The heat is on for projects trying

to find crews in the gold rush of ’94

Forget those lazy, hazy days of summer. Crazy is the only description that fits the Toronto production scene this season. Word is that Toronto’s production community is so busy some of the service deal-shakers are taking drastic measures to get movies made here.

Everyone agrees the entire industry is handling the load beautifully, that’s not the issue. But there are rumors that crew members are being offered double the standard rates to step aside from one commitment for another, and that Americans were brought in to flush out at least one needy crew ’cause there weren’t no Canucks available.

Communications honcho Suzan Ayscough of Alliance Communications’ says they are sans problems despite the boom.

Jamie Paul Rock, director of production operations at Atlantis Communications, says everything there is running smoothly, with the TekWar series in gear on preproduction and Harrison Bergeron, one of the tv features in the Kurt Vonnegut series, rolling in September. Writer/director Stan Daniels (Glory! Glory!) is signed on for Harrison Bergeron, slated to air on Showtime and The Movie Network.

Karen Lee Hall, producer of House, has postponed that film’s start date for a month because, after making more than a few phone calls, she discovered too many people are unavailable. The Canadian Film Centre Feature Film Project production has a very small budget which depends on a lot of deferrals, and Hall just doesn’t have the money to bargain with. House will start up in early October if all goes well.

Delmage deluged

Producer John Delmage of J.A. Delmage Productions is juggling an eclectic collection of projects. He’s got a tv series, a pilot for a series, a feature in development, an mow in early stages, and a few ideas to boot.

Aside from his duties as executive producer of Groundling Marsh, producing year two for ytv, Delmage is wrapping Flamingo Estates, a half-hour pilot for Global Television’s new producers program. The short is written and directed by Wendy Ord, and Alliance is distributing the pilot, which airs at the end of the month.

On the back burner is a screen adaptation of Marine Life, Linda Svendsen’s novel about working-class family life in 1970s Vancouver. Delmage, in partnership with Stromhaus Productions, bought the rights before the book was published and Lori Lansens (South of Wawa) is at the second draft stage of adapting it for the screen. The film is titled Saint June’s Choir, and Delmage says the script is not a direct adaptation but a story which takes incidents from the book and incorporates them into the film script.

Svendsen is a well-established screenwriter (she is currently adapting The Stone Angel and adapted The Diviners for Atlantis), but she wasn’t interested in adapting her own book, says Delmage. She had spent 10 years with the characters and that was long enough.

Delmage says Lansens was one of Svendsen’s suggestions as a writer. The film will be shot in Hamilton, Ont. and Delmage says he’s looking forward to shooting the steel-town’s ‘wonderful look which no one has exploited yet.’ He hopes to get a British partner into the picture.

More on the literary trail: Delmage optioned the rights to former Toronto Star sports columnist Alison Gordon’s collection of murder mysteries and is ready to start turning them into mows.

You may remember Gordon as the first woman reporter to be allowed into the Blue Jays dressing room. Since those heydays, Gordon has published three books (and is about to publish her fourth) featuring sports reporter Kate Henry. Delmage is hoping partner Sara Botsford will coproduce and star as Henry.

First up, and in first draft, is The Dead Pull Hitter. Stromhaus is involved as is an agent in Los Angeles (name not disclosed) who is looking to get a broadcaster deal done.

The stories are set in Toronto and Delmage says hopefully they will be shot in the SkyDome.

On the idea front is a feature film called To the One I Love, a semi-autobiographical tale drafted by Ord. Ord and Delmage are in the process of talking to a couple of writers and the cbc. It’s a small feature about Ord’s adolescence in Georgian Bay where her family used to own a marina.

Fox trot

Fox Television is planning to shoot not one, but several miniseries in Toronto this fall, all bio-pics.

First up is Mia, Child of Hollywood (wrongly categorized as a feature in an earlier edition of this column) which will star Patsy Kensit (Twenty-One) as Mia Farrow. The four-hour, two-part series shoots Sept. 19 through mid-November.

Madonna, The Early Years is a two-hour tv movie based on the pop icon’s pre-adult years. I wonder at what age she started wearing lethal lingerieÉ

Celebrity/murder suspect O.J. Simpson is also said to be on Fox’s bio-pic slate, undoubtedly straight from the pages of your favorite supermarket tabloid.

Legalities

The Great Defender, Warner Bros. new tv series, starts rolling Aug. 17 in Toronto and continues through mid-October. The one-hour, seven-episode series is said to be a comedy/drama about lawyers, but it’s not a legal show. Try getting around that one in court.

Elizabeth Young is production manager, George Schenck is executive producer, Sascha Schneider is producer and Frank Renzulli is supervising producer. The series will air on the Fox Network at the end of October.