ENTERTAINMENT. Cont'd.
Photo:
Martin Short. (AP/Mark J. Terrill)
Posing for disposable cameras and sharing sips of bubbly, Hollywood actors are turning their black-tie charm on the country's often-ignored theatre owners. Michael Keaton, Martin Short and American Pie hunk Chris Klein lit up Show Canada on Saturday, a gathering of 700 directors, producers and exhibitors, hoping to win star-struck promises to show their upcoming Canadian films. The leading men are used to this kind of room-working in the U.S. where production houses require them to air kiss for distribution deals. The more screens they are on, the more Prada they can buy, so in many countries, conventions for theatre owners draw more stars than the Oscars. In Canada, it's taken this long to realize that first, the big names need an invitation, and second, they will come. "Yeah! I like Vancouver!" crooned a tipsy Keaton on a red carpet outside a downtown hotel. "It's got a great vibe, the people are very friendly, I'm happy to be here!" he said before charging into a throng of fans already introduced to a trailer of a movie he shot with local Brightlight Productions. An innovator on the Canadian scene, Brightlight's gala led the industry in a teetery stilleto-heeled step toward sophistication. Keaton joked back and forth with Short, calling him the "favourite son of Canada" who made him feel dumb for not knowing how many provinces the country has. "He made me feel, like, less.
He
made me feel ethnocentric, it was painful really." "That's because you're
uneducated," Short quipped before introducing a preview for Jiminy Glick. In
the comedy produced by Brightlight and Gold Circle Films, Short plays a
red-carpet reporter at the Toronto film fest. This year's Show Canada marked
one of the first attempts at getting film-makers and theatre owners working
together to sell Canadian productions. "If you look at it the way one of the
exhibitors described it, the film-makers are the producers, the distributors
are the wholesalers and the exhibitors are the retailers," said Steve Hegyes
of Brightlight. "In what other business do the producers not talk to the
retailers?" Hegyes said this year, he actually sat down with smaller theatre
owners, who say they can't get their hands on Canadian films because
distributors only bother with big chains. "Now when a distributor tells me I
can't get more screens, I can call this guy directly," he said. "It's amazing
that as an industry we haven't talked before." Michael Hoppe, a film
programmer at Victoria's independent Cinecenta, said the chocolate dipped
strawberries and star treatment is nice, "but it's not going to make me show a
Canadian film just because it's Canadian." He wasn't impressed by the
Brightlight slate, but it had the mainstream gloss Cineplex Odeon is looking
for. "This kind of promotion means I'm more likely to remember the name of
these movies, which is huge," said Robert Wales, a Cineplex vice president. "I
am swamped by hundreds of titles coming out of the U.S. and all over." Many at
the networking meeting credited Telefilm for bringing the national players
together. It is urging directors to stop churning out the "dark little films
Canada is known for," said Earl Hong Tai, Telefilm's Western director.
Instead, the government agency has decided to fund movies with mass-market
appeal that camouflage low-budget challenges. The goal is to increase the
market share of the Canadian box office to five per cent. In the first three
months of 2004, Canuck movies already claimed 5.5 per cent of the national box
office and one, the Barbarian Invasions, even won an Oscar. That one award has
created a sea change among exhibitors Hung Tai said was obvious at the
conference. "It's taken the edge off the risk associated with showing a
Canadian film," he said. "There's just so much buzz around the industry right
now." -Amy Charmachel.
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