WE'RE STILL IN TIGER COUNTRY

TIGER COUNTRY:(SLANG VIETNAM ERA) A place where nothing can be trusted or depended upon....


The first rush of press/blog reactions to the recently issued CRTC report on the state of Canadian television were heady stuff for us creative types.

After years of being whipped by a perfect storm of reduced funding, fewer time slots for drama and a propaganda campaign insisting "Canadians won't watch Canadian programs"; it was heart-warming to learn that somebody inside the Commission had realized the truths we've known and lived with far too long.

In their report, lawyers Laurence Dunbar and Christian LeBlanc, in addition to proving there are still some trustworthy lawyers in the world, had the courage to confirm that the Canadian television industry is predicated on principles that ensure there will never be a real Canadian television industry.

D&L came out firmly opposed to simultaneous transmission and genre protection of specialty channels while fully in support of prime time content quotas and consumer choice in purchasing channels. And while that earns them the gratitude of creative artists, it also makes you wonder:

a) What they were smokin'?

b) Where will the poor shmuck who hired them be working next week?

and

c) Does the law firm they partner in after nobody else will touch them specialize in anything other than lost causes?


It's still unclear if the CRTC will act on any of the report's recommendations or whether it will end up mouldering amid the previous interventions, comments and Royal Commission findings that have championed many of the same things. But I'm fairly certain that's where it's headed.

I hope I'm not overdoing the cynical here, because I'm just being realistic. These things won't happen because...

They can't.

Simultaneous Transmission or Simulcasting has been standard practise as long as there have been TV networks in Canada. And although our guys trumpet their independence while rebranding the imported show with their own logos and colors and promo stylings to make them appear of local vintage; they operate as little more than "per-show" affiliates of the American Nets from which they purchase the broadcasting. Watching CTV or Global or CITY is often no different from catching the feed from the Tribune station in Toledo or Fresno, instead of the crisper version on ABCNBCCBSFOX.

Basically, we're the grindhouse circuit, taking whatever's thrown off the truck and augmenting it with stuff the geeky kid next door makes in his garage.

An additional benefit our nets accrue is the ability to coat-tail on the costly marketing campaigns necessary for launching and maintaining a hit show -- often having to do little more than slap their logos on that material as well.

But the big advantage is the CRTC rule which allows them to substitute Canadian Ads in the commercial breaks, a perk that has made them fortunes.

What the Dunbar/LeBlanc report addresses for the first time is the obvious reality that people making massive commercial profits off shows they pay less to broadcast aren't going to lessen those profits by placing Canadian programming that costs them more to acquire in these lucrative prime-time time-slots.

And on a purely bottom line, "Buy Low Sell High", that's only good business level -- who can blame them?

I'm always amazed by Canadian producers insisting how well they're doing on Saturday nights on Global or CTV or CITY opposite hockey. Because you know that coming in a consistent 2nd or 3rd or 4th in that one horse race is the equivalent of being a lounge act in Vegas, where everybody is either passing through on their way to catch the big show or concentrating on the craps table.

God, American networks don't even program Saturday nights anymore and here, that's the showcase position!


In other moves to back Canadian creatives, the report recommends content quotas in prime time and the elimination of genre protection for specialty cable. The first would see even more of those simulcast slots replaced while the second probably allows Lonestar to follow the History/CSI roadmap and bill itself as a "history" channel or alternate to the Aboriginal Network because of all the Westerns they run.

Let's get this straight. The CRTC can't offer Canadian nets financial assistance in the form of additional commercial breaks and six months later saddle them with fewer cheap shows to exploit and more competition.

It just won't happen.

So why did Dunbar and LeBlanc write this report? I don't know. They had a free summer. They're young and needed the money. They have an uncle who once won a Gemini and never worked again. Maybe all of the above.

What they missed is -- the entire concept of broadcasting as we know it is over.

We're in Tiger Country here.

Think about it. Minutes after a new episode of "Lost" airs in the Eastern time zone, it is available online to anyone anywhere else in the world. Maybe not completely legally available, but it's available. The concept that you can move the CTV simulcast to Tuesday, Friday or opposite hockey is a suicidal choice for either the show owner or the broadcaster or probably both.

And yeah, you could have five versions of Life/Slice/Whatever (given the current CBC schedule, it seems there are already two). But when that programming is about as bargain basement as it gets, will competition in the genre really spur an increased investment in the creative community?

I mean we've already got about 11 sports channels and I defy anybody to either tell them apart or define the cultural contribution of their non-game programming.


Point is -- what this report clarifies more than anything else is just how ill-conceived and protectionist Broadcasting policy has been in Canada; designed not to nurture or present a Canadian perspective to the world -- but to make sure a handful of well connected corporations pocketed a few extra bucks.

And now, when the US networks are already implementing business models that say the future is in downloading and streaming, our protected little fiefdoms have become islands that will soon have no goods to import for resale and nowhere to create their own after paving everything over so the "Etalk" celebrity limos and design show smart cars have someplace to park.

To even enter the download game, our nets need the equivalent of 2-3 original shows per night and that's simply beyond the factory design of plants that have only had to create 2 or 3 per season (at a reduced production run of 13).

I mean, we're here with the raw material if they want to gear up the line. But I'm thinking that might be a long wait.

Face it. Canadian Broadcasters are already done and their future looks even worse.

For starters...

IPTV is a technology currently sweeping Europe and debuting stateside very soon. The acronym stands for Internet Protocol Television which delivers television content and VOIP through a broadband internet connection. I tried it last month in France and it's very cool. Crack a beer. Hit the couch. Watch a show. Send an email or place a VOIP call during commercials. Check out the storm warning crawl by linking directly to the weather satellite and then order the cool boxers Jim Belushi was wearing on "According to Jim" from JC Penny.

The French version of IPTV also has 60 premium Channels not available on their standard broadcast systems -- meaning new players, new markets, new possibilities in a format that will definitely attract new viewers.

Added to this, the Telecoms who own many of our current broadcasters face the double barrelled profit threat of new competitors like Quebecor, who promise to lower rates with increased services and a lawyer from Saskatchewan named Tony Merchant, who has filed a class action suit (join here) to force repayment of Billions allegedly illegally collected from cell users by Bell, Rogers and Telus.

If their corporate owners are looking at competition reducing their income or a divestiture of major assets to repay their customers, how much money do you figure there will be for some edgy little TV show set in Moose Factory?

Nope. As this grizzled vet of the Canadian network wars hunkers Sgt. Rock style in a muddy fox hole dead center of "Tiger Country", my rain-soaked compass is telling me the true way out for Canadian artists is to stop playing this game.

Forget the interventions and the letter campaigns. Forget fighting for funding that mostly goes to somebody else. Forget searching for greener pastures in other countries and start selling your stuff directly to your audience.

Who says your show can't be the foundation of an IPTV channel, an AMAZON UNBOX download stream or an ad supported presence on JOOST, CHIME.TV, SPIRALFROG or one of the dozens of imitators already re-inventing those models?

That's a far brighter future than anything the CRTC might deign to allow -- and we all have better places to be on Saturday nights.

WHEN A MIME FALLS IN THE FOREST...

Marcel Marceau, probably the world's most famous mime, died last night in Paris and will be buried this week in Pere Lachaise Cemetery among people who were a lot noisier in life like Edith Piaf, Chopin and Jim Morrison of The Doors.


I took a class from Marceau once. He was a very funny and generous guy, full of jokes and giggles. And gosh, what can you really say when a mime dies. I mean...









...and that's about it... ;)

THE BURKA

When I was still acting, I was doing a play in London, England. One afternoon, I wandered into Harrods. Their book department included one of the largest magazine displays I’d ever seen and I often dropped by to pick up reading material I'd never encountered before.

This particular afternoon, I stumbled across something far more interesting.

A very wealthy looking Arab guy walked in, followed closely by a woman dressed in the complete burka, veiled and robed so heavily and completely, you could only see her eyes. He said something that I took for “Wait here!” and left her by the magazines as he went off to find a clerk.

He was looking for something apparently hard to find for the clerk had soon taken him deep into the stacks. The woman purused the magazine stand for a moment, looked around to make sure nobody was watching and moved to the Fashion section. Then, making sure she couldn’t be detected, she took the corner of an issue of "Vogue" between two fingers and peeled it back ever so slightly so she could peek inside.

From where I was standing, I could see the utter amazement in her eyes as she stared at the high fashion models visible inside the barely open pages. Taking another glance to make sure she hadn't been seen by her male companion, she cautiously fingered her way onto another page, staring again at images clearly forbidden to her.

A moment later, the guy and the clerk were back, sorting through a number of books, so she had to turn from the magazine and stand around like she wasn’t looking at anything.

As the two men haggled over something or another, I went over, picked up the copy of "Vogue" and stood near the woman, flipped it wide open and slowly turned page after page as if I was studying each photograph in detail, but making sure she could see the pictures.

This went on for about 20 minutes. He glanced at me a couple of times, probably assuming I was gay or some kind of haute couture perv and finally called her over as he bought his book.

I put the magazine back and went back to browsing. A couple of minutes later, they left, with her once again following a few steps behind him. As the woman passed, she turned her eyes toward me with the warmest look I’ve probably ever had from a woman.

I wonder if any of these guys have any idea what’s really going on the heads of their wives, sisters and daughters -- or how much better their marriages and their lives would be if they did.

A TOAST TO JIM SHAW

I've always thought of Jim Shaw as our own version of Al Swearengen, the completely immoral brothel owner of "Deadwood".

Like his fictional counterpart, Jim is wealthy, cunning, manipulative and doesn't mince words. Neither is afraid of throwing his weight around or viciously attacking those who don't see things their way. And both achieved success by owning pretty much the only game in town, a game that was also pretty much rigged in their favor.

That said, there's a thin line between "Bullying" and having a clarity of vision that might give a Jesuit pause. You may not enjoy dealing with somebody who's always on your ass. But sometimes the constant riding and jerking of the chain gets you where he (and maybe you) wanted to be all along.

In the world of "Deadwood", Al Swearengen's robber-baron and feudal warlord attitude is the chaotic spark that leads to civilization and I'm thinking that Jim Shaw's recent salvos at the CTF are the kind of insurgent wake up call we need to get a baseline of creativity back into Canadian television before its too late.

The Writers Guild of Canada sent me a letter this week, suggesting I write the CRTC and much of the immediate world to chastise Jim for suggesting Canadian TV isn't as good as it could be and that the CTF is spending a lot of money on shows most Canadians don't watch.

Normally a firm a supporter of the Guild, I'm not getting with their program this time. Because, quite frankly, Canadian TV isn't as good as it could be and the CTF is spending a lot of money on shows most Canadians don't watch.

Don't get me wrong! I don't begrudge the CBC (or any other broadcaster) getting financed for programming I'll never watch, as long as somebody's watching it -- either in enough numbers to ultimately justify its production or as part of an audience that would have never gotten the programming they want or need without it.

I believe that's what Jim Shaw really wants from the CTF because that would make his customers happy and it might encourage them to purchase more programming, or at least have that option as opposed to getting the same damn thing on 10 different channels.

I believe that's also really what was behind the CTF when it was created.

But I think most of us know that's not how the Fund's being used.

The painful truth is, that an annual infusion of $250 Million for this long should have built some stability in the industry, greater variety of choice and more than a handful of hits by now.

We should all be asking why those things aren't happening, why you can still count the number of current Canadian hit shows without taking off your sox and most importantly why OUR AUDIENCE isn't being served -- instead of lobbying to keep the status quo.

The Fund was founded to support the creation of high-quality and culturally significant programming, to cover the risk gap on shows that might not get made for any number of reasons -- including being "too" Canadian. But now broadcasters regularly include what funding a producer might receive from the CTF in calculating how much they can lower their own contribution to development costs and licensing fees.

The Fund wasn't supposed to replace broadcaster investment. It was put there to encourage niche projects (like "Trailer Park Boys" before it found an audience) as well as enhance productions with higher production values so those shows could find wider (as well as foreign) markets.

Shouldn't we all be asking how so much of that money ended up funding bland MOWs that make up the bulk of programming on Lifetime, or why our broadcasters have so little faith in their own development choices (or staff) that most of their annual 'envelopes' are spent on renewing series that couldn't find an audience of any kind in their initial seasons.

Mr. Shaw's most cogent point for me to date has been this -- "Where is the incentive to produce anything good if you're gifted everything?"

Our current system does not require Canadian broadcasters to base their homegrown programming choices on ratings and their development decisions on filling needs within the Canadian market. If it did, and the CTF were really there to support programs considered culturally valuable but demographically risky, we'd end up with a much broader spectrum of choice -- and work opportunities.

I also get the impression both Jim Shaw and I are being jobbed a little by what feels like an orchestrated outcry against his position. Because he's listed shows he apparently doesn't like, it's said that he wants to be the one who decides what gets made -- and I haven't seen him say that anywhere.

Now, I wouldn't want Jim Shaw's tastes deciding what gets funded any more than I want that job done by you or me. But more than anything, I don't want those choices to be made by faceless bureaucrats through a funding system that isn't accountable for its choices.

And when somebody who has to answer to irate customers that want to know why their cable dollars aren't buying them anything fresh or exciting raises the issue, I get suspicious of the motives behind those telling him to shut up, be happy with the cards he was dealt and to put some more money in the pot.

It's like some other Al Swearengen is running the game.

So, I'm backing Jim Shaw here. Never met the man. Don't know much about him beyond his apparent good taste in Cowboy boots. But he's right!

The system isn't working and the CTF has created a virtual welfare system where a thriving industry once existed. I firmly believe that's all Jim Shaw really wants to change -- and so do I.

A TALE OF TWO ANIMALS

This is my friend Alexandra. Lexie for short.


She's not my dog, but we're pals. She belongs to friends who travel frequently and sail, activities at which she does not excel. So, on those occasions, she stays at my place. I refer to this as "joint-custody". Her owners say she's "sleeping over with the boyfriend".

Lexie is a very well-trained animal.

I'm not.

Therefore, when she's around we do the stuff she's not allowed to do in her properly domesticated home life.

I've always owned or been around dogs, so I long ago learned that they're intelligent, sentient beings capable of many of the interpretive processes and emotions you and I share. I'm sure we don't think or feel in the same way but I'm not prepared to say whose version is the best.

I'll never forget walking her in the woods one afternoon after a week of heavy rain and coming across a massive mud puddle. We shared a look and I swear the same simultaneous thought -- then we dove in to splash around and get absolutely filthy.

It's an amazing feeling to sense you've communicated with another species, getting a window, even for a moment into how they might perceive and relate to the world.

On another walk, Lex and I came across a very bored horse grazing alone in its paddock. The horse took an immediate interest in us and the dog in particular. They sniffed each other, followed one another along the fence line, each making feints and dodges as if wanting to play.

Along with the bales of hay and water that had been left for it, the horse's paddock included a large heavy rubber ball. As we turned to leave, the horse kicked it through the fence rails to us. Lexie corraled it and I threw it back in the paddock. The horse kicked it back to us again.

We spent a long time repeating the process.

If you can understand the thrill of communicating with one species, consider interacting with two, who are also interacting with each other...


This is Michael Vick. Scumbag for short.

Michael used to be an athlete I admired, easily the most exciting player in the NFL and maybe all of professional sport.

Michael will not be playing in the NFL season that opens on Sunday because he's going to jail for participating in dog fighting and killing many of his animals.

If Michael and Lexie had ever met, I'm certain she would have seen him as a creature she should befriend and he'd see her as one he could brutalize, turn into a fighting dog and then enjoy watching as she either tore apart another dog in the fighting ring or was torn apart herself.

If she had survived the ordeal, but not shown the agression that would win her the opportunity to fight to the death again -- Michael would have taken her for a walk in her beloved woods and either hung her from a tree or held her under that mud puddle until she drowned.

A lot of people are wondering how Michael Vick could have thrown away the $130 Million dollars he was being paid to play his sport and his once respected reputation as the new face of the NFL for the transitory thrills of a dog fight.

Others analyse the aggressive, competitive nature and elite status of professional athletes, attempting to unearth the source of Michael's downfall.

The answer to all those questions is simple. Residing in Michael's magnificent athlete's body is the mind of a twisted little fuck.

Something in Michael enjoys seeing other sentient beings suffer. The sight of another creature in agony or desperation gives him a woody. In short, some part of him is just plain evil -- and I'm quite happy that he'll never play football again.

I long ago learned to trust the art not the artist and that many of the people I admired for their work in movies and on television are not the people you want close by in the flesh. But few of them repeatedly sink to the level of depravity that Michael Vick practised.

Talent can buy you incredible privilege, but it also comes with enormous responsibility. Many choose to ignore those responsibilities. It doesn't deminish their talent, but it certainly removes them from the list of those we should emulate.

There are those who claim Michael will be back one day and people will cheer for him again, but I doubt that will happen. In the funny way our world works, he'll do most of his time for gambling, a crime nobody really thinks of as major and not much for the acts which truly sicken most people.

Therefore, the basic concept that if you've done the time you're done with the crime won't come into play here. If Michael isn't seen to be doing time for abdicating his humanity, (as well as making a few bucks off it) then people just aren't going to forgive him.

I'm not a fan of life sentences or eternal damnation, and god knows there are things I wish some people would forgive me for -- but I also believe that you're not totally off the hook until you can convince those people the demons that got you in trouble in the first place have been finally dispatched.

Please, please, please do not click on the link I'm about to post if you are easily shocked or harbor even the slightest homocidal tendencies. But this is what Michael did to his dogs. Forward it to Michael's apologists, the moral relativists who insist there are 'worse' crimes he could've committed and all those other sports fans who can only get a woody from watching guys like Michael play football.

Unlike the whack-jobs of PETA and their ilk, I know there's a difference between us and the other species with which we share this planet. But when we choose to torture and degrade them for sport, we degrade ourselves and any claim we make to being superior.

Perhaps Michael Vick will realize the error of his ways and find a path to redeem himself. I truly hope that ending awaits him. But that achievement won't encourage me to watch him play again and I hope he does both of us the favor of directing his talents elsewhere.

Now excuse me while I go and scratch this silly old dog's belly.

PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES

I've worked in Paris before. Previously, it was for the usual Canadian reasons: tax credits, co-pro requirements, spending money somebody otherwise can't get out of the country. This time it's for all the right reasons -- Paris made sense for the series and my Execs said "Go for it!"

My first visit here was for all the right reasons too. I came to get laid.

I was 18, going to school in London, had a new girlfriend and figured a trip to Paris was the ticket to get the relationship headed in the right direction.

Like all 18 year olds plotting a romantic weekend, I invited all my buddies and their girlfriends to come along. We decided to go to Paris for Bastille Day, July 14, 1968.

1968 was a rough year in France. A student uprising in May had rocked the city. The Sorbonne had been occupied. This was followed by a general strike and a lot of social unrest. I never fully understood the politics. But a bunch of French Filmmakers made great movies about it all (Goddard's "Tout La Bien", Malle's "Milou et Mai", Bertolucci's "The Dreamers").


When you're 18, you don't consider that you're walking into a war zone -- especially when there's a chance you'll get laid.

We caught a train to Dover, a ferry to Calais and another train to the Gare du Nord. We'd booked a cheap hotel and the lady and I checked into a snug 2nd floor room overlooking St. Mark's Square. It was going to be a special night.

As the sun set, we found a sidewalk cafe, blew through a few bottles of wine and set off to watch the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. Despite being warned that the city was a powderkeg, all we saw were the happy throngs partying in the streets. The music, the wine and the soft summer night soon had my girlfriend and I cuddling close and we caught the Metro back to our hotel.

As we climbed the subway steps near St. Mark's Square, I thought I heard another street party. But this one was louder and the only music was a heavy rythmic drumming.

We stepped onto the street facing a phalanx of angry students, many wearing masks and bandanas, others pounding the street with clubs a little longer than baseball bats and just as big around. The Mob blocked the street ahead, so I turned to see if there was a way to go around them and saw a solid line of blue uniformed Paris police in riot helmets carrying large grey shields and rubber truncheons.

We were right between them and the Mob. Instinct told me to move toward the cops (after all, we were tourists who hadn't done anything wrong). No sooner had we begun to move than tear gas cannisters came arcing over the Police line. One hit my girlfriend in the shoulder and bounced to our feet. I moved to kick it away. My soccer skills being what they are, it went right back at the cops.

The Mob cheered and the Police charged. The Girlfriend turtled and I tried to cover her as the Cops ran right over us, one of them making sure we stayed down by whacking me with his truncheon as he passed.

Hey, I was a long-haired and blue-jeaned kid like the students. How was he to know I had innocent bystander status.

Choking on tear gas now, unable to see, we somehow got up and kept moving. A couple more blows and few screamed epithets in French and we were far enough from the chaos to make a run for the hotel.

We were just yards from the entrance when we were tossed back by a sudden rush of air. I didn't hear the explosion until we were on the pavement, glass raining down around us.

The chaos seemed to go into hyper mode. Sirens wailed, bullhorns blasted and people shrieked. When I could see again, I realized the front doors and window of the hotel were gone. We learned later that someone had tossed a concussion grenade into the lobby.

Chipped by the glass, bruised and still choking from the gas, we managed to get into the relative shelter of a shop doorway; where for the next hour we watched a pitched battle between the students and the police. At one point the cops appeared to be getting the upper hand. Then a second mob burst from a sidestreet, out-flanking them and clubbing several down as they attacked from behind.

Soon after, more police and soldiers arrived, the students scattered and things began to quiet. We picked our way to the hotel as our friends rolled in as well. The manager was in his shirt-sleeves, supervising as a couple of Firemen hosed the broken glass and debris from the lobby. He assured us everything was fine upstairs and we went to our rooms.

My girlfriend bandaged our cuts and put some ice on the welt on my back. Then the rest of the evening went pretty much as planned.

Next morning, I woke to hear her talking to someone on the balcony. I figured it was one of our friends but emerged to find a French soldier perched on the turret of a tank lighting her morning Galois and less than happy to discover she had company.

French Guys! Honestly!

Our train left early in the afternoon and we walked to the station passing more tanks and machine gun toting soldiers in the street. We also encountered small groups of students distinguished by their camo gear and red bandanas. No matter what the uniform, the response was universal; a dismissive look to the guys and an appreciative one accompanied by a wink or whistle to the ladies.

I took it as a sign that Paris was quickly getting back to normal.

FULL MOON IN PARIS

Man, I love this town!

I'm here for two days, shooting more stuff I can't talk about yet. And while the days preceeding have been filled with all the complications and headaches that bedevil any production that's going on location; a couple of hours of this city erases all that and reminds you of how special it is just to be allowed to experience one of the best places on earth.


I'm convinced that every great city in the world, whatever their individual charms and personalities, secretly wants to be Paris. Maybe that's just a result of coming from Toronto, a city which has failed so miserably at its "World Class City" aspirations by constantly falling back on its Presbyterian roots, Family Compact way of doing business and patented exclusionary paternalism.

This year's tourist logo for Toronto was "Come for the Fun -- Be the First!"

The secret to Paris is simple. It's open and everybody's welcome to the party. I'm sure it has all the problems of any large city. But you get the feeling that Parisians don't let them interfere with their primary pursuit -- enjoying life.

There was a full moon here tonight and slightly jet-lagged, my DOP and I went out to embrace an almost perfect Summer evening. Within minutes, we'd blended into the throngs along the Champs Elysse, walking from L'Arc de Triomphe to the river.

You don't walk around most North American cities at night. Even Toronto, which once boasted such a lifestyle choice, has pretty much lost its charm in that department.

The crowd was diverse in all demographic categories. Families with toddlers mingling with Teens on the prowl, tourists, shoppers and people watchers jamming the cafes.

I've developed a theory that the seating arrangements in street cafes are identical to that of strip joints. The first row is for the devout voyeurs, the second holds those who want to appear slightly more sophisticated and the back is for the ones who just came for the atmosphere and the drinks.

I'd heard a lot about the Islamification of France before I arrived and while there were a few Burkas passing, I also noticed a number of young Arab women competing quite ably with the always striking contingent of French femininity. That's another one of Paris' charms -- the opportunity to shuck the expected and just be who you are.

All around us, people shopped or patronized vendors selling mountains of fresh fruit, candy and chocolates. There was a crush of people going to the Cinema, dressed for the occasion and appearing eager to buy tickets.

Each of the 4-5 screen multiplexes featured one North American Summer blockbuster, the balance of the screens taken up by French, Italian or British films I'd never heard of. And several cinemas were only showing French features.

Like the lost street culture of Toronto, they reminded me of the lost opportunity that once was Canadian film and an insight I'd had in New York 20 years ago -- that my own country did not yet possess the corporate courage or government will to build its own culture. I mean, why bother when you could make an easy living at less risk simply by coat-tailing American entrepreneurs.

Walking now amid a vibrant culture Canadians fought two wars to save, I wondered how we had the guts for that, but not the fortitude for this.

Bringing that further home is the method I'm using to post what you're reading. I'm flopped on the bed in my hotel room, wireless keyboard linked to the 40" plasma screen on the wall. I could be watching TV on it, gaming or viewing a recently released film. But the internet is also delivered on TV here -- something we'd have in Canada if the CRTC wasn't so busy pimping out the Canadian public for the benefit of our telecoms and broadcasters.

But back to the night...

Our goal for the evening was to film a Paris neighborhood for a dying friend, in the hope that seeing the streets and sights of her childhood might encourage her flame to flicker a little longer.

It was a part of the city I'd never been. But working from Google Maps and remembered anecdotes, we pieced together the locales that helped make her who she is and filmed them. Amid the world history that is memorialized everywhere here, it was a poignant reminder of the more important human stories that play out in any city every day.

I'll let you know if the plan works...

After shooting, we had a great meal in an open air cafe with a plasma screen hanging from the street awning. No different from any of Paris' red draped sidewalk cafes, it turned out to be a sports bar, playing Soccer and Rugby accompanied by cranky waiters, wine that's never seen a cork and the "Plat du Jour" standing in for Chicken wings.

An hour later, we were hanging our camcorder out a taxi window after convincing the driver to careen (as if that's hard) through the Alma Tunnel so we could experience Princess Di's last ride.

Yes, there's nothing like Paris to bring out the understated sophistication and elegance for which I'm widely known.

FAME

I've never really understood the cult of celebrity; the need to collect autographs, have your picture taken with somebody you don't actually know or acquire a piece of ephemera once possessed, touched or casually noticed by somebody famous.

When I was acting, I'd often be accosted after a show to sign somebody's program or pose for a picture with my arm around their mom or girlfriend. Some fans went further, asking for small momentoes like the pen I was using to sign my name. After a while I took to buying them in bulk to make sure I had one left over for writing in my journal on the bus ride home.

The sharing went the other way too. I did a long run playing a German SS officer in one show and by the final curtain had amassed a small collection of Nazi paraphernalia delivered with appreciative notes by some seriously misguided theatre patrons.

And there were always the cards with phone numbers, polaroids or quite professionally produced "glamor" shots -- all from women (and the occassional guy) seeking an intimate moment with somebody who didn't bear the slightest resemblance to the stage character that had somehow pushed the right buttons for them.

I had a director friend at the time who shot interviews with famous Hollywood personalities (past and present) for a Canadian educational channel. He used to take a still camera to his shoots and would approach the interview subject afterward. Inevitably, they prepared to have their picture taken with him. Instead, he'd hand over the camera and ask them to take a picture of him.

They all loved that and he ended up with a collection of portraits he'd hand around at parties. "This is the picture Jimmy Stewart took of me. This one's by Hitchcock. That's by Mae West."

On one level, it was way better than the wooden shots you see at an Italian restaurant or car dealership that could just as easily be the fan with his arm around a cardboard cutout -- on another level -- I still didn't get it.

Anyway...

Last week, a member of my crew turned up one morning with a web search result outing a romantic entanglement involving yours truly and somebody quite famous. Neither one of us was at all famous at the time of our entanglement but that didn't matter to the crew member -- or, as the morning progressed, a growing number of the crew.

By lunch I was inundated by requests for details, anecdotes, some little gem they could take home with them -- to do what with I can't imagine. Not being the kind to kiss and tell, I just allowed that she's a very nice lady, we're still friends and that was that.

But that wasn't good enough and by day's end my tight-lipped approach to the subject was being taken as a personal insult. In this era of endless celebrity detail, how could I possibly keep any of this from them.

I have a handful of friends who've remarked that one of the reasons they like hanging with me is that I don't treat them any differently than they were treated before their fame arrived. I think that's because I've been semi-famous at times myself and the plain fact is you're not any different from who you were the day before except that a few more people seem to know who you are.

And I got a great lesson in celebrity when I was working in Australia. I went from a society here that was obsessed with celebrity to one there that was absolutely identical -- except the names of the celebrities were different -- and I'd never heard of any of them.

Their stars had local TV shows, played Rugby and Cricket, or had made a fortune harvesting Cane Toads. I didn't know the faces, didn't recognize the names, didn't get the puns or plays on words in the headlines, didn't understand the jokes.

It was like changing high schools in mid-term and having to re-learn which ones were the cool kids, the jocks and the drama queens.

A few months after my arrival, the Golden Globes were on television and I tuned them in to escape yet another night of "Home and Away" or Rugby. But because of the nature of the film distribution system and the presenters on Awards shows, I wasn't aware of half the movies and had no clue to the identities of the various tuxedoed newbies and starlets the crowd seemed enamored by.

It was like attending a Rotary roast in a town you'd never visited before.

By the time I got back to the Northern hemisphere, most of the celebrities I was familiar with had run their course, replaced by a new set with names and faces I also didn't know. It made me wonder even more why any of us even bother trying to keep up.

As our shoot day drew to a close and most of the crew had stopped talking to me, I was setting up a shot with the DOP, the two of us taking turns peeking through a camera perched on top of a truck.

"So, were you really with ----?" he asked. I nodded. "What was it like?"

It was a complicated shot and I needed to keep him as an ally.

"What did you and your wife do last night?" I asked.

He shrugged. "She told me how she liked things loaded in the dishwasher and then we went shopping for shoes."

"It was like that." I said.

And it was.

I'M ALMOST BACK

Sorry for the long silence but we've been shooting a pilot. My first time producing, writing AND directing. Tap dancing must be next -- wait, that's how we got the financing...

Anyway. It looks good. I like it. The backers are ecstatic. We await the official verdict. Lots of stories, pix and clips once the cone of silence is lifted.

Off to Paris next week to shoot something else, but will drop in a few posts I've been scribbling in the moments of downtime.

And I can't thank the likes of Will, Bill, DMC, Alex, Riddley and the others who've kept me far more entertained and informed than the conventional media about what's been going on while I've been in the shoot cocoon.

This world really is the future. I hope I can repay you in kind.

CONSIDER THE NUMBERS

Within show business, especially Canadian show business, and most especially within the briefs submitted to regulators by established production companies and broadcasters, it's fashionable to bemoan the difficulties of making a profit.

Audiences and box office numbers are always fickle, the landscape is always changing, somehow befuddling the media conglomerates and the journalists who write for their newspapers and magazines as to how movie and television shows will ever survive let alone meet the outrageous demands of those who create the entertainment being marketed.

"Can't these people just be happy doing what they love? How many of us are that lucky?"

So, on a day when Tom Hanks and his producing partners launch a lawsuit against a distributor who is claiming "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" still hasn't made a profit...

Budget: $5 Million
Prints and Advertising: $19 Million
Worldwide Gross: $354 Million
Funds remitted to partners: $0

...please give a listen to voices within the industry you've probably never heard, clearly explaining how the corporate spin works. If they'll fuck Tom Hanks, what do you think they're doing to people without a publicist.

THE MOMENT APPROACHES

I've always been intrigued by the concept of self-awareness, the ability to step back in the midst of a special moment and not only see its uniqueness, but understand how it fits into your life as a whole. What does it feel like when you know you've reached your peak? Do you comprehend on some level that nothing you do again will ever be this good? Is there an instant where you feel complete satisfaction or know that you will never achieve what you've always dreamed of accomplishing?

How many of us, while focused on reaching our own particular goals, take a second to consider the ramifications of what we're doing to achieve them, who's being hurt or taught a life lesson by our actions? Do any of us see exactly how the paths we take impact on even ourselves?

Saturday night, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hit home run #755 equaling the Hank Aaron record that has stood for 31 years. Sometime tonight or in the next few days, he will hit #756 achieving a record he's been pursuing all his life.

A lot of people want to see Barry break the home run record. A lot of people don't. That's because Barry has been accused of using steroids to achieve his dream. He's juiced. He's found an unfair edge. He's a cheater with no regard for his game, its fans or anything save his own ego.

Horseshit!

I've been a Bonds fan all of his career. When he was young, he was explosive and acrobatic maturing over the years into a power hitter with the sweetest swing in baseball.

If Barry Bonds used steroids to accomplish what he is about to accomplish, I don't really have a problem with it. It's his body and if he wants to wreck it, that's pretty much his business. On a certain level, it's no different than the guys I've been admiring this week on the "X" Games literally risking their lives for their sport and its rewards.

On other levels, he doesn't have an unaccountable right to that kind of behavior -- and I'll get to that in a minute. But speaking as someone who has played and loved baseball all my life, I find the hypocracy of the Baseball establishment, politicians, sports media and fans commenting on Bonds more repugnant than whether or not Barry cheated.

You see, Baseball knew all along that many of its players were using steroids. Coaches, Managers and Trainers knew. Owners knew. The Players Association knew and the Sportswriters knew. They’ll all deny it now, but they couldn’t have not known and still have been doing their jobs. The obvious results of steroid use was staring them in the face season after suddenly musclebound season.

The reason nobody did anything is twofold. First – Baseball has always embraced and silently condoned cheating. It’s an acceptable part of the game. Benches make a practise of stealing signs from the opposing team. It’s okay to drill a batter with a pitch to send the message that you don’t like something he or a teammate has done to beat you. Bats are corked. Balls are scuffed. Double plays broken by sliding with your cleats up or made without tagging the lead runner or touching the bag.

There are former players still wringing Gaylord Perry’s spit out of their jerseys. He writes a book about how much he cheated (“Me and the Spitter”) and resides in the Hall of Fame, while radio sports jocks debate Bonds worthiness of sharing a nearby plaque.

The second reason is the nature of steroids themselves. I’m no expert, but I’ve had some experience with them. And while the Media and Dick Pound of the World Anti-Doping Agency make blanket condemnation, most people remain unaware of just how broad that family of pharmaceuticals actually is. Indeed, there are steroids banned in North America which are condoned for use by sports federations in Europe – and vice versa.

When I was working in Australia, we flew in supplements for our stunt players which required reams of regulatory paper to import, yet were purchased over the counter and without a prescription in LA. Visit any GNC in America and you’ll find products banned by their Canadian stores. It’s quite plausible that an athlete using a particular substance can be legal or illegal simply on the basis of geography.

According to Jose Canseco, hardly the most reliable source on the subject, yet far more honest than most in Baseball; 85% of players in his era were juiced. Even if Jose is only half right (and allowing home runs to bounce off your head and sleeping with Madonna can do that to a guy) it means that Barry Bonds and any other “clean” player in Major League Baseball was facing 2-3 pitchers per week (or even per game) who were juicing. A few times a week, he was trying to outrun the throw from a pumped up Fielder who had suddenly grown a gun for an arm.

In my view, Baseball allowed an environment to develop where drugs clearly gave some Players an advantage, so those who weren’t juicing had no choice but to get with the program or wave good-bye to their careers. If Barry Bonds started jamming a syringe in his butt, was he cheating or simply trying to level the playing field in a sport that was doing nothing to protect those who played clean?

You have to wonder if Baseball’s complacency robbed us of the full enjoyment of unknown talents by allowing lesser players to “cheat” their way to the top.


Much of what I’ve heard during this assault on the most venerated Baseball record reflects a desire by some to put an asterisk (*) next to Barry’s achievement so future readers of the record book know it is a diminished victory. It would be like the one they put next to Roger Maris’ name when he out-homered Babe Ruth, because he did it in more than the 154 games that made up a season in the Bambino’s time.

I’ve never really understood Baseball’s obsession with the sanctity of records in a game that changes exponentially on a regular basis. Would the Babe have hit 60 Homers if he’d had to endure the transcontinental travel, day games after night games and other rigors of a modern athlete? How would he have fared under the intense media scrutiny Bonds has had to deal with for the last few months?

Something tells me, he’d have been imbibing more than Beer and Hotdogs.

Every time I hear some Baseball geek quote stats I wonder if Ty Cobb (who once murdered a man) ever got a homer by sauntering up to a pitcher at batting practice and giving him the choice between tossing a fat hanging curve and extensive dental work. I wonder if Mickey Mantle ever invited some corn-fed rookie to his watering hole in Manhattan the night before a game for a couple of boilermakers that wouldn’t wear off til sometime in the 4th inning.

To paraphrase Churchill’s quote that Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the others. Records are a poor way of comparing players, but it’s the best one we’ve got. Overall, Records reflect the era in which they were set and little more. They can’t be so sacrosanct that we diminish our enjoyment of the game or need to find a way to asterisk Players we don’t like for one reason or another.

If people need a villain in this piece, I nominate MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. Bud was present to see Barry slug #755, looking on glumly, hands firmly jammed in his pants as Barry circled the bases. It might be that he was trying not to show his appreciation of the moment. It might be that he was desperately searching for his testicles.

Instead of offering a long overdue “Mea Culpa” on behalf of all in Baseball for what’s gone on, Bud has stood by and let the media hounds and politicians savage one of his players (albeit an apparently dislikable one) at will. After the game he issued a press Release which read in part…

“…out of respect for the tradition of the game, the magnitude of the record and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty, either I or a representative of my office will attend the next few games and make every attempt to observe the breaking of the all-time home run record."

How's that for an understated "Way to go, Slugger!"?

Bud then promptly announced he wouldn’t be attending the next few Giants games and failed to acknowledge that Clay Hensley, the San Diego Padres pitcher who served up #755 had been suspended for steroid use in 2005. In other words, the Commissioner and many others were rooting for a convicted “Cheat” over a Player merely suspected of doing something wrong.

Years ago, I did a show with NFL star Lyle Alzado after he became one of the first professional athletes to admit to steroid use; usage he claimed caused the brain cancer that would eventually take his life. While his doctors never shared that diagnosis, Lyle was completely convinced the same drugs which had prolonged his career also shortened his life.

The true victims of steroid use are not professional athletes who should know better, but the high school kids shooting up in the vain hope of winning a college scholarship. Bud and his buddies were in the position to make a difference to those kids, but they did nothing, and now they are praying that Barry Bonds will take the fall for their failings.

As for Barry Bonds…


When he crossed the plate, officially scoring #755, his son Nikolai was the first person in a Giants uniform to embrace him. I hope for both their sakes that Barry does not suffer Lyle Alzado’s fate and lives to see his son grow and achieve his own dreams. But that may have been put at risk by the way he may have chosen to reach a record that will inevitably be surpassed.

I hope he has the awareness to consider how this moment fits in his life and how much it really means when the moment has passed.

CRTC SUBMISSION

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments regarding the CRTC Task Force report on the Canadian Television Fund.

Many of us working within the Canadian TV industry welcomed your announcement of this long overdue and much needed re-assessment of the Fund’s administration and its ultimate goals.

That said, I must express my own disappointment that the Commission chose to follow a review process conducted out of public view and without the participation of directly affected stakeholders such as the artistic community of writers, directors and actors working in the industry, as well as the group who’s interests the Commission is specifically obliged and mandated to protect – the owner of the public airwaves – the Audience - the Canadian public.

Compounding this oversight, which has clearly skewed the Task Force Report, the recommendations do not include a single piece of supporting evidence justifying their inclusion.

Further abusing any semblance of a democratic process, the Commission has rejected utilizing these recommendations as the basis for a full public hearing to openly assess the Fund and allow dissenting opinions or other options to be heard. Instead, the Commission has chosen to proscribe a very short 30 day window for interested Canadians to respond – in writing.

This appears to contradict the clear promise made by Commission Chair Konrad von Finckenstein that the regulator “…should be guided by the following four principles: transparency, fairness, predictability, and timeliness."

Okay, I’ll give you points for timeliness. But your actions belie any acceptable definition of transparency and fairness.

Perhaps I should also congratulate you on predictability, for the CRTC continues its long tradition of protecting the corporate interests of Canadian production entities and broadcast networks over the needs of all others affected by your policies and rulings.

You also continue a tradition of basing policy and regulatory rulings on non-existent myths of a struggling industry shackled by an abundance of second rate Canadian talent.

In 1999, the Commission dealt a body blow to the indigenous Canadian television industry in allowing Canadian Broadcasters to meet their content quotas with cheaply produced reality and information style programming. In the ensuing 8 years, the once vibrant and growing production of Canadian drama and comedy has been reduced to 10% of its former output.

Thousands of Canadian jobs were lost. Thousands of Canadian artists were forced to leave the country in order to continue their careers. And Millions of dollars that might have been earned by the domestic distribution and foreign export of a unique and definable Canadian cultural product never materialized.

It would now seem that in considering the implementation of a split Fund that would make more Canadian tax dollars available to foreign artists under an 8/10 content rule, the Commission intends to further reduce the opportunities for Canadians to participate in what remains of their own industry and additionally reduce the exposure of what is Canadian to audiences at home and abroad.

The downward spiral of Canadian television drama was immediately clear to former CRTC Chair Charles Dalphen who, in a speech delivered on November 6th, 2002 to the members of ACTRA said:

"I believe we have a common goal: a healthy and distinctive Canadian broadcasting system that makes the fullest use of all the great creative talent that we have in this country. And let me emphasize that I do mean all the talent."

But rather than listen to Canadian artists, the CRTC of that time chose to side with Broadcasters crying poverty and the need for assistance in finding an audience.

I beg you not to continue this Broadcast centric view of what will create a vibrant and healthy Canadian television industry. For if you continue on the path you have been following for most of the last decade; if you do not begin to listen to others, there will be no need for a CRTC in another 8 years, because there won’t be an industry in need of regulation.

Allow me to address the myths on which you have based your regulatory policies…

CANADIAN WRITERS AND DIRECTORS AND ACTORS AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH

In the late 1980’s, Paramount Pictures of Los Angeles planted a production in Toronto entitled “Friday the 13th”. While its content might be beneath the interest of those who achieve the status of CRTC Commissioners, it had a vast worldwide audience during its three season original run of 74 episodes. It remains in very profitable distribution twenty years later.

I (a Canadian) was head writer of the series and additionally in charge of hiring the other writers we used.

To meet Canadian content regulations of the time, a 50/50 rule was followed during the first season. That meant that 50% of the episodes were written by Canadians and 50% by Americans. The same percentages applied to directors. Two of our three lead actors were Canadian and the majority of guest artists were American.

By the second season, 75% of the scripts were written by Canadians and the percentages of Canadian directors and guest artists were increasing.

By the conclusion of the third season, the vast majority of all our writers, directors and actors were Canadian. That was a conscious corporate decision made by Paramount Pictures, not as a way of furthering Canadian culture or to save money, but to make greater profits because the quality of the product provided by Canadian artists equaled or exceeded the product delivered by the available pool of American talent.

As a result of their expose on this series, a large number of Canadian writers, directors and actors entered into development deals for new programming from American networks and producers or launched successful international careers.

In the early 1990’s, I served as head writer and producer of the CBS television series “Top Cops” – once again, a series I doubt would draw the viewing interest of any member of the CRTC. But for four seasons and 96 episodes, it remained one of the most popular programs on CBS. At times it achieved as much as a 26 share – meaning one quarter of the available audience, an audience equaling the entire Canadian population of the time, was watching that series.

“Top Cops” was American in content. But 100% of the writers, directors and actors used on the series were Canadian. The series has been distributed in hundreds of countries and remains popular in Canada today.

So popular, in fact, that the CanWest system has broadcast it on several of their specialty channels, 8 times a week for three full seasons.

As a result of their expose on this series, a large number of Canadian writers, directors and actors entered into development deals for new programming from American networks and producers or launched successful international careers.

At this moment, three of the most popular programs in the USA and Canada, “House”, “Bones” and “ER” are show run (written and produced) by Canadians. Canadian writers and actors once employed by Canadian series now make up a significant percentage of all American prime time programming. Yet, according to our networks and production entities, they aren’t quite good enough to work in their own country.

The Commission might be interested in contacting some of these internationally recognized Canadian artists, now working elsewhere, to find out how often they are approached by Canadian networks and production entities to create Canadian programming. You will be surprised at how seldom that occurs.

How did my own career fare as a result of the above mentioned titles? Over the last 20 years, I’ve had dozens of development deals that resulted in successful and profitable programming from American studios and networks. I’ve worked on programming produced in Europe and Australia.

How many development deals have I been offered in Canada? One.

Of further interest to this discussion is that this single deal received CTF financing and was cancelled at the absolute last stage of development. And it was cancelled because the Canadian network executive in charge did not feel that Canadian actors could be found who were “good enough”.

Because of the diversity built into the script, that meant this particular network executive felt they could not find two black Canadian actors who were “good enough”, one Asian actor who was “good enough”, one South Asian actor who was “good enough”, one Hispanic actor “good enough” or one actor over the age of 50 who was “good enough”.

Shortly after this cancellation, one of the actors we’d attached to the project was offered a continuing role on the popular American series “24”.

If the CRTC intends to favor the 8/10 rule change, work opportunities for Canadian artists will decrease, as will the opportunities for the thousands of future artists currently studying film and television arts in Canadian Universities, Community Colleges and film schools.

If these people have no future, why are we training them? And why are Canadian taxpayers paying the freight for those costs as well as subsidizing production that will fund the graduates of foreign film schools instead of their own children?

What we are dealing with here is not a lack of marketable talent, but a failure of the entrepreneurial ability of Corporate Canadians to develop, finance and market this talent to the world.

Which brings us to the second myth…

CANADIAN PRODUCTION ENTITIES AND NETWORKS NEED TAXPAYER SUPPORT

While Canadian Broadcasters continue to cry poor and request additional assistance from Canadian taxpayers to produce programming “nobody watches”, their own numbers contradict this position.

From Statscan July 4, 2007

Ad revenue for the whole Canadian TV industry rose 7.6% to $3.3 billion, while subscription revenues jumped 11.3% to $1.6 billion.

Specialty television made $447.8 million in profits before interest and taxes, slightly less than the $449.2 million they earned in 2005. However, the segment's 22.2% profit margin was the second best recorded in 10 years.

Private conventional television broadcasters reported revenues of $2.2 billion in 2006, which is unchanged from the previous year. This segment still ranked first in terms of revenues, but the gap between it and the specialty television segment has closed. Advertising sales accounted for almost 92% of private conventional television revenues.

On the other hand, specialty television revenues increased 11.2% to just over $2 billion. This segment's advertising revenues jumped 14.7% to $900 million, while its subscription revenues totaled $1.1 billion, 8.9% more than in the previous year, say the Statscan numbers.

The pay television segment, however, had the strongest growth in 2006, with revenues climbing 17.7% to $482.3 million. This is largely due to the growing popularity of video-on-demand and pay-per-view. Revenues from those services soared 41% to $157.4 million in 2006. For a fifth consecutive year, the pay television segment had the best profit margin of the industry, generating for its owners more than 25 cents in profits before interest and taxes for every dollar of revenue.

After falling 5.2% in 2005, revenues for the public and non-profit television segment (CBC, TVO, et al) rose 15.6% in 2006 to $1.4 billion. The resumption of activities in the National Hockey League had a positive effect on advertising revenues, which climbed 44.2% to $351.1 million.

Okay, so Canadian Broadcasters are doing well, but they’d like to do better. Who wouldn’t? But it would seem clear given this and the recent Billion dollar mergers involving CTV/CHUM and CanWest/Alliance that Canadian taxpayers don’t really need to be on the hook to support 8/10 programming, if the broadcasters want to pursue that production model.

And perhaps its time to take a hard look at what our Country’s production entities are actually earning as well.

A number of years ago, I was involved in a dispute over the reporting of distribution earnings and audit procedures with a Canadian production entity. In pursuing additional sources of information, we attempted to access reports submitted by the producer to Telefilm Canada.

Because Telefilm is a Crown corporation, much of that information remains confidential and is not accessible by anyone questioning the financial reports they are receiving from Canadian production companies.

Were the Writers Guild of Canada, the Directors Guild of Canada or our performers’ Guild, ACTRA, allowed to discuss the concept of whether 8/10 programming will actually benefit Canadian producers in an open hearing on justifying such a rule change, you would learn that there is a very long history of these Guilds questioning the financial reporting and audits provided to them.

As the forensic accountants in my own case commented in assessing the material in question, “Where are the Government agencies here? How are they accepting these numbers as accurate?”

Perhaps we're not getting the same numbers...

During a libel trial between plaintiff Sullivan Entertainment Group and the original rights holders of the “Anne of Green Gables” franchise, assessed in favor of the defendants by Ontario Superior Court Justice J. MacFarland on January 19, 2004, this issue was of paramount importance.

As reported by the Globe and Mail during the trial:

“On Friday, the court heard testimony that Sullivan Entertainment used two systems of accounting: One for Telefilm Canada and other equity investors in its television productions “Anne of green Gables” and “Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel”, and another for the Montgomery heirs. The first shows profits, the second losses…”

Motion picture and television accounting and the business practices defined by the terms “industry standards” have long caused great contention and litigation within the industry.

As recently as this week, Writers Guild of America negotiator John Bowman stated the following in his opening remarks to negotiations between the Guild and the American Motion Picture Producers and Television Producers.

“First of all, I want to congratulate our corporate partners at CBS, Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, and NBC-Universal on what appears to be another great year for entertainment revenues and profits. Box office is up, and broadcasters are getting ad rate increases across the board, driven largely by digital content created by many of the people in this room. We are all of us very fortunate to be working in an industry that is thriving. It is thriving not only because of the content created by members of the DGA, SAG, AFTRA, and the WGA, but also because the CEOs of these companies are proving to be extremely adept at finding ways to monetize the Internet and other new technologies.

There is a real disconnect, however, between what the companies are reporting to Wall Street and what they’re saying to the talent community. Investors are hearing about the changing landscape in entertainment and exciting new markets to exploit. In contrast, the AMPTP communicates nothing but problems to the Writers Guild. Problems like-and this was mentioned by AMPTP at a recent press conference-ad skipping, even though NBC Universal had just announced a one billion dollar DVR deal. And while WGA member revenues have not kept pace with industry growth-we are a line item that is definitely under control-the companies balk at giving us a fair and reasonable share of the industry’s success.”

If the CRTC wishes to support 8/10 content, you must provide proof that those who would benefit can supply documented figures that they are financially hampered by 10/10 content; figures which can be substantiated by an independent and unbiased source who has access to those numbers, such as Telefilm Canada.

In closing, let me say that there are a myriad of other options which might do more than watering down the 8/10 rule to create a successful Canadian television industry. There are hundreds of creative artists who, through their own experiences in creating successful Canadian drama could be supplying the Commission with their knowledge, expertise and “creativity”.

Yet we are consistently ignored and marginalized by the CRTC. No matter how often we’ve been right in the past, we are either not included or dismissed in the next discussion, while the industry on which we depend for employment continues to dissolve around us.

In speaking to the 2007 Broadcast Invitation Summit on June 26, CRTC , Chairman von Finckenstein stated:

“I think this is just the right time for us to convene here at this first Broadcasting Summit. And I’m very pleased when I look around and see that all the 'RIGHT' people are here.”

Mr. Chairman, the creative community of the country was not there, nor were representatives of your mandated constituency -- the public.

Okay, so we’re the “WRONG” people.

But you’ve been listening to the “right” people for a very long time and Canadians are no longer telling their stories to either themselves or the rest of the world.

Please do proceed with a revamp of the CTF, but please make sure that all Canadian voices are heard in the process and that they are all required to provide evidence for their claims.

Yours truly,

Jim Henshaw

Lucy! Ju Gots Some Splainin' To Do...!

My recent comments on the CRTC have been turning up all over the place. Gawd! Epstein publishes one errant email and all of a sudden I'm the screenwriter's Che Guevara...

But following the links referring here as a result has been interesting and educational, with a lot of traffic coming from a blog and website I wasn't familiar with. It's called pulpanddagger.com an offshoot of The Great Canadian Guide to the Movies and TV which featured an interesting assessment of my character and career.

It reads as follows:

"So what's my point? I dunno. You tell me.

It's just there's a feeling that a lot of Canadian artists bemoan the lack of support and enthusiasm they receive from the public...even as they are often the worst practitioners of national pride. At Canadian filmmaker Jim Henshaw's blog, he makes some good points in an earlier blog (Sunday, April 15, 2007 "A NATION OF AMNESIACS") about Canadians having amnesia about their own history, and angrily denouncing Canadian executives who were cool to his proposal for an uber-Canadian movie. Yet the joke is, if you look through Henshaw's cv, he's spent most of the last thirty years working on movies and TV shows that pretended they were American. In other words, he's spent decades contributing to that very amnesia -- a climate that marginalizes Canada and Canadian culture -- then is surprised when he's having trouble drumming up support for his Canadian project!

(Okay, I have a certain sympathy for Henshaw -- long ago Henshaw wrote and starred in a very Canadian comedy called A Sweeter Song, and for that alone he deserves kudos. In fact, Henshaw is presumably one of those embittered cultural soldiers that have accrued over the years. A guy who got tired of banging his head against a wall, and so decided it was easier to sell out than keep fighting. So I do have sympathy -- 'course, Henshaw also wrote the episode of Friday: the Thirteenth: the Series, "My Wife as a Dog", about which the less said, the better)."

Well, accurate factually (and thanks for the compliments "Pulp and Dagger") but I think the essence of me has escaped you, much like it escapes most people who search for the meaning of what it is to be Canadian by expecting to see it constantly exhibited and championed in the work of this country's artists.

The truth is that few if any of us ever aspired to be "Captain Canada", wrap ourselves in the flag or spend our careers writing about the lonliness of Maple Sugar tappers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

We're just writing or otherwise creating what comes from inside us, and while that's shaped (as we are) by where we live, I don't think any of us are consciously trying to speak with a Canadian accent. We're simply trying to tell our stories to anyone who wants to listen and will hopefully pay for them.

I grew up on the prairies and love this country, and while I've been over most of it, including nameless places well North of the Arctic Circle, I've never been East of Quebec City --and special as I'm sure it is, don't have any desire to go. There are other countries and cultures on my list that have a far greater priority -- for reasons that are my own. I don't think that makes me less a Canadian.

As a teenager I was with a band that opened for "The Guess Who", "Mashmakhan" and "Crowbar". But I mostly listened to Dylan, Hendrix and Zeppelin. Was I a cultural traitor even then? Is some kid today who likes Shakira more than Avril Lavigne betraying his or her culture?

And I hate the kind of attitude that suggests an artist who's left this country (usually to work with Americans) has "sold out". I don't consider Robbie Robertson, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers or James Cameron "sell-outs". They're guys who went where their hearts told them they could best realize their dreams.

Y'know, it's interesting that we seem to be okay with calling people who work on US TV shows "sell-outs" when we would never use that term to describe a Canadian actor choosing to work at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in London, or a Canadian tenor taking off to perform at La Scala in Milan. How come Leonard Cohen isn't taken to task for spending most of his life in hedonistic bliss at the Chateau Marmont, or Peter Jennings for eschewing the CBC for ABC News?

We're a funny bunch. We don't have anything remotely emullating a NY Times, an MIT, a Metropolitan Opera, a Broadway, Hollywood, Mayo Clinic or NASA and yet we piss on any Canadian who chooses to embrace them.

When I started writing, I was writing independent films. I didn't think of them as CANADIAN independent films. I thought of them as low-budget movies I had to write to get the chance to write something bigger.

When I went into television, my choices were "The Beachcombers", "Danger Bay" or "Friday the 13th". I jumped at the chance to write something I thought would be cool. It also paid about 10 times as much!

It may not have been patriotic, but let me tell you, there are a couple of Canadian ex-wives able to live in very nice Toronto neighbourhoods today because I made those decisions!!!

Yeah, nobody wants to do my Canadian history movie. But then, nobody in Canada wanted to do the dinosaur and cleavage scripts I wrote on either side of it and sold to Americans and Australians. Were they Canadian culture? Actually, yeah they were! They were written in Canada by a Canadian.

I realize Canadians don't usually lay claim to their cultural lock on giant lizards -- or cleavage for that matter. Having been all over the world, I will attest to the fact that pretty much every indigenous film industry has a couple of dinosaur films those nations think of as their own. So how come we can't too? I mean, we could -- and in the cleavage department, it's well known that Canadians take a back seat to nobody!


I did a bunch of George F. Walker's first plays when I was acting. Today, George is recognized as probably the greatest living Canadian playwright. Where were those early plays set and who were the main characters?

"Bagdad Saloon" -- in Bahgdad, starring a bunch of Arabs, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein and Doc Holliday.

"Ramona and the White Slaves" -- Hong Kong, with a family of Austrian ex-pat opium addicts.

"Beyond Mozambique" -- uh, somewhere beyond Mozambique, featuring an Italian Doctor, a Chinese priest, and an American movie star. A Mountie makes a brief appearance.

Were the themes Canadian? Well, a few years ago, I saw "Beyond Mozambique" performed in Sydney, Australia. The audience fell about laughing in exactly the same places they had in Toronto. That play touched people who knew little if anything about what its like to be Canadian -- because it wasn't written with its meaning to Canadian culture in mind. It was written to make people laugh, no matter what passport they were carrying.

"Pulp and Dagger" takes a swipe at an episode of "F-13" that he didn't like. He could've mentioned that one of the episodes I wrote is the only horror script ever nominated for a Gemini, or that another one was nominated for a Humanitas and a third was honored by the NAACP, but that wouldn't serve his view of the tawdry nature of American "culture" when compared to what's available above the 49th.

We actually had a great time making "My Wife As A Dog" (the title a take-off on Lasse Hallström’s Oscar nominated film) -- and interestingly enough, it has remained one of the most popular episodes of the series. It's been almost 20 years since it was shot and it's still playing all over the world.

I suppose I could've written episodes of "ENG" instead, but I wouldn't have reached as wide an audience -- and I sure as hell wouldn't be cashing regular residual checks from them.

Ya see, "Pulp and Dagger" one reason that Canadian artists leave or "sell out" is because when they work for Americans, they actually get paid. When we work for Canadian producers, we usually don't.

I once wrote and produced a series that was in profit on CBS from the end of year one and has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties to Canadian writers. The same series has been re-running 8 TIMES A WEEK for THREE YEARS on a Canadian channel accruing not a single additional dime.

Maybe some of the great minds concentrated on defining Canadian culture want to figure out that one!

I also once wrote an action film for an American company that didn't do very well, because it wasn't very good. But it still runs occassionally and still generates a few extra bucks for the retirement fund. Around the same time, I wrote a Canadian TV film that played in the US and out-rated NFL Football.

We beat fucking football!!! Do you know how close to impossible that is?

Well, that film's been sold in hundreds of countries and been playing regularly for years. But the Producer was Canadian -- so no one who worked on it has seen one more dollar than they were paid in advance.

I'm about as far from an "embittered cultural soldier" as you can get "Pulp and Dagger". Because I never wanted to be (or saw myself as) a cultural soldier in the first place. All that time I was doing those hundreds of Canadian plays, I was also doing Sam Shepherd, Beckett, "The Sunshine Boys" and being an animated Bear.

I've probably written and produced as many films and TV episodes in the rest of the world as I have here. And you know what? That means more people have been exposed to what it means to be Canadian than if I'd focussed completely on writing about Mounties and hockey players and how hard it is to get your health card replaced.

Let me explain how that works.

I wrote an episode of "Top Cops" that garnered a 26 share, meaning in one night and one performance, it had an American audience approximating the entire population of Canada at the time. Included in the script was an anecdote from my life embodied in the philosophy of a New York cop.

After the episode ran, I got letters from hundreds of cops (and not just American cops) appreciating the sentiment and asking for copies of the script, because it so perfectly represented their lives and their feelings.

That's how it works, "Pulp and Dagger". Deep down, we're all the same us humans. But an American would never have put those words into the mouth of a tough, no nonsense New York cop. A Canadian did because in his culture the sentiment didn't make you any less tough or no nonsense.

And they got it.

And it meant something to them.

Stop thinking of Canadian culture is some Holy Grail or cause you need to fight for. It's who you already are and what you already create. Let some critic waste his life defining it. Just do the work and try to enjoy the weekend.

Oh yeah, and like I said, do it for Americans. At least they pay you.

THE SILVER BACKED GORILLA

It's odd watching the news and seeing people you know featured in the lead stories.

That's happened twice this week. The first occurred when elephants "rampaged" through my home town of Newmarket on Thursday morning. The second was the conviction of Media Baron Conrad Black -- or Lord Black of Crossharbour as he's known in the British House of Lords.

Actually it wasn't a very big Elephant rampage. But it's the only one to happen in Canada in living memory -- or at least mine. Two of the beasts escaped from a circus performing a few blocks from my home, the third member of their troop sleeping through the whole affair. One was captured chowing down a nearby park, the other arrested after consuming a neighbor's flower bed and a tree.

But it was fun watching a couple of the cops I regularly run into at my local coffee haunt trying to keep straight faces on television as they described the perilous take-downs and assuring the public that the dangerous fugitives, identified as "Suzy" and "Bunny" were safely back behind bars.

Less humor appeared on screen following Lord Black's conviction on Friday morning. Watching him leave the court accompanied by his wife Barbara Amiel and lawyer Eddie Greenspan, I recalled encounters I'd had with all three of them.

I met Conrad Black when I was still an actor. Caught in a sudden downpour one afternoon, I ducked into a Yorkville bookstore. There was a sleepy clerk at the counter and one other customer, Conrad Black.


He wasn't a Lord then, just a multi-millionaire (maybe already a billionaire for all I know) owner of several newspapers and quite the local celebrity. He was standing in a corner, browsing a biography of Abraham Lincoln. I asked if it was any good. He answered, "I've only perused page 284. But that suggests it has some promise."

I asked if he'd seen the great Richard Burton film "Prince of Players" about Lincoln's assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, and Booth's more famous actor brother Edwin. He had and we got into a great conversation about the assassination and the events that followed, somewhat inspired by my telling him a little known fact -- Edwin Booth saved Lincoln's son Robert from being run over by a train a year before the president was assassinated.

Whatever he was or turned into in the business world, Mr. Black was quite charming that afternoon. I invited him to the play I was doing and about a week later he came, leaving a nice note at the box office thanking me for the performance.

Barbara Amiel and I didn't have the same convivial experience.


Back in 1982, I was hanging around with screenwriter John Hunter and producer Peter O'Brian as they put together what might be the best Canadian film ever made, "The Grey Fox". It became the first movie I ever invested in. If you've never seen it, please rent or buy the DVD. Despite being one of the most successful Canadian films of all time, it still hasn't made its money back.

Hard to believe, I know, but that's how the business works in Canada.

Anyway, the movie came out in 1983. It's a western about real life train robber, Bill Miner, who was inspired to follow that career by the early silent film, "The Great Train Robbery". While it won almost universal praise and launched a new career for its 62 year old star, former stunt man and cowboy, Richard Farnsworth; Ms. Amiel, then an editor of the Toronto Sun, savaged it.

Actually her review didn't have much to say about the film, but questioned whether public funds (Telefilm was an investor too) should be used to glorify murderers.

Being a guy who has trouble listening to horseshit, I wrote a letter to the editor, pointing out that Bill Miner had never killed anybody and listing a number of great films that had "glorified" or at least examined the lives of criminals.

My letter appeared a couple of days later, but with the points I was trying to make edited out and a reply by Ms. Amiel suggesting that some people (that would be me) defended Canadian films no matter how bad they were.

I realized writing back would be pointless. But we got to finish our conversation a year or two later, when Eddie Greenspan introduced me to her.


During the 1980's, Greenspan, one of Canada's top criminal lawyers, hosted a CBC radio series, "The Scales of Justice", which dramatized famous Canadian court cases using actual trial transcript. The series was produced by Ms. Amiel's ex-husband George Jonas, and I was one of the rep company that regularly appeared on the show.

It was a fascinating experience. Most of the scripts were written by fantasy novelist and fellow prairie boy, Guy Gavriel Kaye, chosen because Greenspan felt they exhibited the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian legal system. Sometimes the real lawyers came in to play themselves and more than once, I got to watch heated debates between some pretty astonishing adversaries as the cases were re-argued for our benefit at the table reads.

One night Barbara Amiel dropped by to watch a recording session and Eddie introduced her to the gang. We got talking and I mentioned my letter to the editor. Although she obviously didn't remember it, Ms. Amiel stood her ground. While I didn't agree with her, it was obvious she was a tough cookie.

But that was all years ago, so let's get to the Silver Backed Gorilla and Friday's events.

As time rolled on, Conrad became a Lord and Barbara went to England looking for (among other things I'm sure) a new husband. She apparently told friends she wanted to find "A Silver Backed Gorilla". As one can never fully understand the ways of the human heart or what turns somebody on, I won't get into what that might mean. But as the story goes, she attended a speech Conrad was making, turned to Maclean's columnist Alan Fotheringham and said, "Now that's a Silver Backed Gorilla!"

They married. Much Gossip column fodder ensued, all of which I'll leave to "Vanity Fair" and a whole slew of Brit tabloids.

Meanwhile, I got into writing cop shows and spent about six months hanging with the Toronto Homicide Squad. One of the things I observed during that time was that when Homicide cops like somebody as a suspect, they start dropping by unannounced to "ask one more question" or "go over things one more time". That makes the suspect uneasy and sometimes he says or does the wrong thing.

One night, I entered the Homicide office in Toronto with two of the detectives to find a third detective literally dancing with glee. We asked why and were told that a suspect's lawyer had called to insist he lay off the unscheduled visits. The lawyer was Eddie Greenspan.

My two detectives started dancing too. I asked what was going on. They told me when a suspect hired Eddie, that told them they probably had the right guy.

Watching those three cops dance always stuck with me. So when Conrad Black hired Eddie Greenspan to defend him on fraud and racketeering charges in Chicago, I wondered if that meant he was Guilty. On the other hand, not all Eddie's clients have been Guilty, so it might mean he just hired the best lawyer he could think of.

During Friday's newscast of the verdict, a couple of the commentators discussed whether Conrad would have been convicted by a Canadian jury. I suspect he wouldn't have even been charged in the first place.

It's interesting that the conviction that might put him away for 20 years, obstruction of justice, occurred in Toronto, videotaped by Black's own security system. But nobody in authority here even wagged a finger at him.

There's a growing Canadian tradition of some of our leading citizens remaining society and media darlings here while getting put away by American juries.

Alan Eagleson, former head of the NHL Players Association, was still enjoying free hockey tickets and lunches with senior politicians in Canada when an American court finally nailed him for defrauding the players he'd been hired to represent.

In fact, Carl Brewer, the first player to accuse Eagleson of wrong-doing, publicly thanked the US Courts for Justice he claimed could not be found in Canada.

Big Al was followed by Bernie Ebbers, co-founder of Worldcom, one-time darling of the Canadian business elite and now doing 25 years in a Louisiana federal prison.

Garth Drabinsky (as yet unconvicted of any crime) continues to produce television series for the CBC, while under the shadow of fugitive arrest warrants issued by the US government. It's interesting that criminal charges on the same issues, though laid by the RCMP in late 2002, still haven't reached trial five years later.

And now there's Conrad. As recently as Wednesday, all four Toronto newspapers were confidently predicting his complete exoneration.

Somehow, the courts and the media here appear to treat these people much differently than their American counterparts. And somehow, I don't think whatever that "somehow" is, it will be appearing on a beer commercial flattering us with how much better we are than Americans.

I called the richest guy I know yesterday to ask him how he felt about Conrad's conviction. This guy's a multi-millionaire too -- and he couldn't have been more pleased. He's worked hard for his money, building a hugely successful company on sweat and talent and being good to his clients.

But being rich isn't easy. Okay, lots of things are harder. But when you're wealthy, everybody figures you must've pulled something to get somewhere they aren't. And the Kenneth (Enron) Lays and Lord Blacks of the world cement that impression to the average guy on the street.

My friend hoped what happened to Conrad might inspire Canadian business and our courts to get rid of a few more of our bad apples. Like me, he wants people who use their power and influence to personal ends to become an endangered species...

...just like the Silver Backed Gorilla.