Montreal: It’s celebrity watch time all the time these days. A local publicist: ‘Me and my girlfriends are going to start hanging around hotel lobbies waiting for Brad and Matt. Brad Pitt and Matt Damon,’ she adds, picking up on the slow uptake. A handout printed in oversized letters for local crew on the George Clooney feature debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind strictly prohibits any and all photos. Montreal Film Commissioner Andre Lafond tells the host of an early morning CBC radio show the sets of all the U.S. movie shoots in town are closed. Security is tight, but that’s not the problem, he says. The bigger concern is the freelance snoops with telephoto lens targeting unsuspecting stars (at play) from as far away as two city blocks.

The service year in Montreal is off to its quickest start ever, following a difficult year in 2001 when the level of U.S. production activity dropped to $235 million from $335 million a year earlier.

CDM Productions’ Andrew Lazar and Jeffrey Sudzin are in town producing Clooney’s Confessions, a quirky Miramax Films comedy based on the autobiography of Gong Show host Chuck Barris. It features the director, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and superstar Julia Roberts. Roberts blew into town about in mid-January, but was gone two days later after a round of publicity shots, makeup tests and setups on location in Old Montreal and in studio at Mel’s Cite du Cinema.

Pitt and Damon won’t be here until late February. Both have cameo roles in the film along with three or four other Hollywood notables.

Quebec crew includes supervising producer/PM Josette Perotta and art director Isabelle Guay. Filming carries through to March 23.

Preproduction is underway at Cine-Cite Montreal on the Richard Donner film Timeline, which shoots from early April through to July 20. Donner, Lauren Shuler Donner and Jim Van Wyck are producing on this Paramount Pictures pickup, based on the Michael Crichton novel. It stars Paul Walker and Scot Butler. Set mostly in 14th century Europe, this time-travel thriller was originally slated to film in Germany, but has landed in Montreal for security reasons, says Lafond.

The Montreal leg of Beyond Borders, a Lloyd Phillips and Dan Halsted production for Mandalay Pictures and distrib Paramount, wraps Feb. 26. It’s directed by Martin Campbell and stars Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen and Teri Polo in an international humanitarian drama about refugees. Wolf Kroger is the designer and Claude Pare is the art director.

Jolie’s husband, the personable Billy Bob Thornton (The Man Who Wasn’t There, Monster’s Ball), is in town as well to shoot screenwriter Ed Solomon’s (Charlie’s Angels, Men in Black) feature debut Levity, a Muse Entertainment service shoot for Columbia TriStar and producers Richard Gladstein, Adam Merims and Irene Litinsky. Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst also star.

Local craft credits on Levity go to production designer Francois Seguin (The Red Violin), art director Pierre Perrault, PM Michel Chauvin, film equipment supplier Locations Michel Trudel, tech service providers Global Vision (for rushes) and Deluxe Laboratories (in Toronto) for lab. Casting was by Andrea Kenyon and Associates.

Late last year, Muse serviced the Knightscove-financed father-son action reconciliation film Kart Racer.

Filming goes from March 18 to May 31 on location in Montreal and at Mel’s Cite du Cinema/Technoparc on Robert Benton’s The Human Stain. It’s based on the Philip Roth novel and stars Golden Globe winner Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge) and Sir Anthony Hopkins (Titus, Hannibal). The film will be distributed by Miramax and is being produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Ron Bozman and Andre Lamal. Francois Sylvestre is the PM and Zoe Sakellaropoulo (Stardom) is the art director.

Signed with STCVQ, DGC

All the productions are crewed by the STCVQ film technicians union and have signed for various positions (PM, designer, art director, and in some instances, production accountant) with the Directors Guild of Canada – Quebec Council.

Other major international shoots underway or prepping in Montreal include CineGroupe’s $25-million 3D live-action series Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, licensed to Fox Family in the U.S. and YTV in Canada and shooting at Cine-Cite, and an extended TV series for MTV/Viacom from producer Claude Castravelli and Taurus 7 Film Corp. In unconfirmed location news, Robert Downey Jr. is slated to star in director Stephen T. Kay’s heist/crime caper Six Bullets From Now, a $20-million feature from producer Ridley Scott slated to film in both Montreal and NYC.

Studio expansion

In response to the vastly improved service outlook for 2002, at least for features, three or four studio groups have announced expansion plans, including Mel Hoppenheim and Trudel, who are investing $11 million in a new, four-soundstage studio facility. A second group, rumored to be partnered with Clairmont Camera Film & Digital, has invested $21 million to date in Studio Bromont, a 1.1-million-square-foot mega-soundstage project to be housed in the former Hyundai plant in Bromont, much to the delight of Eastern Townships Film and Television Commissioner Reno Fortin. Taurus 7 Film Corp. will soon unveil its own studio plans for a location in Point St. Charles. Moliflex-White, a Comweb Group company and the operator of Cine-Cite, is slated to announce major expansion plans for the city’s Ice Storm Studios, acquired last month.

Comweb president Paul Bronfman says his company intends to increase marketing efforts in support of its expanded Montreal operations.

‘Our efforts have been mostly one on one with producers who want trustworthiness and ethical business dealings,’ he says. Comweb exec VP Rick Nelson, housed in The L.A. Center Studios, is the company’s point man with producers, PMs and production financing people in Hollywood.

While there are no details on the scale of Moliflex-White’s investment in Ice Storm, located in the old Angus Railyards in north-central Montreal, Bronfman says, ‘We plan a major redevelopment of that facility, which will be used for motion pictures and television. People are going to flip out when they see it.’