A14 O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| FRIDAY,MARCH27,
FILMFRIDAY REVIEWS | OPINION| PUZZLES | WEATHER
| NEWST
his was supposed to be Can-
adian Screen Week, chocka-
block with film and TV in-
dustry events, culminating in a
televised awards ceremony on
Sunday. On April 30, 220,000 peo-
ple were supposed to start watch-
ing films from 55 countries at To-
ronto’s Hot Docs festival.
In March and April, a lucky few
Canadian independent films were
slotted to run for a week or two in
cinemas. It’s traditionally the on-
ly window they get – after the Os-
car fare goes, and before the sum-
mer Hollywood blockbusters ar-
rive – and it was already Kate-
Moss-skinny. As well, spring is the
time Canadian streets sprout the
orange cones that signal film and
TV production has come back to
life after a dormant winter.
All of that – and much more,
obviously – vanished in a week.
Film and TV might seem like a
luxury, but it’s not. According to
the 2018 report from the Cana-
dian Media Producers Associ-
ation, the industry employs
179,000 people full-time, and far
more part-time and freelance. It
generates $12.8-billion in gross
domestic product. And how
much are you relying on its out-
put right now? So I checked in
with a handful of people to see
how they’re coping.
The short answer: They’re
holding tight, and fretting.
Screenwriters, already used to
working alone, are trying to write.
But it’s hard; the news is a con-
stant distraction. Filmmakers in
postproduction are figuring out
what they can work on remotely
(sound mixing) and what they
can’t (picture). Funding agencies
are still operating, so people are
chugging through their paper-
work.
“We’re committed to sustain-
ing the industry,” Christa Dicken-
son, the executive director of Tele-
film, said this week. “In our devel-
opment program, we want to
front-load the payments, to keep
screenwriters writing. We’re sus-
pending our default measures, if
applications or documentation
are overdue. We’re collaborating
with other funding agencies, fed-
eral, provincial, the guilds, the
unions. We’re talking to everyone,
collecting data, so we can make
our case to thegovernment.”
The industry is fragile at the
best of times, though. It’s always
been tough to find the right date,
theatre and city for Canadian in-
dies. How many of the few re-
maining independent cinemas
will close permanently? When
theatres do reopen, owners will
be desperate – they’ll scramble to
program “sure things,” U.S. genre
films. Amid the scores of films de-
layed from 2020, and the scores
already scheduled for 2021, room
for Canadian product will be vir-
tually non-existent. So is this the
end of theatrical releases for
homegrown indies?
John Bain, the head of distribu-
tion at Level Film, hopes not. But
he’s facing hard choices. Take the
Canadian indie dramaWhite Lie,
about a university student (Kacey
Rohl) who fakes having cancer.
(Full disclosure: a family member
was on the crew.)White Lieplayed
well at last September’s Toronto
International Film Festival. It’s up
for best picture at the Canadian
Screen Awards. It was scheduled
for a theatrical release at the TIFF
Bell Lightbox on April 17. In other
words, it looked like that rarity: A
potentially successful Canadian
indie.
So should Bain hold the re-lease, hoping for an eventual the-
atrical run who knows when? Or
skip theatres and go straight to
streaming/video on demand
(SVOD)? He’s leaning toward the
latter. “We can spend promotion
money on the VOD release,” he
said. “We’re exploring new ideas,
like holding online viewing par-
ties with virtual Q&A sessions.”
But for even that, he’ll likely
have to wait until May. “The big
players like Universal have the
market leverage to say, ‘We want
to releaseEmmaandThe Hunt
now, make it happen,’ ” he said.
“We can’t. VOD providers have too
much in their queues ahead of
us.”
Next, film festivals. Indies rely
on them for their survival: It’s the
place for actors and filmmakers to
break through, and to do most of
their networking. A positive reac-
tion from festival audiences is the
surest path to a theatrical release.
And let’s face it, festivals are
where filmmakers reap their
greatest emotional rewards, since
no one makes Canadian films for
the financial ones.
Producer/director Ali Wein-
stein has been working for five
years on one of her films, a docu-
mentary about the redevelop-
ment of the landmark Toronto
discount store Honest Ed’s, called
There’s No Place Like This Place
Anyplace. It was supposed to pre-
miere at Hot Docs, which would
have been the best venue imagin-able: a hometown crowd, in a the-
atre kitty-corner from the Honest
Ed’s site. Weinstein is grateful that
the film is scheduled to air on CBC
this summer, and she’s keeping
busy cutting down the feature
version to the shorter TV length
(which she can do remotely). But
missing her one shot at a public
screening is still “devastating,”
she said.
First-time producer Katie Cor-
bridge and first-time director Phil
Connell are putting the finishing
touches on their micro-budget
film,Jump Darling, made through
Telefilm’s Talent To Watch pro-
gram, where fledgling filmmakers
get $125,000 to make a feature.
“We’ve been submitting it to
festivals, acting as if the world was
the same, knowing it’s not,” Con-
nell said. “Festivals are still mak-
ing selections, trying to keep
themselves relevant. Maybe
they’ll hold virtual marketplaces,
online viewing platforms for sales
agents and distributors. Filmmak-
ers can still say, ‘I got into Cannes,
or Venice.’ And Apple, Netflix and
Amazon will still need content.”
The most shattered are those in
preproduction, or whose films
were just about to begin. When
that momentum is stalled, it’s
near impossible to restart. When
things are running again, the rush
for crews, casts and equipment
will likely squeeze out indies.
I hope the Canadian film biz
will use this enforced hiatus to dosome big-picture thinking. I hope
Telefilm will rethink the Talent to
Watch program and, in the future,
award more money to fewer film-
makers, so they can make films
properly without scrambling for
extra financing. I hope all dolers
of cash will space out funds
throughout the year, so not every-
one is working toward the same
deadlines, and competing for the
same resources.
I hope streamers such as Crave
and CBC Gem will lean into Cana-
dian product even more, and
spend promotion money to high-
light it. People are looking for new
stuff to watch – why not steer
them to our own stuff? I also hope
the U.S. streaming giants Netflix,
Amazon and Apple TV+ will buy
more Canadian fare.
And I hope Canadian indie
filmmakers can stay optimistic.
Producer Karen Harnisch – who
has several films on the go, in-
cluding the disaster picThirteen
Minutes, starring Anne Heche – is
trying. “When humanity has been
faced with incredible challenges,
we’ve taken leaps and bounds in
our thinking,” she said. “I’m
hopeful this crisis generates cre-
ative expression. Yes, I worry
about indie films getting dumped
online, getting lost in a sea of con-
tent. But people will always need
stories, and storytellers. And hey,
everyone is home.”SpecialtoTheGlobeandMailCOVID-19shatteredCanada’sfilmindustry,
butwecanpieceitbacktogether
Thepandemic,though
challenging,maygive
thebizanopportunity
totakeafreshlook
atthebigpicture
JOHANNA
SCHNELLER
BIGGERPICTURETheCanadianindiedramaWhiteLie,starringKaceyRohlasauniversitystudentwhofakeshavingcancer,playedwellattheTorontoInternational
FilmFestivalinSeptember.ItwasscheduledforalimitedtheatricalreleaseinApril,butthoseplansareupintheairamidtheCOVID-19crisis.R
ight about now, depending
on whether you have
school-age children or not,
you are likely wondering what
else could possibly be hiding in
the nooks and crannies of your
Netflix queue. The good news is
that there is still much to be
found in the undiscovered depths
of the streaming world, with
enough underrated movies and
heretofore-unheard-of content to
keep your household occupied
these next few weeks. Or months.
But eventually, sooner than we
think, we’re going to run into a
problem: There simply isn’t any-
thing new being made. The pipe-
line of Hollywood production,
which has been clogged with pro-
jects these past few streaming-
war years, is completely dry. For
now, we are stuck with whatever
movies we have.
Just as the COVID-19 crisis hit,
the studio system was busy
cranking out hopeful blockbus-
ters in various stages of produc-
tion. Warner Bros. had just start-
ed shootingThe Batmanwith
Robert Pattinson and was in the
middle of production on the new
Matrixsequel in Germany, while
Universal was busy withJurassic
World: Dominion, Paramount had
the nextMission: Impossible, Sony
the would-be franchise-starter
Unchartedwith Tom Holland and
Disney the next entry in its world-
dominating Marvel Cinematic
Universe,Shang-Chi and the Leg-
end of the Ten Rings, plus its gar-
gantuan, already much-delayed
set ofAvatarfollow-ups.
It is not just the tentpole busi-
ness that was hit, of course. A rash
of mid-budget, potentially Oscar-
friendly films shut down in the
midst of production, too, includ-
ing Guillermo del Toro’sNight-
mare Alleystarring Bradley Coop-
er, Ridley Scott’sThe Last Duelfea-
turing the onscreen reunion of
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and
Baz Luhrmann’s untitled Elvis
Presley biopic (the latter of which
may forever and unfairly be
known as the movie that allowed
Tom Hanks to contract CO-
VID-19). On the indie scale,
there’s Paul Schrader’sThe CardCounter, the ballet dramaBirds of
Paradiseand on and on and on.
Just as the world has pressed
pause, so, too, has the movie busi-
ness ground to a halt.
Which isn’t to say that this is
the very end of new movies.
There is a sizable backlog of
ready-to-go features, thanks to
the spring and summer movie
seasons effectively cancelling
themselves. Already, the major
studios have indefinitely
scrubbed 2020 releases ranging
from megacartoonMinions: The
Rise of Gruto Marvel adventure
Black Widowto Lin-Manuel Mi-
randa’s musicalIn the Heights,
and it is only a matter of time be-
fore the remaining seasonal
blockbusters fall, too.
So while there is product wait-
ing on the shelf, it is a wide andterrifyingly open question as to
how confident the studios are
that public anxieties will subside
by late summer or fall – which is
when Warner has shiftedWonder
Woman 1984and Universal/MGM
moved the new James Bond entry
No Time to Die– or whether Holly-
wood needs to further break its
own business model and release
more movies digitally rather than
holding out hope for a theatrical
premiere.
Right now, Universal’s decision
to sendTrolls World Tourstraight
to home audiences or Disney’s ca-
pitulationto speedOnward’s Dis-
ney+ debut by months are dras-
tic measures for drastic times –
aberrations that no one in the
business of showing movies on
movie screens wants to see re-
peated. But there is only so long
that a studio can hold on to, say, a
Top Gunsequel without a certain
stench wafting over the whole en-
deavor.
“Given the stay-at-home or-
ders could be weeks or months,
would Hollywood studios not or-
ganically choose to release their
‘coming soon’ projects on digital
platforms as a first-run option?
Seems plausible to me,” says Jim
Mirkopoulos, vice-president of
Cinespace Film Studios. “How
long will the release of the next
007 film be mired in uncertainty,
thus prolonging MGM’s return on
their investment?”
And after those inevitable re-
leases –Ghostbusters: Afterlifede-
buting on, say, Hulu makes a
weird amount of sense rightabout now – we are facing empty
shelves. Studio lots are shuttered.
Actors are quarantining them-
selves. The many hundreds of
people it takes to populate a film
set cannot be let near each other.
Nothing is being made, and no
one knows when this might
change.
“It’s going to last long, and the
damage is going to be here for a
good long while,” Paul Bronfman,
chief executive officer of produc-
tion company giant William F.
White International and chair-
man of Pinewood Toronto Stu-
dios, told The Globe and Mail last
week, whenwave after wave of
production suspensions were an-
nounced. “Depending on how
long this thing goes for, to get new
series on or new movies into the
theatre, there’s going to be a lag
time. It depends on how much is
in inventory. What’s in postpro-
duction already, and what can
they get finished, perhaps with
people still working from home?”
Still, this is the movie industry- an improbable business pivot-
ing on a constantly disrupted
model, when you break it down –
and so there is boundless opti-
mism to be found, too.
“I’m optimistic because I be-
lieve in these people and this
business. I know we’re going to
get through this,” Bronfman says.
“There are only two constants in
this crazy business: change and
uncertainty.”
All audiences can do now,
then, is hold out hope for a Holly-
wood ending.
Whenwillanyoneevermakeanewmovie?
BARRY
HERTZ
SCREENTIMEWarnerBros.’WonderWoman1984isamongthefilmsthathavehad
theirreleasedatesshiftedtolatesummerorfall.