On the funding crisis…

‘There is no ‘next week,’ there is no ‘next month’ – it has to happen now.’

-Semi Chellas, cocreator of The Eleventh Hour, calling for restoration of the CTF at an emergency press conference

‘The government has said to us ‘Clean up your act and then we’ll talk’… I can tell you that if we clean up our act, we make the effort and still there’s no money, this upcoming year will go down as one of the worst production years ever in this country. And it will be on somebody’s head.’

-Laszlo Barna, producer and CFTPA chair

‘The problem is that the government has been able to get away with murder. They give us [very little], and then everyone in the industry – and the industry is to blame, I’ve decided – tromps up to Ottawa and kisses ass, saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ when actually the Canadian industry should take the chump change, toss it back at Ottawa and say, ‘Send real money or forget it.”

-Michael Donovan, president of Salter Street Films

‘It is really a shame what has happened. Oversubscription is very substantial and obviously it will be worse next year. And it’s not as if we are turning down bad stuff. We’re turning down good stuff. I think it’s unfortunate and a very disappointing way of going at things.’

-Richard Strusberg, executive director of Telefilm Canada

‘We’re very clear with our international partners that there is a risk that, if we miss one of the [domestic] funds, a project is sort of dead. The funding has been reduced and we are competing with even more producers for less money. Yes, securing international coproductions is going to be more difficult.’

-Blair Peters, partner at Vancouver’s Studio B Productions

‘It gets much harder to close the loop on the financing when the pie in Canada is smaller. It leaves producers with two options: secure greater foreign financing or don’t produce.’

-Mark Musselman, head of business and legal affairs at Serendipity Point Films

‘We’ll be a smaller and leaner company. This is a reality of the times and situations that are out of our control.’

-Kevin DeWalt, president and CEO of Minds Eye Entertainment, forced to restructure due to the volatile international markets

‘Telefilm could go away tomorrow and it would make our jobs harder, no question, but as a taxpayer, would I necessarily think it’s a bad thing? I’m not sure I would.’

-Steve Hoban, partner, 49th Parallel Films

On the drama crisis…

‘My hope is that, long term, people will get rich making cop shows in Canada just as they do everywhere else in the world; and the more auteur, creative or risky drama is what will use the public money.’

-Trina McQueen, author of the Telefilm-sponsored report on Canadian drama

‘We’re going to have to be prepared to celebrate significant amounts of failure, otherwise we’ll never take a chance.’

-Slawko Klymkiw, CBC executive director of network programming

‘[I remember thinking] ‘What’s the matter with Canadians?’ It wasn’t a question of supporting Canadian art or culture. It was strictly as a business. They could make money.’

-Director Ted Kotcheff, on his inability to finance a feature despite his box-office success with The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

‘We’re witnessing the meltdown of the Canadian industry, but out of the ashes of that, what is the pheonix going to be, and who is going to be prepared to deal with the phoenix?’

-Daniel Pellerin, sound mixer

‘You either have to be CSI or a cooking show, or a Hitler miniseries or a cooking show. If you’re going to make something, better to make it at one end of the spectrum and not be in the middle.’

-Peter Sussman, CEO of Alliance Atlantis’ Entertainment Group, and exec producer of Hitler: The Rise of Evil

‘It’s not just Showtime being down in their production of TV movies. It’s across the board with many studios. They can’t sell these movies in the foreign market.’

-Patrick Whitley, president of Dufferin Gate Productions and Temple Street Productions

Love, love, love

‘When you strip the guns and dope and bullshit away, all you’ve got is love.’

-Trailer Park Boy Robb Wells, on his and other characters on the show

Taste testing

‘That’s one of the things I think Canadian films have suffered from – they haven’t really been tested at all. So filmmakers are often delusional about how their films will play because ‘It played so great when I invited my 80 friends and they all loved it, plus the crew loved it.’ Those are not tests. In Canada they often have been confused for tests.’

-Robert Lantos, producer, Serendipity Point Films

Runaway not so cool

‘Worldwide, we are no longer in the position of being this cool, inexpensive place to go. We’re the bad guys in respects to runaway production, but we’re suffering, too. The runaways are running away from us.’

-Warren Carr, Vancouver line producer, on Vancouver’s current appeal to service producers

‘I prefer not to work in Canada. I prefer to work in my own country. There are better actors down here. That’s why they have to import so many actors for their Canadian productions.’

-Actor Robert Duvall, at a press junket in Washington promoting the feature Open Range, which shot in Alberta

Polishing up the Gems

‘I see it now: Debbie Travis [of W decorating show Debbie Travis’ Facelift] redoing the Trailer Park Boys’ trailers.’

-John Doyle, Globe & Mail TV critic, on ways to make the Gemini broadcast more relevant

‘The Geminis is on at exactly the wrong time of year – late October. CTV and Global are going to go with [U.S.] simulcasts. They’re not going to hold that back just because somebody on another channel is waving the banner for Canadian TV, and I don’t think their advertisers would let them hold back, either.’

-Alex Stachan, CanWest TV critic

‘If you direct a whole bunch of really quality MOWs for HBO and you get a bunch of Emmys, your phone is ringing off the hook. Up here [if you win Geminis], it just doesn’t happen.’

-Jerry Ciccoritti, multiple award-winning director

The forgotten writer

‘It’s amazing when you look around this room. It’s a regular ‘Who’s that?’ of Canadian television.’

-Sean Cullen, hosting the WGC awards

But I like those shows

‘It’s like the shows on Telelatino. Without the whorey girls.’

-Luciano Casimiri, creative producer of Toronto 1’s The Toronto Show

TIFF in a year of adversity

‘Barring raining frogs or a plague of locusts, we’re good to go.’

-Michele Maheux, managing director of the Toronto International Film Festival

Loonie on the rise

‘It’s a problem. You have to have a jaundiced eye toward the budget and make changes. Kodak isn’t about to lower its prices and the actors aren’t working for less. That means we have to beat up our suppliers.’

-James Shavick, Vancouver producer

Trolling for shrimp in Banff

‘I’ve had vast security problems. I’ve got people swapping their delegate badges, I’ve got people crawling through the woods trying to get into this barbecue.’

-Pat Ferns, president and CEO of the Banff Television Festival, at the event’s closing gala

‘Forget the shrimp. Just make it more accessible.’

-Laszlo Barna, on the sometimes-prohibitive costs of the Banff Television Festival

Big hits on the big screen

‘It’s excellent to make money! What’s wrong with that? How else are you going to gauge your popularity?’

-Deepa Mehta, director of The Republic of Love

‘The person who really believed in the project the whole time was the director, Bob Clark. He never lost faith when we were on the set, sometimes saying ‘Omigod, is this rubbish or what?”

-Cinematographer Kevin Jewison, reminiscing about his gig as second assistant camera on Porky’s

‘We think it’s a great comedy that’s also for the mass audience. But it’s not fair to put pressure on Mambo Italiano to perform at $27 million. If it does in the $5 [million] to $10 [million] range, we’ll be ecstatic.’

-Michael Mosca, senior VP and COO of Equinoxe Films, on the distributor’s release of Mambo Italiano following its sleeper success with My Big Fat Greek Wedding

‘Men with Brooms certainly moved the industry to another level, and we’re taking on that success and the lessons that were learned through it and bringing it out a bit further.’

-Jim Sherry, president of Alliance Atlantis theatrical distribution, on the nearly $3-million P&A campaign for Foolproof

Runaway cows

‘We usually use Alberta beef, but we can easily get beef from other places until things settle down a bit.’

-Bruce Toy, co-owner and chef at Calgary-based Filmworks Catering, on the ‘mad cow’ scare