Hollywood Slaves are Free at Last

By Ken Hegan
Published: The Georgia Straight, June 2, 2005

In the go-go 1990s, Vancouver surfed a wave of “runaway” Hollywood productions. Taking advantage of the feeble Canadian dollar, TV series and feature films like The X-Files and Free Willy pumped billions into Vancouver’s economy, creating the third-largest film industry in North America.

By the late ’90s, B.C.’s film industry was on fire. Four out of five Vancouverites were choking on secondhand smoke machines. There were so many movie trailers outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, you couldn’t swing a Baldwin brother without slamming Tom Arnold into his lunch truck on the set of his Oscar-overlooked National Lampoon’s Golf Punks.

Cut to the George W. Bush era, when the sinking greenback sent the Canuck buck rocketing. Starting 2003 at US63.4 cents, it finished the year at US77.1, a meteoric 21.6-percent rise. In 2004, the loonie rose again and finished at US83 cents. As a result, producers swiftly fled Vancouver to shoot lower-budget reality TV in the tropics. Americans who stayed were slammed by Yankee patriots back home. Canada’s Consul General in L.A., Colin Robertson, witnessed Alec Baldwin say that any American doing business in Canada is “a traitor”. Robert Duvall told the Toronto Sun that he never wants to shoot another movie in the Great White North: “I prefer not to work in Canada; I prefer to work in my own country. There are better actors down there.” By July 2003, it seemed the only filming in Vancouver was inside Brandi’s Exotic Nightclub, where the security cameras captured Ben Affleck blowing his engagement to Jennifer Lopez.

The news kept getting worse for Vancouverites trying to hang onto the evaporating Hollywood dream. New Mexico and Louisiana introduced whopping new film-production tax incentives (15 percent and 20 percent, respectively) to lure producers to their balmier and suddenly cheaper locales. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed actor-filmmakers Danny DeVito and Clint Eastwood to the California Film Commission. Their high-profile mission: halt the accelerating number of productions leaving California and the U.S.

Meanwhile, Vancouver crews have been scrambling to put Mr. Noodle on the table, while local actors have returned to legit theatre and mascot gigs.

Veteran character actor Gary Jones, who played the “baggage handler” in Homeward Bound II, says: “My livelihood has been deeply affected. All the cheesy MOWs [movies of the week] are gone. You know, the kind starring Morgan Fairchild as a nuclear physicist being stalked by disgruntled janitor/ex–navy SEAL psychopath Gary Busey.” Jones adds, “All I can say to that braying arse Alec Baldwin is, ‘Hope you had fun filming The Edge in Alberta. You know, the Canadian province that your Canadian crew faked to look like Alaska.’ Jerk.”

Vancouver actor Peter New, who gave a memorable performance in A Guy Thing as the crabs-infested “guy in tiki-bar bathroom”, says: “Duvall is right! All the good actors are in L.A.: Jim Carrey, the Sutherlands, Mike Myers, Keanu and Carrie-Anne, Shatner, Tilly, Matthew Perry, Wendy Crewson, Eugene Levy, Tom Cavanagh, Mary Pickford, Eric McCormack, Kim Cattrall, and Conrad Bain.” Casting director Stuart Aikins says, “Half the talent populating the WB network in leads are Canadians, [so] don’t talk to me about who has better actors.” Asked what Canada can do to lure projects back, Aikins says, “I think it’s a natural progression that I hope will induce the Canadian industry to stop feeding its young south of the border and start supporting more independent Canadian cinema.”

“There’s an enormously talented pool of Canadian writers, actors, directors, and technicians who’ve all cut their teeth working on American dreck,” says Vancouver actor Chris Robson (you may remember him as Elizabeth Berkley’s boyfriend in Becoming Dick). “It’s an opportunity for this talent pool to start making their back-burner projects, develop those ideas and start guerrilla filmmaking,” adds Robson, who recently coproduced two short films.

Indeed, B.C.’s independent filmmakers are flourishing, with scores of Vancouver indies making waves in Hollywood. The Corporation, a documentary about the psychopathology of big business, has won 25 awards and, ironically, done huge business for local filmmakers Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan. Hardwood, a short doc by Hubert Davis about his father, former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, was nominated for an Oscar and is airing on PBS. And White Noise, the thriller starring Michael Keaton, was produced in Vancouver by our very own Brightlight Pictures.

Lori Triolo and Sarah Nixey are strong supporters of Vancouver’s burgeoning creative class. They produce the Cold Reading Series, billed as “an exciting live venue where actors are cast on the spot to cold-read brand new scripts”. Triolo is a transplanted New Yorker who fell in love with Vancouver’s mountains and fresh ocean air. She sees the industry dip as “a terrific opportunity for Vancouver artists to channel their Disney-chasing energy into creating their own work”.

Consider Wisegirls, a mob drama by John Meadows. After his screenplay’s Cold Reading Series debut, Meadows became a local hero when he sold the script to Hollywood. The film starred Mira Sorvino and was shot on location in lovely downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. “Close enough,” says Meadows, who is currently writing a romantic comedy set in the Vancouver speed-dating scene.

Though the spotlights have dimmed a little, Hollywood is still using B.C. as a backlot. This summer, watch for Robin Williams in RV, Heather Graham and Alan Cummings in Gray Matters, John Cusack in Martian Child, Samuel L. Jackson in Pacific Air 121, and Jennifer Garner in Catch and Release. And although we miss The X-Files, Vancouver is still clinging onto sci-fi series like The 4400, starring Peter Coyote and Michael Moriarty, and Smallville, starring John “Dukes of Hazzard” Schneider.

To woo back Hollywood heavyweights like Ben, Jen, and the Baldwins, the B.C. government recently raised the tax credit for foreign film productions from 11 percent to 18 percent and to 30 percent for domestic productions—matching the new, higher incentives being offered in Ontario—and just in time for the provincial Liberals’ reelection campaign.

Further sweetening the pot, B.C. film commissioner Susan Croome is hyping B.C. as “A World of Looks” that includes “deserts, volcanoes, glaciers, rainforest, and wild oceans, all in close proximity to a world class production centre” just a three-hour flight from L.A. And in perhaps the greatest incentive of all, Gary Jones says Alec Baldwin can be “filming in the mountains by day, drunk in front of lap dancers by night”.

Ken Hegan is a Vancouver journalist (Rolling Stone, Toro), filmmaker (“William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece”), and man about town. Visit www .kenhegan.com/.

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