What a nasty little piece of writing Mr. Vlessing offers up in his Big Screen column of Jan. 7 (‘Canadian cinema takes a step back in 2007’).

Filled with pedantic metaphors about beaches, bottoms and swimming, Vlessing opts for a series of cheap shots that I thought we were collectively way beyond. Apparently not.

Of course there’s the usual ‘if this were Hollywood’ nonsense (one is tempted to say the same about the quality of Canadian entertainment journalism), where men are men and bucks are bucks, but in Canada we ‘rattle the begging bowl’? Disdain is never productive.

Ironically, Vlessing raises a good issue when he writes, ‘…several smart films with big stars vanished at the box office, or remained stuck on the festival circuit.’ Why not pursue an intelligent investigation of that instead of announcing the unmooring (cheap metaphors, alas, are available to all) of the entire Canadian industry?

A column called ‘The Big Screen’ deserves to be written from similar proportions, not such small-mindedness.

Kevin Tierney,
Producer, Bon Cop, Bad Cop.