Cher is a doyenne of showbiz, so let’s modify her cover-song advice on reading your man’s intentions and apply it to the problem of how filmmakers at the Toronto fest recently located a little development cash. It’s in the pitch, that’s where it is, it’s in the pitch.

Six groups of pitchers descended on the Rogers Industry Centre Sept. 12 for the Telefilm Canada Pitch This! competition. Each spent six minutes describing the films they want to make, hoping for the $6,000 cash prize, while the audience and a jury (the International Advisory Committee) looked on.

Producer Mary Sexton and director/writer Rosemary House talked about the origin of the sad nickname ‘Atlantic Blue’ for the ‘unsinkable’ oil rig Ocean Ranger, which did sink off the coast of Newfoundland, drowning all 84 hands. The nickname, also the title of their film, comes from a song written about the tragedy.

Budgeted at $3.9 million, the production is to be a drama in three parts: the workers and their lives at home and at sea, the disaster itself and the aftermath and inquiry. The duo say cbc is helping fund the development, but they need help with the rest of the budget. Nigel Markham is signed on as dop.

The Happy Couple is Chris Philpott’s (The Eternal Husband) project, presented via a little skit performed by an ensemble pitching cast. In the story, two salesmen meet on a road trip and hatch a bet as to whether one can seduce the other’s wife. As Philpott notes, it’s An Indecent Proposal made In the Company of Men…

Sheila Jordan, an actor/writer, needs a producer for her feature, Honey and the Rock, a tale of last chances. In this yarn, Freddie and Mary meet as young nurses in the war. Mary’s husband is missing in action, and the women fall in love. Eventually, the husband turns up and he takes Mary home to Canada. Fifty years later, Freddie and Mary meet again. Again the universal theme – does Mary follow her heart or preserve her marriage? Norma Bailey is attached to direct.

Writer/director Allan Tong and lead actor Byron Mann presented The Red Album, a $2.5-million film noir-type crime drama about an Oriental patriarch, his debts and how his sons struggle to pay them off.

Tong, who would make this his debut feature, says the script will have appeal beyond the Asian market and offer strong male role models. Open to coproduction or cofinancing, the team needs more development funding, and distribution.

Whispering Rain, from director Mark de Valk, is a $5.3-million feature set in 1933 Toronto, budgeted high to cover expensive actors and period costumes. Action, murder and betrayal are key to this ‘murder mystery’ whose script has won a prize from the u.s tv academy in l.a. De Valk is looking for a coproducer, exec producer and a distrib.

And finally, the one the jury liked best. Two Blondes Productions’ Anne Masson, producer (Deepa Mehta’s Earth), and Bonnie Anderson, writer, are fashioning The Waitress. The preliminary budget for this comic tale of waitress Amanda and her day from hell is $3 million, but that will depend on the stars and director they get.

They won the $6,000, but much more is obviously required. They’re open to interprovincial coproduction, international coprod or an American partner. *