Yaletown’s new entertainment arm

gets a million-dollar opportunity

Vancouver: You never know what your fax machine will spew out next. For Vancouver producer Mike Collier, president of Yaletown Productions, it was a million-dollar opportunity to try something new.

Two months ago Swiss filmmaker Reto Salimbeni, fed up after spending two years in development on a feature film project with major American studios and getting nowhere, decided he’d duck out of the Hollywood shuffle and try to make his feature film in Canada instead.

He sent faxes to about 50 possible production companies and then narrowed the list to 15. After interviewing the companies on his Canadian short list, he chose Yaletown as his coproduction partner.

‘The timing couldn’t have been better,’ says Collier. ‘We had just formed an entertainment division of Yaletown with new private investment and this serves as a perfect launch point.’

Entitled Urban Safari, the script – written by one of Hollywood’s top comedy writing teams, James and Alison Desmarais (Golden Girls, Designing Women and Murphy Brown) – is set in a New York City apartment building and involves two of its architect tenants who are vying for the senior position at an architectural firm whose owner lives upstairs in the penthouse.

Collier says it’s very much like those wonderful French farces, with lots of plot twists and turns and even a little slapstick. Fine, just as long as there’s no Jerry Lewis look-alike.

The low-budget feature ($1.2 million) is being coproduced by Salimbeni’s Zurich-based Glass Films and Yaletown and is being entirely privately financed by the two companies – no government assistance. Bravo!

Production on Urban Safari begins in a Vancouver studio in November, with Salimbeni, an internationally known commercial comedy director, at the helm.

Changing places

While news reports indicate that droves of companies are leaving Quebec again in anticipation of the provincial fall election which could spell the beginning of separation, it appears the Vancouver-based Vince family of Robert, Bill and Lynn will be bucking the trend and moving to Montreal to establish the head office of Keystone Entertainment (formerly Entertainment Securities).

Last month Keystone signed an exclusive distribution deal with Montreal-based Malofilm Distribution, which gives Malofilm Canadian distribution rights in all media for French- and English-language feature films produced by Keystone over the next two years.

Keystone produces primarily mid-range budgeted features with American stars for the video market.

Keystone principals could not be reached for comment, but word on the street is that they are fed up with the b.c. government’s inaction on a tax-incentive scheme aimed at spurring private investment in the province’s film industry and opted to go where the grass is greener and tax incentives are in place.

I wonder how many more company departures and lost deals it will take before the provincial government finally wakes up to the fact that indigenous producers here can no longer compete with the seductive tax deals offered by other provinces. Is anybody listening?

Magna cum laude

Barely six years after opening its doors, the Vancouver Film School is establishing a solid reputation in the industry with the stunning successes of several of its recent graduates.

Last year, vfs alumnus Kevin Smith and two former classmates produced Smith’s first feature film, Clerks, on an anorexic budget of $27,000.

The film won the Filmmakers’ Trophy at this year’s Sundance Film Festival before going on to attract raves at the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films Festival in New York this spring. Then in May it won the prize for top new director at the International Critic’s Week at the Cannes Film Festival and the attention of Miramax, which has picked up the film about a convenience store clerk for worldwide distribution. It will open in New York and l.a. in October

Dan Mannix, who graduated from the vfs in ’92, picked up an Emmy for Adventure Cinematography for his rock-climbing documentary Rock ‘N Road, which he shot for espn.

In January, the vfs expanded its operations beyond film production and 3D animation to include classical animation (no doubt in anticipation of Disney’s rumored plans to open a studio here) and in January ’95 will begin offering a one-year multimedia production program.

Heaven sent

Let’s see, first it was Cannell Films, then it was Spelling Films, then rumors of Disney. Maybe Billy Graham will be next to think about opening an office here.

Graham’s l.a.-based production company, Worldwide Pictures, has been up in Vancouver for the last few weeks shooting another dramatic film, Power Play, for Graham’s evangelical audiences.

Producer Michael Sajbel of Worldwide says Graham began the film company in the 1950s to record his seminars and evangelical crusades. During the 1970s the company moved into feature film production, renting entire theaters in which to screen its pictures.

Sajbel says during the ’70s and early ’80s, Worldwide’s movies were usually about an individual undergoing a crisis in his/her life and running out of ‘earthly resources’ before turning to God.

From this period of production came Graham’s best-known feature, The Hiding Place, based on the true story of a family who fought the Nazis during ww ii.

By 1986, the economy had changed and big-budget features were out at Worldwide. It switched to 16mm films that could be shown at meeting halls or on video. Now, says Sajbel, the company has moved back into features, but with significantly lower budgets.

Power Play reflects a move into more contemporary issues. It is about a young female attorney climbing the corporate ladder and is intended as a one-hour drama for video.

Sajbel says the decision to film in Canada was influenced primarily by a Winnipeg-based Canadian division of Graham’s Evangelical Association, but adds, ‘We’ve had such a good experience with a largely Canadian cast and crew that we would not hesitate to come here again.’

Make an offer

And the last inch I reserve for this little nugget I spotted in the classifieds of a recent British Columbia Motion Picture Association newsletter:

‘as is sale: Up to 38 crtc licence applications. Barely used. Cost about $300,000 each to create. Pick from hundreds of great ideas. Bid now in plenty of time for the next scheduled hearings June 30, 1995.’