If you're Canadian, and you want to tell a Canadian story based on Canadian events, the one place you should be pitching first, is the one place you can't.
The CBC.
Earlier this year, the CBC ran a biopic on the life of Tommy Douglas, one of the founding members of the CCF Party...God. I can't write this again. Here...this is from the Wikipedia entry.
As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 , he led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public medicare to Canada. When the CCF united with the Canadian Labour Congress to form the New Democratic Party, he was elected as its first federal leader and served in that post from 1961 to 1971. He is warmly remembered for his folksy wit and oratory with which he expressed his steadfast idealism, exemplified by his fable of Mouseland.Now, Medicare is still something that's controversial in Canada, believe it or not. At least in some circles. What happened after the movie aired is the truly interesting, and scandalous part.
He was the father of actress Shirley Douglas, and the grandfather of actor Kiefer Sutherland.
In 2004, he was voted "The Greatest Canadian" of all time in a nationally televised contest organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The miniseries Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, was filmed between February and May of 2005 and aired on CBC in two parts on March 12 and 13, 2006.
The short version is this: Relatives of Jimmy Gardiner, a predecessor of Douglas', objected to the portrayal of the politician in the film. Remember, this is a film that was developed, researched and vetted all the way along by the CBC. They complained. The CBC hired an independent historian to vet the film. He said it was innacurate. CBC pulled the film from circulation, and canceled the DVD release.
If you're thinking, "did a step get missed in there?" You're right.
Because at no point, before taking these actions, did the CBC ever talk to the screenwriter, or the director, and give them a chance to defend their film. They were ready to defend it. But they were never asked. In fact, they found out that the film was being pulled by watching television.
So now these creative people are tarred with this brush of accusation, and the CBC is left cowering in the corner, terrified of offending anyone.
They didn't back up their people. Surprise, surprise. The spirit of the Lockout lives on.
The issues of historical innacuracy, or fictionalizing historical movies, is something that rears its ugly head all the time. CBS pulled a biopic of The Reagans a few years back, and shunted it to a cable net. Now, at the time, the focus (I think, rightly) was the fact that the program trotted out lots of tabloid stuff about astrology and whatnot. It was by no means an important piece of work. But CBS managed to frame the discussion for what it was: largely a business decision.
What the CBC has done is not anything close to that. The disputed bits: that so and so took a drink in public instead of in private -- are inane in the context of the historical drama. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is that the CBC hung the writer and the director -- everybody involved with the production of this show -- out to dry, just as they did years ago with The Valour and the Horror.
This is a shameful, craven action. You know, a lot of the people who criticize the CBC want it to morph into something more like a PBS North. But PBS has a lot more integrity on this score. PBS -- especially shows like Frontline -- have no compunctions about running hard hitting programs that pull no punches and speak truth to power.
CBC is in the midst of trying to say to writers, directors, and creatives, "The bad old days are gone, come work with us."
Well, actions speak louder than words. I agree with this anonymous, frustrated CBC manager... they owe the creators of this fine movie an apology. They couldn't have handled this worse if they'd tried.
See what happens when you fire all your publicists?
5 comments:
I personally know some of the filmmakers of 'Prairie Giant', and know that shelving the film is the last thing they need to see happen. But it did happen. And I don't want to sound like I'm defending the CBC and their actions, but it just seems like there's got to be more to all this than what is being presented, or perceived. In the world of telling dramatic 'stories', even if about real people, it's still ultimately just a story...a piece of entertainment, first and foremost.
So for this to happen, it just makes no sense. Which makes me think there might be more than meets the eye. Who knows...
Much as I hate lawyers and court rooms, I have to ask, "Is there any legal recourse available to the writer and director beyond an apology by the CBC?"
I saw a CBC TV movie about the Avro Arrow a long time ago - and they didn't seem too worried about the historical innacuracies in that one. They simply put in a post script on the film saying that 'events and characters had been dramatized' for effect.
The best way to get people to not act rashly is to let them know there are consequences...big, fat six or seven figure consequences.
Excuse the cynicism, but it’s nice to see this sort of thing happens in 1st world countries too.
When you were in SA, Denis, you probably didn’t get to witness the shenanigans of the SABC – along with months and months of delay in issuing contracts for commissioned projects, delays in payments for produced content, forcing producers to mortgage their houses and incur onerous personal debt in order to meet transmission dates, the SABC are now, in almost identical fashion to your example with CBC, taking to pulling commissioned projects. A recent documentary "Mbeki - Unauthorised" was pulled at the 11th hour without informing the producers who, as in your example, discovered this by tuning in to watch the (non-existent) broadcast of the show. Granted, it's a little different from your example given that the show deals with a sitting president, but still, it'd been vetted and approved by the SABC throughout the entire process and only pulled because management became uncomfortable with the content.
Now, the producers are being threatened with a defamation suit by the SABC for voicing their side of the story – so much for the hard-earned battle for freedom of speech in this country.
Plato tried to have all the poets and storytellers exiled. We are the true force. We are the ones who have the power to tear down this whole shit-house of cards, and they fear us for it.
Haha, just kidding.
Soon, when we can all produce our own films and sell them directly online for 99 cents each, we will take the power from the corporate hordes. We'll move to Suriname, and distribute from there where the lawyers can't reach us. We can make whole Tommy Douglas super hero trilogies, with Tommy Douglas flying his own Avro Aero, and kill Viet-kong with top secret Saskatchewan government made lasers that are ahead of their time.
Nice post, Denis. Sums it up nicely.
As for the "more than meets the eye," there is definitely a threat of a lawsuit in there somewhere from the Gardiner family.
We get a lot of that at the CBC. Most of the time we tell them to get stuffed. We are not afraid to go to court over what we put on the air, and we do it all the time.
But the fight went out of CBC senior management for this one. As I wrote in my blog, the surrent regime never had much love or hope for Prairie Giant.
I bet Bill is right - the CBC avoids one lawsuit from the family, only to get another from the creative team.
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