by Noreen Golfman
Canadian Forum, Apr. 1998
Republished with permission

Finally providing Canadian films proper distribution leads only to another problem: What's to be shown?

Now is the winter of our Canadian content. Federal Heritage Minister Sheila Copps's recently calculated declarations about the need to guarantee exhibition of Canadian films in Canadian theatres immediately roused the queasy sensation that comes from having a long held wish finally granted. As countless Hollywood films have ceaselessly demonstrated, bearing the weight of a fantasy is far easier and more pleasurable than managing the matter of its materialization. What, after all, do you do with your wish when it is granted? Living up to its promise is so very hard to do. Even Canada's preeminent cinematic moralist, Atom Egoyan, disappointingly remarked that Copps's threats to overhaul the nation's film policy could lead to a backlash against enforced routing of the public's theatrical taste. This is the kind of cautious hey-now-wait-a-minute reaction we might be surprised to hear from someone like Egoyan, long an advocate of state-supported industry, but a reaction nonetheless that many Central Canadians probably share. Too bad. Copps should be encouraged to repeat her wish-list, if more forcefully. Moreover, heroic nationalist entrepreneur Robert Lantos of Alliance should speak for more than a few blocks on Yonge Street when he observes that the exhibition of Canadian films isn't really the problem, but that the marketing of his films is. Lantos, if you're listening, you need to get out more.

For the record, only about three per cent of the films watched by Canadians are actually Canadian, a figure so pathetic you'd be inclined to make the whole matter a campaign issue for the Rhinoceros Party. Making sense of why this is so usually leads to the invocation of a holy trinity of problems Canadian movies, particularly in English Canada, are always already doomed by limited distribution, small budgets and depressing themes. Ostensibly, too few Canadians watch low-budget films about suffering and death. The inverse proposition is that wider national exhibition, larger budgets and happier endings would draw larger Canadian audiences to Canadian theatres. In other words, if James Cameron had stayed in Niagara Falls and badgered Telefilm into floating him a few gazillion dollars to make Titanic, we would have had more Canadians watching a Canadian movie than there are life rafts in the world. And anyone who tries to argue that Titanic is as sombre as The Sweet Hereafter does not understand the difference between an iceberg and an icy pond. Titanic is, in the final analysis, all American: a grandly spectacular melodrama morphed from an enormous tragedy, a sentimental hymn to hubris, as immodest in its ambitious nostalgia as Gone with the Wind. We are speaking here of tragedy for dummies.

Is this what we really want? More money for kitschier productions about grandly superficial themes? Surely the flag-happy Can-content-boosting federal Minister doesn't intend to encourage big boys and model boats in overscaled bathtubs, just to ensure that we get the crowds queuing up to buy buckets of rancid popcorn in theatres near us. Perhaps we would all take a firmer position on the whole matter if Copps were clearer about what she does want, or thinks we need, and perhaps if she were resolute about her willingness to resist the arrogantly asinine declarations of Motion Picture Association of America bouncer Jack Valenti, a man clearly suffering from having grown up on an excess of Victor Mature movies. Indeed, we might then all be galvanized to take up a position that had some conviction, encouraged by more than thickly coated ambiguities about our national film policy. It is sometimes difficult to discern what Copps is trying to say when her caucus fellows cut the production studios at the National Film Board and choke the life out of the public broadcaster. But I've come here to encourage Copps, not to dissuade her.

First, it needs to be said that Canadian films do require wider distribution, and let's talk primarily about distribution in this country, before we start dreaming about European markets. The Sweet Hereafter might as well have joined the choirs eternal, because you can't watch this award-winning feature in most places in the country at any time. If Robert Lantos is happy that this Alliance film is being exhibited sufficiently, he should drop his spring vacation plans and take a national tour right now, courtesy of one of those Air Canada planes he rightly bullied into showing Canadian features. He ought to see directly for himself what is and what is not playing at the local Canadian Famous Players or Cineplex Canada or Empire theatrical venue, and then fire his management teams. The Titanic is sinking on almost every large screen in this country and probably will continue to do so long after all the Oscar tickets have been recycled into nacho cartons. If Copps means what she says, and if she means wider exhibition, she should say so loudly enough to burst Valenti's eardrums.

Second, bigger budgets for Canadian films would be pretty, but if we think size matters, we are never going to dismantle the master's marketing machines. The country's film industry needs support, not necessarily concentrated power in the hands of a few critically tested directors, courtesy of Telefilm or some ultimately elitist production fund. One implied consequence of Copps's announcement is that a sizeable film production fund would pass sizeable bucks into the hands of a mere few, thereby cutting down on the number of productions a year and resulting in blockbuster-budget spectacles. It is hard to see an Egoyan, a McDonald, or even a Cronenberg buying into that notion, especially at the expense of their own talent, let alone at the expense of developing film-makers or currently thriving regional centres of production. Nonetheless, an argument circulating in too many well-carpeted towers in this country is that production money is being unwisely deployed in the service of too many low' budget—that is, unglamorous—efforts. Our firm view on this should be let's fund as many of the country's creative artists as we can, encourage diversity of genre and expression and inspire expatriate Canadians and other egomaniacs to launch, sink and soak the Titanic somewhere else.

Third, the matter of those depressing themes. Well, so what? Anyone can do melodrama or broad comedy or special effects for overfed audiences crawling from a six-hour-a-day television habit to a movie house. If Canadians aren't watching Canadian films, either they can't see them at their local theatres or they are utterly unhmiliar with and menaced by anything but Hollywood product. Canadian films have always been made for adults, so no wonder they are often as gloomy and enigmatic as a doomed yellow school bus. If we do not have enough adults in this country willing to watch Canadian features, then we should stop worrying about the whole business of audience altogether and promptly take charge. Copps is right. Just keep showing the stuff. And if Canadians won't eventually turn out to watch Canadian films, well, let's take away their voting rights, revoke their medical insurance and tax them for film production. I mean it. The whole tired matter needs some strategic enforcement, not just tax rebates for American co-productions. In view of free market ideology, a country full of near-empty theatres defiantly projecting Canadian films is about as irrational an idea as denying Titanic an Oscar. So let's do it.

Noreen Golfman teaches English and Film Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland.