A few years back when Whoopi Goldberg was in Toronto shooting Norman Jewison’s Bogus, she wandered into The Book Cellar looking for a good read. Upon the store clerk’s recommendation, she picked up Timothy Findley’s lyrical tale The Piano Man’s Daughter….

Twitch City’s Don McKellar and Fabrizio Filippo of the Fox series Action are starring in Gary Burns’ latest feature Way Downtown….

Vancouver: As Playback went to press, Shaw Communications and CanWest Global were to sign off on their long-awaited plan to divide WIC Western International Communications on Nov. 1 – almost 18 months after they announced that they would dissolve the Vancouver-based…

Vancouver: Chris Brough and a group of friends head up his latest business venture. Brough resigned as ceo of Vancouver’s Mainframe Entertainment earlier this year….

Montreal: Productions Prisma, one of Montreal’s oldest production houses, was officially declared bankrupt Oct. 22. The company’s total debt is close to $10 million….

Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures is wrapping its second consecutive Manitoba/Ontario coproduction, while a third joint venture with a Toronto company begins preproduction….

Tattersall International and Salter Street Films have taken minority ownership positions in Triptych Media, the award-winning producers of The Hanging Garden and Lilies….

Vancouver: Kenneth Ross, the deep cover cop-turned television writer, is suing his coproducers over credit on the ctv-backed Vancouver-shot series Cold Squad….

Robert Rabinovitch says he is humbled by the strong positive reaction to his recent appointment as head cheese of the cbc….

Re ‘The Gents of Bent’ in the Oct. 18 issue of Playback: Bent Animation’s Kristian Howald worked for Cinar and Mainframe, and Bent’s Colin Doncaster wrote the plug-in programs that were mentioned in the article….

A Tangled Web…

The latest in innovative ways to raise budgets for feature film and tv projects is the subject of discussion at Creative Financing For Film and Television, a one-day conference produced by Brunico Marketing Inc….