BY BEN WINTERS
For the past several years, runaway production–that’s when penny-pinching
American studios move their shoots to Canada, or even further-flung republics,
to save a buck or two–has been an increasingly contentious issue
in the world of film and television. Now the USA Network has handed the
aggrieved parties (among them SAG and city poobahs reluctant to lose the
lucrative film business to foreign shores) a particularly flagrant transgression
around which to rally. Los Angeles Times reporter James Bates had the
scoop late last month, when he noted that in November, "a TV movie
about former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his handling of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks starts shooting–in Montreal."
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| Lots of people are upset over the movie of Guiliani’s life being shot in Canada. |
Bates’ piece lists some of the other big runaway productions currently in play: "Last year, the TV series 'Pasadena,’ set in Hollywood’s backyard, was instead shot in Vancouver, Canada. The film version of the best-selling Civil War novel "Cold Mountain" is shooting in Romania."
The Times writer also lets Pamm Fair, SAG’s National Director for Policy, Planning & External Affairs, explain why the Giuliani movie (titled Rudy!) is so egregious. "Once again, this is a perfect example of what the unions have been trying to explain to legislators across the country," Fair tells Bates. "A story about an American icon is being filmed outside of the borders. American viewers may never know the difference, but American workers will."
What’s so galling to New Yorkers, writes Bates, is that Rudy! is very much about New York City–not just the physical place but that famous New York spirit, which was so famously exemplified by Giuliani in the hours and days after 9/11. A Congressman from Brooklyn leaned heavily on that irony in a press statement, carried by the Associated Press, on Nov. 7: "'Today, somewhere in Canada, USA Network is making a movie about the mayor of New York,’ Rep. Anthony Weiner said…'I guess they’re going to show him watching baseball games at the [Toronto] Sky Dome, or eating pommes frites rather than eating at Patsy’s.’"
AP neglected to point out another of the great ironies involved, and it somehow passed without comment in the LA Times piece: The producer of Rudy! is named Carlton America.
But the AP article does delve into the salient economic issues: "Canada offers wage-based incentives that can cover 35 percent of labor expenses. Entertainment industry executives estimate that those credits have cost the United States 25,000 jobs and $10 billion annually for each of the last three years."
Which is why Weiner is pitching legislation on Capital Hill "that would provide producers with a 25 percent tax credit for wages if they film in the United States."
Neither story explains–possibly because it’s in no way relevant–that the title Rudy! is a sly nod to the 1959 Bock and Harnick musical Fiorello!, about another New York mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia.
The Invisible Drabinsky and Winona’s Winono
A.O. Scott, the New York Times’ fancy-pants movie critic, spent 3,000 high falutin’ words in the Times Magazine’s Nov. 3 special entertainment issue explaining that movies continue to dominate all other forms of popular entertainment. He might have saved his ink and simply compared the landslide of press given to the Winona Ryder trial in which a barely A-list actress was accused and subsequently convicted of stealing a stack of designer duds from Saks and the desultory coverage given to the charges leveled in Toronto against theatrical impresario Garth Drabinsky, who allegedly stole as much as $500 million from Livent stockholders.
Since he was arraigned on Oct. 23, Drabinsky has been little noted in the American press. Could that be because the scandal is A) Canadian or B) having to do with the (yawn) theatre business? Even in Canada, coverage has been limited to the initial flurry of press around his arrest, and a couple of subsequent think pieces. One was from Janice Kennedy in the Ottawa Star, using the Drabinsky snag to reflect on the human need to indulge in schadenfreude when a great figure is brought low.
"The tendency [to gloat] is a peculiarly human one, of course," Kennedy wrote on Nov. 3. "No other creature in the animal world smirks at a fellow creature’s misfortune…We get a huge charge out of seeing the Porsche that passed us at dangerous speeds pulled over by the cop car down the road. We love it when the nightly news shows us images of Armani-suited execs in the U.S. being led away in cuffs. We take enormous delight in the imagined prospect of Martha Stewart doing a fabulous makeover of her very own prison cell."
Some of the other Canadian papers spent time outlining Drabinsky’s rise and fall. Here’s the highpoints:
· Oct. 27, 1948: Drabinsky born, fights polio.
· Late 1970s: Produces handful of negligible films (The Silent Partner, The Changeling).
· 1980s: Takes over Cineplex-Odeon and makes bucket loads of money.
· 1990s: Forms Livent ("Live Entertainment, Inc.") and produces smash hits like Ragtime and Showboat.
· Jan, 1999: Faces criminal charges in the U.S., along with business partner Myron Gottlieb, of "inflating earnings reports and taking kickbacks worth $4.6 million." (Drabinsky hasn’t been back in our country since charges were announced.)
· Last month: Similar charges levied in Canada. Drabinsky awaits trial…
That’s a pretty interesting trajectory, but the U.S. Media is having none of it. But man were they excited about Winona! Her conviction brought on not one, not two, but three full-length articles in the Los Angeles Times. One about the trial itself, one about whether the conviction will "burnish or tarnish" her career (can’t tarnish it much more than Autumn in New York, right?), and one headlined "Impulse To Shoplift Treatable, Doctors Say." (There were three more Ryder-related stories the following day.) The New York Post, which covered the Winona Trial with the gusto that their forefathers afforded the Spanish-American War, smeared the conviction across the front page, in a faux movie poster layout: "Winona Ryder is: SAKS THIEF."
Take note, Janice Kennedy of the Ottawa Star–that is some serious gloating.