Montreal: Filming wrapped Aug. 27 after 25 days on Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story, a two-hour tv movie dramatization of the 16-year-old’s heroic marathon swim of Lake Ontario in 1954. The $4-million mow will be broadcast on cbc and is the fourth coproduction between Toronto producer Bernard Zukerman and Cinar Corp.’s Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg, the exec producers.

‘I can’t emphasize enough how fantastic this crew is,’ says Zukerman. ‘Anywhere else, anywhere, this is easily a 35- or 40-day shoot and that’s pushing it. It is so complex shooting on water.’

The shoot ‘was just a monster because of the complexity,’ says the producer. And because of the many night sequences, the crew had to build a 165,000-gallon tank at the new Mel’s Cite du Cinema/Technoparc. Other watery locales included Lac St-Louis, for the wide shots, and the Olympic Basin.

Shot on Super 16mm, the film is based on an original screenplay by Canadian Film Centre graduate Karen Walton (Straight Up) and directed by Manon Briand (2 Secondes, Cosmos). Caroline Dhavernas (Marilyn, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne) plays Bell. Ron White is coach Gus Ryder and Claudia Besso is American swimmer Florence Chadwick. The legendary Bell is a consultant on the project.

Zukerman says he’s very impressed with his young director.

‘I’m Manon’s biggest fan,’ he says. ‘I think she’s just sensational and has an enormous future. I loved 2 Secondes. That’s why I hired her.’

Pierre Letarte (Revenge of the Land, Dieppe) is the dop, Richard Comeau is the editor, Jean-Baptiste Tard is the designer and Irene Litinsky (The Sleep Room, Audrey Hepburn) is the line producer.

Zukerman holds the rights to a collection of George Walker (Suburban Motel) plays, in development in the form of a Robert Altmanesque epic miniseries. A homocide suspense mow collection a la Prime Suspect is also in development with Cinar and cbc.

Cinar and Zukerman also teamed on Million Dollar Babies, The Sleep Room and John N. Smith’s Revenge of the Land, new to cbc in the coming season.

Funding on Heart comes from Telefilm Canada and the ctf Licence Fee Program. Cinar will introduce Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story at mipcom, Oct. 4-8.

*Writing duo delivers on Beautiful Losers

Jacob Potashnik and Tony Babinski of production house mtl/art have just delivered the ‘final’ draft of Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, a feature film in development with producers Denise Robert of Montreal’s Cinemaginaire International and Greg Gold of l.a.’s Milk & Honey Films.

The story begins with Gold and Cohen screening Leonard, Light My Cigarette, a six-minute short made by Potashnik and Babinski about Cohen, who obviously liked it because he eventually asked the writers if they wanted to develop Beautiful Losers after the mgm option expired.

‘It’s a very difficult book to adapt,’ says Potashnik. ‘We’ve made it more narrative. We actually had to sit down over two three-week periods and read the book to one another. I remember finally saying, ‘Oh, it’s about a betrayal.’ ‘

Babinski, who’s also a music composer, calls it a classic coming-of-age story about two very close friends who ultimately go separate ways. The boys’ separation is sparked by the presence of a beautiful Mohawk woman.

‘The body of the book ultimately deals with the consequences of decisions, calling to mind the hard consequences that result from bad decisions,’ explains Babinski.

‘She [producer Robert] seems interested in me as a first-time director,’ says Potashnik, ‘but it’s up to her to decide what the best direction for the film is.’

Apparently, Cohen’s sole request or concern is that Mohawk representatives eventually see a treatment.

Potashnik’s big breakthrough came as cowriter with Denys Arcand on Arcand’s new movie 15 Moments, produced by Robert and Robert Lantos of Toronto’s Serendipity Point Films and distributed by Alliance Atlantis Releasing.

Potashnik first met Arcand at Jacques Langlois’ commercial house Jet Films. Arcand read a couple of the writer’s short stories, they met over coffee, and sometime later, in August ’96, the director invited Potashnik to collaborate on what ultimately became 15 Moments.

‘We worked for a year and a half,’ says Potashnik. ‘We did many drafts and we worked with index cards, and then we’d rift. A very classic [approach] and one of the most enjoyable and intellectually satisfying experiences of my life. Denys is a brilliant filmmaker and I consider it a real privilege.’

Set in the glitzy world of international fashion, Potashnik says 15 Moments is also about the ‘mediatization’ of lives.

Another mtl/art project in development is The Love Rack, a modern, steamy, film noir feature about ‘a man who uses a woman to get at another man.’ The story is set in Canada and Cuba and cowritten by Potashnik, who hopes to direct, and Babinski, who wants to produce or coproduce on a budget of about $4 million. ‘Basically, we’ll complete the screenplay and there’ll be an auction between various producers,’ says Potashnik.

Another feature project is The Weatherman, a political thriller set in 1967 Montreal. It’s in development with Potashnik’s Headstrong Films and ace video director Steven Goldmann’s The Collective, llc of Nashville.

Potashnik, Babinski and Goldmann wrote the half-hour narrative 50 Odd $, which was directed by Goldmann and produced by Susan Bowman for The Collective.

Columbia film school grad Potashnik, 43, says there’s a general lack of support for screenwriting in Canada.

For example, he says, ‘if you are a screenwriter over the age of 35 in Quebec you are too old to apply for funding at sodec, and if you haven’t got a credit on the screen you cannot get access to funding available to professional screenwriters. You could have published a book, have mounted three [stage] plays, have done a million short films up to 59 minutes, but you can’t get any money because your feature film has not screened for one night in some theatre in Montreal. This is a very strange flaw.’

Potashnik says there just hasn’t been much evidence of smarts in the screenwriting business in Canada, raising the perennial mystery of why more good Canadian novels aren’t being adapted.

Babinski, 35, and Potashnik’s filmography includes Dancing About Architecture, a film about Moshe Safdie and Habitat ’67 coproduced with Jet Films and Bravo!fact, and Artie’s Film, an homage to Art Speigelman, produced in association with Else! Films of Hamburg, Germany.

Both writers say Bravo! has made an important contribution to their careers. ‘If it wasn’t for Bravo! we probably wouldn’t have made Leonard, Light My Cigarette. Leonard would not have seen [the short] and we would not have started talking about Beautiful Losers,’ says Potashnik.

*Space Travesty bankrolled

In 2001: A Space Travesty (working title), currently shooting in Montreal, Leslie Nielsen plays a driven, havoc-inducing character with the strange assignment of going to the moon to find the u.s. president, who may or may not have been cloned by conquering, silicon-needy aliens.

Allan Goldstein, whose most recent feature credit is the Transfilm comedy The Home Team, is directing the us$25 million Canada/Germany coproduction. Nielsen’s recent movie credits include Wrongfully Accused, Mr. Magoo and Spy Hard. French actress Ophelie Winter and Italian star Ezio Greggio are also featured.

Coproducer Danny Rossner of Montreal’s Cinevent says major foreign territories have been sold but u.s. rights will go later. Canadian rights are also available. ‘Certain people in the u.s. will see a piece of it soon. We’ve got good footage so we’re not concerned. We’ll be able to make a u.s. sale,’ he says.

Space Travesty is a Jeffrey Konvitz Group presentation of a Cinevent coproduction with Germany’s Helton Media. The producers are Rossner and Werner Koenig. Craft credits on the shoot include dop Sylvain Brault, designer Csaba Kertesz, costume designer Nicole Pelletier, pm Luc Campeau and picture editor Gaetan Huot.

Imperial Entertainment Group of Beverly Hills is bankrolling the entire shoot. Independent Film Financing, Imperial’s Toronto affiliate, arranged the Canadian tax-credit certification. ‘The tax-credit incentives are allowing Canadians to produce higher budget, commercially viable content productions, which previous to [the incentives’] implementation were difficult to finance,’ says iff president Laura Polley.

The 50-day shoots wraps Sept. 10.