Vancouver: Karen Moore, an American television producer who has brought 30 tv movies to Vancouver in the past 13 years, is considering taking her next mow to Toronto, or ‘anywhere I get a waiver.’

While producing mow Advocate’s Devil in Vancouver for abc in June, Moore was blindsided by an unevenly applied 15% withholding tax on earnings for which she and every other non-resident behind-the-camera worker have always been exempt. Because she appears on Revenue Canada’s computer as a frequent worker in Vancouver’s film industry, the taxmen have now required her to prove she is non-resident. Until then, she gets hit with the tax.

That is, of course, unless she takes her business to Toronto where she’s been told by her lawyers that she’ll get the waiver. The conspiracy theorists can work that one out for themselves.

‘I was very distressed when this happened,’ says Moore, in a call from Montana. ‘[The tax] will have an impact. Companies are not going to want to make up the difference. I hope for the sake of the business there, it gets changed. I’ve always had a fond feeling for Vancouver and the crews there.’

Complicating the tax issue are reports that highlight how randomly it is being applied. At one u.s. project currently in production, for example, the non-resident director was granted a waiver, while the non-resident producer was denied a waiver, even though the director has worked here more often.

Has the problem cost Vancouver business? b.c. film commissioner Pete Mitchell isn’t sure. ‘The damage is done,’ he says. ‘When you lose business, you don’t hear about it.’

Moore’s next scheduled mow is Last Man on the List for the USA Network.

She’ll decide whether to go to Toronto in a couple of months.

-IATSE 891’s drive

B.C.’s biggest film union, IATSE Local 891, has quietly opened up its membership to anyone with proof of 60 days IA 891 experience (and paid up dues). Spread only by word of mouth since a general meeting June 8, new applications have to date totaled 250. The union originally expected 400 new applications, but with no end-date scheduled for the drive, the actual total could well exceed that first target. IA 891 had about 1,750 members before some new members were initiated earlier this month and more new members initiated by the end of July.

IA 891 hasn’t held a membership drive since 1992 when the call came from the union’s international head office. This time, IA 891 is all on its own, a reflection of the new level of demand for film technicians in the Vancouver area.

At press time, meanwhile, the B.C. Council of Film Unions was still working on the final paperwork for the three-year master agreement that gives the high-end u.s. features and series exclusively to IA 891, IATSE Local 669 and Teamsters Local 155. Ratification was expected by August.

-More character, few effects

Poltergeist has finally been given its green light after much confusion among cast and crew about the future of the syndicated show, even through June. mgm is going ahead with season three (22 episodes) and season four (about the same) by cutting costs on the post-production side and improving margins for the resale market. The spin now is to create more character-driven stories.

Most affected by the recalibration will be Vancouver’s post-production houses that have earned a living by making special effects that will now be reused from past episodes. Production resumes in September.

In other series news, Super Dave Osborne ­ aka Bob Einstein ­ is shooting 17 episodes of his goof-ball, daredevil stunt work in Vancouver for ytv.

The new show, called Super Dave’s All Stars, is taping in front of an audience at the Norman Rothstein Theatre at the Jewish Community Centre.

-Scripts with scrip

The big features have worked out their schedules. Disney’s market-dominating Eaters of the Dead began June 26 and wraps in October just as nuke movie Ground Zero, directed by Charlton’s son Fraser Heston, gets going.

In the meantime, more modest production is still being sh’ehorned into the city.

William Baldwin (Backdraft) stars in and Barbet Schr’eder coproduces the $7-million feature Shattered Image, which is about a woman trapped between her dreams and reality. Production for the l.a.-based Seven Arts Entertainment project begins in Jamaica July 7 and resumes in Vancouver Aug. 28 until Oct. 4.

For the small screen, Stockard Channing and RuPaul headline the cast of An Unexpected Life for USA Network. This sequel to last year’s An Unexpected Family mow, picks up with Channing moving her new-found family (kids awarded to her from her unfit-for-parenting sister) to the country and new struggles. Production wraps July 30.

-Homebodies

The Much Talked-About Homecoming of Old Bill is a 20-minute film privately financed by producer Karen Lam and her boyfriend, director Rick Hohn. The story, about a fisherman who is reborn three years later to wreak havoc in his pursuit of the fish that got away, stars newcomer Ed Blain, from the Langley Seniors Drama Club.

Gordon Currie, Lochlyn Munro and a handful of other Vancouver actors who have had considerable collective success in winning paid gigs at home and in l.a. collaborated on the 20-minute film 2 Extra Days. The shortie about film set extras trying to get real acting jobs was shot June 28 and 29 on a ‘next-to-nothing’ budget. Currie directs the piece he cowrote with actor Michael Rogers.

Local director Karin Lee and coproducer Colleen Leung are in China’s Hunan province developing a one-hour doc called Chinese Sisters Secret Voices about a secret language developed by and for women and the role of women in feudal and Communist China. The nfb is in for half the development costs, while the producers are talking to Knowledge Network, Vision and Vancouver Television (civt) for broadcast rights.

-Adventures in distribution

Force Four’s series Adventures in Parenting has been sold by TSC Film Distribution to The Learning Network in Australia, Wharf Cable in Hong Kong and New Zealand. The show comprises five half-hours produced with the assistance of Health Canada and seen in Canada on tvontario.

Meanwhile, animator Gordon Stanfield’s GSA Distribution has added two titles currently in production to its library from Calgary-based Classic Animation: Stitches, a package of six half-hour animated holiday specials, and Velveteen Rabbit, an animated feature. Stanfield’s Kleo series was recently sold to Discovery Channel. His GSA Licensing division will open Sept. 1 in New York City and will control licences and merchandising of GSA Distribution’s product.