Montreal: The 40-year partnership of John Dunning and Andre Link is unique in the annals of the Canadian film industry. When their company, Cinepix, was launched in 1962, the landscape included little more than CBC, Radio-Canada and the National Film Board.

In retrospect, it’s fair to say the Cinepix story, and later Cinepix Film Properties, closely mirrors the history of commercial filmmaking in Canada.

Over 40 years, Dunning and Link have produced close to 60 films and played a significant role in the early careers of industry personalities like Ivan Reitman, David Cronenberg, Denis Heroux, Harold Ramis, Francis Mankiewicz, Don Carmody, Claude Fournier and many others.

Dunning has literally been around the business for seven decades. He remembers sitting in a high chair at the back of a family-owned theatre in Verdun, a working-class section of Montreal. Link was born in Hungary, lived in France, where he schlepped film cans for a distributor, and moved to Montreal almost 50 years ago, taking a first job as a film booker.

In the fall of 1997, Dunning and Link and the other shareholders in CFP sold their company for $36 million in cash and shares to a Vancouver-based investment group led by Lions Gate Entertainment chairman Frank Giustra.

Giustra’s perspective goes right to the core of the Cinepix legacy. ‘They were innovators who went against the trend in Canada in that they looked at product from a commercial standpoint without strict reliance on Telefilm Canada. That was really part and parcel of their entry into the U.S. to become producers and distributors of product, which was a really brilliant move. Had they done what everyone else was doing, which was to remain in Canada and do just Telefilm product, it really wouldn’t have gone anywhere.’

‘I have boundless respect for Andre and John,’ says Robert Lantos (Men With Brooms, Sunshine) of Toronto’s Serendipity Point Films. ‘They are the true pioneers of film as a business in Canada. They have a profound knowledge of film, and were among the first to prove that it is possible to make movies for international markets and be Canadian.’

Link remains active in LGE business affairs as president and a member of the board, and CEO of the company’s Canadian distribution arm, Lions Gate Films. He is also the chair of Montreal production/distribution company CineGroupe. Dunning is chairman of LGF and heads up his own production company, JVJ Productions.

Both men are known for their low-key and disarmingly modest style. In many ways they are an unlikely match and have been affectionately called the ‘Odd Couple’ by friends and colleagues.

Dunning is the partnership’s ‘high-concept’ producer, while Link has keyed on distribution and the money side of the business. Both continue to develop new projects, mainly separately, as Dunning is a writer and is currently working on a movie adaptation of the West Coast police thriller novel Medusa Pool.

‘High-concept moviemaking’

Cinepix’s successful formula was based on what Dunning calls ‘high-concept films, horror, action and thrillers,’ typically produced on modest budgets without expensive marquee talent.

In the early days, many Cinepix projects received public funding. Michael Spencer, who headed the Canadian Film Development Corporation (the forerunner of Telefilm Canada) from its founding in 1968 to 1978, basically shared the Dunning-Link vision of ‘establishing a commercially viable industry in Canada…supporting all kinds of movies.’

‘The CFDC set out in its early years to establish a commercial industry, and after awhile we discovered the political heat was a little hard to take,’ says Spencer, also chairman emeritus of Film Finances Canada.

The CFDC backed early Cinepix features like Denis Heroux’s saucy L’Initiation (1969), the second Quebec film to earn more than $1 million at the box office, following Heroux’s Valerie; Larry Kent’s Keep it in the Family (1972); William Fruet’s Death Weekend (1975); David Cronenberg’s first two feature films, Shivers (1974) and Rabid (1976); and Ivan Reitman’s smash comedy Meatballs (1978).

But as cultural objectives replaced commerce in federal film policy, Cinepix found itself shut out from public funds for more than a decade, until Giles Walker’s critically acclaimed Princes in Exile (1989).

Early days

Rose Films, producer Pierre David and Cinepix produced the Claude Fournier film La Pomme, la queue et les pepins (1971) for $100,000. It became the subject of an injunction and was actually denied a visa by censors at a time when Quebec soft-porn titles were doing well in theatres. Fournier (Hot Dogs, The Book of Eve) says it was the first time a local film portrayed ‘a full erection; that thing was never shown. We re-shot the scene with the erection under the blankets. We borrowed a camera from [a Cronenberg shoot] and used a zucchini as the penis.’ The film ultimately grossed more than $700,000.

Fournier says Dunning and Link ‘contributed enormously to the industry, more than we can imagine.’

Partly in response to public criticism of the CFDC for its funding of Cronenberg’s Shivers (aka The Parasite Murders) in the mid-1970s, Link and Cinepix led an active campaign against censorship and in support of public funds for commercial films, even producing a pamphlet entitled ‘Is There a Place for Horror Films in Canada’s Film Industry?’

Shivers was produced for about $185,000 and sold to Orion Pictures. The unremitting Rabid, produced for $600,000, was sold to New World. Both films made money.

‘John and Andre and Cinepix were my film school teachers basically,’ says Cronenberg. ‘That’s where I learned to make movies. They were wonderful mentors and I have nothing but the fondest memories of my time with Cinepix.’

Cronenberg, who is presently mixing his new movie Spider at Casablanca Sound & Picture in Toronto, with hopes the film will be entered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May, says Dunning-Link were the Canadian equivalent of American B-movie legend Roger Corman and ‘they were the only ones who had a moviemaking presence in Canada. So I naturally went to them. John, strange, wonderful fellow that he is, completely understood my strange script [Shivers]. I think it still took two years before we managed to convince the CFDC [to invest].

‘I knew that if I wanted to only make movies it was going to have to be on a professional level, because I was going to have to make some money doing it, and that is where I needed some help. John and Andre had already learned a lot running their own business and working in distribution.’

Meatballs glory

Reitman’s Meatballs (1978) was initially conceived as a serious (dramatic) ‘girl’s summer camp’ film. Reitman found out about the project and argued that it should be developed as a comedy. The screenplay was rewritten and a young and nutty Bill Murray was cast as the lead. The film was shot in Ontario for $1.6 million and went on to gross $46 million in North America in 1979/80 for Paramount.

The CFDC was one of the investors, and Link says the film’s 33 tax-shelter investors earned back 15 times their initial investment. The property helped rocket Reitman (Ghostbusters, National Lampoon’s Animal House) to a major career in Hollywood.

Dunning and Link take special pride in the fact 31 of Cinepix’s first 35 films (1968-93) were shot in Quebec, representing production investments of close to $40 million.

Studio deals

From the mid-1970s through to the early 1980s, Cinepix produced a whack of movies for the major U.S. studios. Results were mixed.

One of the films was Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1982), which Columbia transformed into a major undertaking, deciding it needed a 3D presence to compete with the 3D version of Jaws. The shoot was basically ‘a nightmare,’ says Link, and a series of dire efforts to create some 3D action were shot late at night by Don Carmody, who went on to direct the Cinepix title The Surrogate (1983) and later emerge as a major motion picture producer. The film’s $4-million budget ballooned to $12 million.

AIP (Orion) picked up the Cinepix-produced feature Death Weekend (1975), directed by Bill Fruet, and New World picked up Jean Lafleur’s feature debut The Tigress (1977), featuring the whip-toting sex goddess Ilsa. After screening some early rushes in Montreal, Columbia executives snapped up all rights to the J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear) thriller Happy Birthday to Me (1980), starring Glenn Ford and Melissa Sue Anderson. Cinepix turned a tidy profit on the picture, produced for $3.2 million and sold to Columbia for about US$3.8 million.

Paramount picked up George Mihalka’s second feature film My Bloody Valentine (1980) and Twentieth Century Fox acquired Jean Claude Lord’s first English-track movie, The Vindicator (1984). ITC purchased Rafal Zielinski’s National Park (1986), and in 1988, George Erschbamer directed the first of his three SnakeEater movies, the special-commander, blood-and-gore action fest starring Falcon Crest’s pumped-up Latin lover Lorenzo Lamas and Scott Bigelow.

Princes in Exile

Cinepix also produced films outside the strictly commercial entertainment model.

The pioneering and award-winning AIDS-awareness doc Making it Safe (1988) won major honors at several U.S. venues. In 1989, Cinepix, in association with the NFB and CBC, produced Walker’s Princes in Exile, distributed internationally by Fries Entertainment. A deeply moving story of summer camp kids battling cancer, the film won a bouquet of international festival prizes at Montreal, Halifax and New York, and a Golden Nymph for best TV movie at the 1991 Monte Carlo Television Festival. ‘It showed we could make non-schlock films as well. It didn’t do well at the box office, but it won all kinds of awards,’ says Link. Princes was a laudable Canadian movie, but it wasn’t the kind of product that could sustain Cinepix’s market-driven vision.

In 1995, Cinepix produced two well-received European espionage thrillers starring Michael Caine – Doug Jackson’s Midnight in St. Petersberg and George Mihalka’s Bullet to Beijing. Dunning and Link served as exec producers on Mihalka’s box office hit L’Homme Ideal (1996).

The CFP family

Jeff Sackman, president of ThinkFilm in Toronto, joined CFP in 1991, later becoming president of CFP Distribution and, in 1998, president of Lions Gate Films.

Dunning and Link rewarded their top managers, Sackman and Montreal-based Christian Larouche, with an equity share in CFP, ‘an exceptional gesture with no money or strings attached,’ says Sackman. ‘The human element keeps getting further and further removed as the big corporations take over everything. And one of the great things about the CFP era was the human element was very important. And that is to their credit.’

Sackman says one of CFP’s great achievements was its ability to bounce back after losing the Miramax Films franchise in Canada in 1994 to Alliance Communications.

Miramax product had accounted for 50% of the company’s business.

‘We didn’t panic. Instead of languishing like so many others in Canada, we were able to survive,’ says Sackman, who with Michael Paseornek was instrumental in rebuilding CFP Distribution’s business in New York (Affliction, Gods and Monsters, Dogma, The Red Violin).

‘The thing that most distinguishes Andre and John and their way of being is that they proved you can be successful, both financially and otherwise, by sustaining a high level of honor and integrity, which contradicts the stereotype in this industry.’

In an interview from Paris, Christal Films president Christian Larouche (L’Homme Ideal, La Conciergerie) said growing up with Dunning and Link was a great education. ‘John taught me about the business of producing. Andre is the financier, the man of business. Over many years, Andre brought me into contact with Europe. And I learned to listen. I was lucky to have both of them. They took risks at a time when cinema hardly existed. I couldn’t have found a better school.’ (Link is a consultant to Christal, which was launched last year in partnership with Lions Gate.)

Moving into the U.S.

Dunning-Link exec produced various Lions Gate ‘non-content’ (American) properties produced between 1997 and 2000.

HBO picked up the drama Stag (1997), which sold worldwide. Other titles include Johnny Skidmarks (1998), starring Frances McDormand; Saul Rubinek’s Jerry & Tom (1998); the offbeat drama Buffalo ’66 (1998) and the loan-shark tale Money Kings (2000). Lions Gate produced the controversial thriller American Psycho (1999), and Link is exec producer on Fournier’s new romance comedy The Book of Eve (2002), a $6-million Canada/U.K. coproduction from Rose Films, starring Claire Bloom and distributed internationally by Lions Gate.

The creation of Lions Gate

In 1989, exhibitor Famous Players approached Cinepix to distribute its product, resulting in the formation of a new company, C/FP. New success came with releases like The Piano, The Crow, The Crying Game, Like Water for Chocolate, Indochine, Germinal, La Reine Margot and Strictly Ballroom.

In 1994, Cinepix bought out FP’s interest in the distribution partnership and reorganized under the name Cinepix Film Properties. A ‘mezzanine’ financing deal for $10 million with three financial institutions (Desjardins, TD Financial and the Royal Bank) was a prelude to taking CFP public. ‘But before we could go public we received a proposal from Frank Giustra, which we accepted,’ says Link.

Prior to the deal with Giustra, CFP had acquired a majority share of Montreal-based CineGroupe, Jacques Pettigrew’s animation company, which remains a Quebec-controlled company. At that point, CFP had annual top-line revenues in the order of $60 million.

In January 1998, venerable CFP was renamed Lions Gate Films.

Today, LGE is a growing diversified company listed on the AMEX and TSE exchanges, with Jon Feltheimer as its CEO. In fiscal 2001, LGE reported total pretax profits of $74 million.

The Canadian challenge

Dunning says it would be helpful if more big-name Canadian stars in Hollywood were willing to play a constructive role in independent Canadian film.

Link says the issue of Canadian theatrical films is complex, but fundamentally, Canadian films are compromised by restrictive content rules.

‘The proximity of Canada to the U.S. is a major factor, [while] the Quebec market is insulated by language. The other part of the problem is the very restrictive [policy] with regards to casting. It’s a very nearsighted view to try to capture world markets when you have to rely on the [public] agencies for financing and they [have] restrictions in regards to foreign participation. I think it’s good to have [public] money coming into the system, but I also think it should come with less restrictions,’ says Dunning.

‘What is great about this business is that somewhere there is an idea gestating in somebody’s head today that will be tomorrow’s hit and it may be against all the odds, a small-budget film that has whatever it takes to succeed,’ says Link.