really laid some great groundwork that Pete has been able to continue with.’

Harold Tichenor, President of Crescent Entertainment: ‘The Film Commission was very helpful when we were doing the Tailhook Incident for ABC- we had done all our work with Canadian Forces and everything was fine; we were going to be able to shoot at Comox and then at the last minute, once we started shooting, suddenly we got the word we weren’t going to able to shoot at Comox, because of Canadian Forces. Certain generals in the Air Force didn’t particularly want to co-operate with what they felt was an attack on the American Forces. The Film Commission was very helpful solving that problem.

‘As international competition grows and as globalization continues, you can never stop the process of marketing an industry in a town like this, as long as we continue to be as dependent as we are on foreign dollars. Obviously the province has seen the need to build indigenous production here with the tax credits, and that’s been great, but because it has its own momentum, there might be a temptation to wind the office down, and I think that would be a huge mistake. There’s always a need for that kind of focus.’

Bob Gray, producer and production manager, now retired, says, ‘We’re in a position right now where there is plenty of work and lots of productions are coming, we must remember a lot of that is due to the favorable dollar for Americans and it’s imperative that the Film Commission remains there to assist each producer who enters BC to make the job as easy as it can be made. Otherwise, the amount of red tape is really detrimental and the producer turns around and heads in the other direction.’

‘When there’s a problem, when a fire bursts into flame,’ says Mitch Ackerman, Executive VP Television Production, Walt Disney Touchstone, ‘the first place the production company would go with a civic/government type problem is the Film Commission, because they are part of government, so they have the ear of politicians and the premier of the province. Those are the things that are really important and are much more difficult, particularly for somebody from out of the country, if a situation arises, to be able to handle with any kind of expediency. Time is money in our business; you don’t have time to fool around.’

‘I always found the Film Commission to be extremely helpful and responsive to filmmakers’ needs to allow an efficient move-in-and-out of a location,’ says Jerry Ketcham, VP of Physical Production for Walt Disney Pictures. ‘Especially for people coming in from the States, who obviously need a lot of help because we bring in very few people and rely on local support.’

Production spending in the province of British Columbia has grown from $17.5 million in the late 1970’s to over $630 million in 1997, creating a net economic impact of $1.76 billion. 167 film and television productions were shot in BC in 1997. These included 24 feature films, 53 movies-of-the-week/pilots, 20 TV series/mini-series, 9 animation projects, and 61 documentaries/broadcast singles. Approximately 25,000 British Columbians are employed full-time and part-time in the Film and Television Industry.