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Tinseltown takeover >> Not everyone is thrilled with the boom in foreign film shooting by MATTHEW HAYS
If it's a go--and the Gazette article which made the announcement intimated it was close to being a done deal--the production would pump more than $80 million into local coffers, topping Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes as the most expensive shoot ever done in the city. This latest news caps off an intense, precedent-setting period for Montreal's film landscape. In the last year alone, Paul Newman, Ewan McGregor, Bette Midler, Julie Andrews, Nick Nolte and Denzel Washington--among many others--have arrived to appear in a wide range of projects. Montreal now appears poised to steal Toronto's claim as the number one city for hosting foreign film shoots. For the starstruck, and for Montreal film commissioner André Lafond, whose job it is to promote Montreal as a location for film shoots, the news couldn't be better.
On the eve of the 17th annual Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois--the annual showcase of homegrown celluloid--there are pressing questions to ponder: exactly how beneficial are foreign shoots to the city's cultural life? Should all levels of government be giving massive tax breaks and subsidies to foreign film shoots? Border shopping
"The local industry here, we're shooting mainly from May to October," says Frappier, "which is exactly when all the Americans want to come and shoot here. It's then very difficult to be able to secure a crew. "Not only do the Americans have a much more significant budget, but they have tax breaks. I was very against the government doing that. They already gain 40 per cent by crossing the border [because of Canada's 66-cent dollar]; now we give them money. And that I don't understand." (Frappier would understand the perils of indigenous filmmaking better than anyone; last summer he was presented with a special award at Cannes for his championing of Quebec cinema.) Robin Spry, president and CEO of the Montreal-based production house Telescene, whose productions have included Obsessed and TV's Big Wolf on Campus and The Hunger, shares many of Frappier's concerns. "Everything that applies to French-language production in Quebec applies just as strongly to English-language production. These foreign shoots are a mixed bag, for sure. People that Roger and others have worked with for decades, and have fought tooth and nail to work with, can now go off and work for Universal and make double. The local industry has survived in the wilderness and managed to build crews, actors--an infrastructure. That infrastructure is now being used very much by visiting firemen who don't really care at all about the local industry and are just building on expertise by the local people over many tough years." Can-con is an endagered species Questions surrounding the benefits of foreign-funded shooting on home turf came under greater scrutiny in the past year, after federal Heritage Minister Sheila Copps commissioned an advisory committee to look into what measures could be taken to bolster Canadian feature filmmaking. After 20 years of lobbying for greater tax breaks for Canadian filmmakers, all levels of government have realized the economic benefits in giving movie producers incentives to invest. Spry, a former economist himself, estimates that for every dollar spent by the government in the form of tax break or subsidy, the economy sees a 150300 per cent return. "Now they've gone too far in the other direction [of over-subsidizing]. They've decided that if they can make money from Canadian producers they should make even more from foreign producers." The provincial governments have been in a dead heat over the past 18 months, topping each other with better and better tax incentives in an effort to appear the cheapest date for Hollywood producers. "I agree with Roger," says Spry. "I think tax breaks for foreign productions is crazy." The irony of Canadians competing for locations and crews is not lost on Peter Wintonick, Montreal filmmaker (Manufacturing Consent) and co-president of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus. For almost 30 years, Canadian filmmakers have been desperately lobbying to get Canadian films on Canadian screens--to little or no avail. On average, approximately two per cent of Canadian cinema screens show Canadian product. Not only are our screens dominated by Hollywood imperialists, now our crews and locations are as well. "This is a matter of survival," argues Wintonick. "We're an endangered species for sure." An end in sight Spry says there is a limit to how much production Montreal can sustain. "In the last 12 months people have been so busy that a lot of people with very limited experience have been working on productions. My guess is that in the long run that will give Montreal a bad reputation around the world and in Hollywood. Tony and Ridley Scott did a feature up here. I told them they were stupid to come here, that they'd have great trouble with the crew. "Sure enough, for the first week of shooting there was some problem with some member of the crew who was not experienced and they lost a week's shooting. They'll never come back here. And they'll spread the word in Hollywood that there are no crews up here, which is not true. There are wonderful crews, but not a lot of them. When you go from $200 million a year to $800 million a year, you are going to have a lot of people working beyond their level of competence. "My suspicion is that the bubble will break, the boom will end, and Montreal will return to a stable position. The boom is good for the overall community and it's finally gotten into government heads that this is good for the economy and jobs and tax revenues, so from that perspective it's nothing but good. "But from the perspective of making Canadiana--totally indigenous projects--it's definitely undermining."
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Much hype accompanied the news that Hollywood star John Travolta was considering shooting his next big-budget project in Montreal later this year. The actor, who's been on a roll since his 1994 comeback in Pulp Fiction, apparently arrived three weeks ago to suss out locations for Battlefield Earth, a $120-million sci-fi epic he's been itching to launch for years.
But not everyone is cheering the burgeoning list of foreign film productions setting up shop in Montreal. Detractors argue that foreign film shoots, with their heftier budgets and big-name stars, draw trained crews away from indigenous film production, substantially driving up costs. Once the Hollywood studios have skipped town, the argument continues, crew expectations are dramatically different, putting additional burdens on local filmmakers who generally operate on sub-shoestring budgets.
Roger Frappier, arguably Quebec's most influential producer and the man behind such landmark films as Pouvoir Intime, Jesus of Montreal, Night Zoo and Cosmos, thinks the foreign shoots are often more of a hindrance than a help.