On Telefilm’s 5% box office goal…

‘Our preoccupation in making investments in Canadian film is the cultural test, which is, ‘Will it do well at the Canadian box office?’ We have $40 million to invest, and so what is the average return we have to get by way of box office? It’s not more complicated than that.’

-Telefilm executive director Richard Stursberg

‘It sounds like a contradiction, because theoretically [the success] should be cultural, but culture also needs to be shared. If your stories aren’t shared, if your art is completely introspective, then it’s not accessible.’

-Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps

‘We do not currently have the quality and diversified scripts that are required for box office success, neither do we have a sufficient number of producers that are willing to go to risk on projects with commercial potential, nor do we have the on-screen talent that attracts paying movie enthusiasts.’

-CAFDE president Richard Paradis in a June 7 letter to Richard Stursberg

‘Withering fortitude in this country, economic and technological changes coupled with more mealy-minded thinking is resulting in a trend to where there’s 2% [Canadian films on Canadian screens] and 10% [of Canadians are watching domestic] television. That’s the best it’s ever going to be.’

-Salter Street Films executive producer Michael Donovan

‘It’s the first time ever that the criterion that drives [a public fund] is success. Hopefully, with this more realistic way of investing public funds in film – if producers, distributors and directors play their role – there should be reasonable success. If not, give the money to the poor and the sick and stop [publicly] funding the movies.’

-Serendipity Point Films producer Robert Lantos

‘If we have a few Men with Brooms in a given year, and if that combines with a couple of larger movies that are more designed to secure a market, then I guess [5%] is attainable. It’s just as easily not attainable, and we shouldn’t despair about that… If we want to continue making films as a cultural industry, we have to be prepared for risk.’

-Director Atom Egoyan

‘I can’t help thinking that producers and bureaucrats should be sent to sell popcorn at multiplexes for a year. Maybe then they’ll understand audiences better. If nothing else, they’ll experience the novelty of taking money from paying customers.’

-Mark Mayerson, Catapult Productions

‘People look at Men with Brooms as a great success. It grossed [$4.2 million], but no one knows how much Alliance Atlantis spent on it.’

-THINKfilm president Jeff Sackman

A-run-run-run-run-runaway

‘In Vancouver, we took the dregs of production – syndicated television and cable, stuff the L.A. industry wouldn’t accommodate. Who knew it would be the fastest growing segment of the industry today?’

-Tom Adair, executive director of the B.C. Council of Film Unions

‘With the ever-increasing problem of ‘runaway production’ reaching critical proportions, it’s time to stand together once again and declare that our SAG contract goes with us wherever we go in the world, or we don’t go!’

-Screen Actors Guild website, on the implementation of Global Rule One

‘We have no beef with the Canadian people, but the subsidies are illegal.’

-Brent Swift, chair of the L.A.-based Film and Television Action Committee, justifying efforts to establish countervailing duties to stem ‘runaway production’

‘But I am also standing alongside a good many of my colleagues in Hollywood to oppose attempts by others in Hollywood to impose countervailing duties on Canada.’

-Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, while lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to entice producers to shoot in the U.S.

The American machine

‘If Jack Valenti had his way, there wouldn’t be anything but American movies in the world. If you have any sense of national pride, identity and independence from the American dollar, government protection and interference are definitely required. [Otherwise] the American machine will just run over everybody, and that day is fast approaching.’

-Director David Cronenberg

Cross-border envy

‘The Canadian marketplace is the envy of the U.S.’

-David Bank, New York-based director of equity research for RBC Capital Markets, on media convergence and digital broadcasting, at the Canadian Association of Broadcasters conference

West Coast ‘tude

‘It wasn’t that long ago that a handful of [U.S. producers] decided that Toronto was too arrogant for their liking. They simply decided not to send production to that city and Toronto for a couple of years hurt very badly… I fear Vancouver has that attitude problem and a handful of people might feel Vancouver needs an attitude adjustment.’

-Eleanor O’Connor, director of Canadian operations at Paramount Production Support

‘It’s not the time to panic. What we have to worry about as an industry is the greed factor. We are lax in the way we market [B.C.]. We have to remember what it was like when we went out to get work.’

-John Juliani, president of the Union of BC Performers

‘If we were in a seller’s market, we could afford to be greedy. That’s not happening now. Nothing like being out of work a bit to make you realize where you are in the universe.’

-Tom Adair, executive director of the B.C. Council of Film Unions

What’s that again?

‘Is there room for two studios of this magnitude in Toronto? No.’

-Paul Bronfman, co-president and co-CEO of Great Lakes Studios, one of two Toronto mega-studios in the works

Why he works in television…

‘You don’t really have enough money, but you go and shoot it because you can, and then it plays for a couple of days at [an art house], it does a weekend box office of $58,000, it’s over and you’re living in a bus shelter.’

-Producer Jan Peter Meyboom (Escape from the Newsroom) on producing a feature in Canada

And why he works in features…

‘I prefer the movies, where it is all on your shoulders, because that’s where the real choices are made. That is when it is yours to fuck up or to raise the flag.’

-Bruce McDonald, director of the as-of-yet unreleased feature Picture Claire

Digi-boosting

‘My guess is that digitals are going to be a far bigger success than most pundits had imagined. And some of that extra success will come at the expense of the existing analog channels and the existing conventional channels.’

-Alliance Atlantis chair and CEO Michael MacMillan

Theft in the skies

‘Stealing programming is no different from stealing a book in a bookstore. Protection of intellectual property rights…is fundamental to our industry’s ability to operate…and we call on government to move swiftly and unequivocally to enforce the law.’

-Sylvie Courtemanche, EVP, policy and regulatory affairs, CAB, on satellite piracy

He thought they were just going for coffee…

‘I was called to a meeting outside the office and I was asked not to return to the office.’

-Dan Lyon, former TVA International executive VP of distribution, recounting the process of his dismissal

Death of drama?

‘By the end of my term [Dec. 31, 2006], I hope to see at least a few Canadian drama and comedy series up in the top 10. I believe if we work together we can find a way to do it.’ CRTC chair Charles Dalfen

No in-jokes, please

‘The show was never intended for, say, only the readers of Playback… People tell me, ‘You should really go after Telefilm,’ and I say, ‘It’s a comedy. It’s not my job to bore the shit out of everyone.”

-Writer/performer Rick Mercer, on Made in Canada