Citytv mogul renewing efforts to

establish 4th Vancouver station

Vancouver: Moses (it’s not the show it’s the flow) Znaimer was in town earlier this month with an entourage of Citytv folk to promote his arts cable channel Bravo!, announce his fund for arts production, and let everyone in on his well-known secret that he intends to apply to the crtc this summer to establish a fourth Vancouver television station.

Znaimer says he tried 22 years ago to start a station in Vancouver and his interest hasn’t waned over the years. He insists the more global television becomes, the more audiences yearn for local tv coverage.

He says he wants to bring his youthful, accessible, vibrant brand of local programming to the West Coast because ‘the whole world is looking at Vancouver.’

What would be so different about his new station? No American sitcoms and game shows, that’s for sure. ‘We try not to look like conventional tv,’ says Znaimer. He also says the City folk want to encourage a greater ethnic mix in their programming.

Why now? Znaimer says Vancouver has been widely oversold in television advertising and he senses the crtc is now more receptive to the possibility of another Vancouver station. Besides, with the cbc rumored to be pulling out of local programming and production on the West Coast, maybe now’s the time.

NOFIP

A group of film industry representatives, led by Neal Clarence, an industry accountant with Ellis Foster, met once again with Culture Minister Bill Barlee, this time to find out why a b.c. tax-incentive program was not included in the recent provincial budget after it had been promised as a sure thing.

The industry group was trying to impress upon Barlee that the province had lost at least $75 million in production to Ontario already this year because of b.c.’s lack of incentives. They estimate another $100 million will be lost before the end of the summer.

Barlee said the industry has made him a believer, it’s the Treasury Board that must now be converted. Apparently the board eliminated the bcfip scheme in last-minute budget-balancing and cost-cutting measures. I guess it’s time to do a few more lunches and play a few more rounds of golf.

By George

George Chapman, who’s been absent from these pages for several years after leaving the union ranks as former president and business agent of IATSE Local 891, has been busy working for the other side. He’s been production manager on such shows like The Little Panda, a feature shot here and in China, the tv series Sliders and Street Fighter, and the Kushner Locke mow The Outpost, ironically an acfc shoot.

I suppose it was poetic justice that after years of trying to destroy his rival union he would end up working for it.

Word has it Chapman’s name is now being bandied about as a contender to head up the B.C. Film Commission now that Dianne Neufeld has moved on, or to step in as general manager at North Shore Studios following Ralph Alderman’s hasty departure. HmmmÉpopular guy.

Eyes east

Vancouver producer/pm Justis Greene is a tad concerned these days that he’s going to be spending a lot more time in Alberta over the next year. It seems more Hollywood studio execs are instructing their producers to take a good look at Alberta before deciding on b.c.

Could be that the constant union hassles and increasing labor costs have turned them off and motivated them to start looking eastward.

Apparently after choosing locations and budgeting The Santa Claus Kid for Vancouver, word came down from Disney that Greene should take another look at Alberta to shoot the show.

Action!

Despite Greene’s gloomier vision of the industry, Mark DesRochers, new acting director of the B.C. Film Commission, says summer production is once again starting to take off.

– New on the list is Carpool, a feature directed by Canadian ex-pat Arthur Hiller and produced by Fitch Cady. Described as a broad comedy, it’s about a guy who gets stuck with school car pool duty. He stops at a convenience store where a robbery is in progress, he and the kids are taken hostage by a Don Knotts/Robin Williams-style robber, and the chase is on through the malls and streets of the city.

Production begins in Vancouver this summer.

– The local dance community should be excited. Producers Robert Halmie and Boyce Harmond and director Gene Sax of the original Odd Couple fame, were up from New York earlier this month for a ‘serious scout’ and casting calls for a miniseries remake of the musical Bye Bye Birdie for Hallmark.

– The big-budget special effects feature Warriors of Virtue looks like a sure bet for Vancouver. The producers, Law Bros. Productions of l.a., have already booked the effects stage and the new stage at The Bridge Studios until next December to shoot the u.s./Hong Kong coproduction, directed by Hong Kong helmer Ronnie Yu.

Famed production designer Bruno Rubio, who was up here on the feature Intersection, has already been signed, as have local line producer Ogden Gavanski and pm Brent O’Connor.

The film, being dubbed Teenage Mutant Kangaroos, is a loose parable of good and bad that follows a young boy with a club foot who falls into a fantastic netherworld where he meets kangaroo characters who are experts in kung fu. The child’s sudden appearance, which had been prophesied, is seen by the ‘roos as the arrival of a messiah.

Warriors is being done as a negative pickup and so far has several of the major studios in a bidding war for the distribution rights.

Production is scheduled to begin June 1.

– Meanwhile, mgm has another new sci-fi series entitled Poltergeist coming to shoot in Vancouver next year. The series has been sold as a companion series to The Outer Limits for Showtime in the u.s.

– Arnold Schwarzenegger could be making good on his ‘I’ll be back’ threats. Director Peter Hyams (Time Cop, Stay Tuned) was in town this month checking out studio space for another high-tech action feature starring the Austrian hulk.

– And finally, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall were sniffing around the studios for their next feature, a dramatic film entitled Relic that’s set in a natural history museum.