Crafty Canadian Musing: Terminal City vs Breaking Bad

The Canadian-made series TERMINAL CITY gets its U.S. premiere tonight on the Sundance Channel, the boutique cable co that made a splash a couple years back through another Canadian acquisition, the much-praised (if little watched, at least in Canada) SLINGS & ARROWS.

What's interesting about some of the critical reaction to Terminal City by Our American Cousins, is that they find it intriguing precisely for the same reasons some Canadians reject Canadian programs -- their markedly different feel. The slight torque that makes them feel, well, less like American shows. (That's also the most common reaction Americans have when they see things like Intelligence, or DaVinci's Inquest.)

In other words, what in Canada leads to what I call the Foley, Really? principle, in the USA, winds up being a bit of a selling point -- at least to the type of boutique audience that the Sundance Channel chases.

Take Heather Havrilesky's recent review in Salon. (Scroll down, halfway down the page.)

We're supposed to understand, early on, that Katie and Ari are people who make odd, unconventional choices. Take the second episode, when Ari tells his wife, "[W]e can get dressed up, but we're not doing horse tranquilizers." Now imagine that line on an American drama.

Katie makes another odd choice when, halfway through the first episode, she brings her 16-year-old daughter, Sarah, along with her when she goes to her breast biopsy. When Katie steps out of the procedure room, there's a TV camera in her face, filming a reality show called "Post-Op." Instead of mumbling an excuse and moving on, Katie lights up and shows the camera her tumor (which includes baring her naked breast). The show's producer, Jane, calls her boss with an idea: Let's fire our lame real-life-doctor host, and hire Katie to host the show instead.

This very off-kilter drama is nicely cast, beautifully shot, and the mix of desperation and joy presented here is about as ambitious as a TV show can get. Of course, with ambition and smarts comes pretentiousness -- the writing can get more than a little precious at times. After Katie's TV appearance, for example, Sarah admonishes her mom about her language on camera.

Sarah: Mom, you said fuck!

Katie: I know ... and I should use that more often, because it's a great expletive.

Sarah: What's that?

Katie: An expletive? It nails life! My life and your life, too.

If an expletive nails life, having your lead character say that an expletive "nails life" doesn't nail life at all -- it nails unnatural, queasily cute, overwritten dialogue onto an otherwise worthwhile backdrop.

What's interesting to me here is that Havrilesky, who's a pretty discerning reviewer I generally agree with, manages to zero in on exactly what I didn't like about this series, while giving it an entirely different spin. Same basic conclusion, different overall impression.

I have to confess: I hated Terminal City -- though I watched every episode. I was kind of duty bound to do that, since I had business with one of the companies that made it. (The series apparently did A-Okay without my lovin -- hence the American sale.) I will say that I found the Television subplot excrutiatingly arch, and hamfisted and yes, pretentious. (When a movie made in 1975, Network, manages to say more about reality tv -- a genre it anticipated, than a tv series made 30 years later that got to observe the trend, you know the arrow's missed the mark.)

That being said, the final episode of Terminal City, which plays almost like a one act riff on the play Our Town, is original and quite lovely. I just wish I'd enjoyed the characters and the journey leading up to the coda a little more.

The pretentiousness of the dialogue, unrealistic feel of the characters and situations surrounding the TV broadcast Katie comes to host sunk my enjoyment largely because, of course, I found myself viewing it through the same unfair prism that creatives always do in this country: "how will reaction to this one show affect the perception of Canadian TV as a whole: will it make it better or worse?"

That's a hell of a thing to put on one little television show. And I'm guilty of it as anybody else. In many ways, it's the en famille version of Foley, Really? I struggle to try and let go of it, and don't always succeed. So it's interesting to read a review from a critic who approaches it without that baggage.

Now, on the other hand, that doesn't mean that U.S. critics are universally raving about the show. Take this review in the Hollywood Reporter as a fr'instance:

This light dramatic series -- which premiered in 2005 on Canadian television and now comes to Sundance Channel -- doesn't always succeed. It's serious stuff, all right, because it focuses on a fortysomething wife and mother who learns that she has breast cancer. But when it tries to be humorous, it hits some rough patches. It's hard to balance the serious stuff with the lighthearted, and not many have succeeded at it. Also, "Terminal City" has a somewhat colorless delivery, and that often makes it seem to be falling off the screen.

The first episode, directed by Rachel Talalay, is pretty slow going, as if unfolding under water. Of course, it takes time for the setup, which includes our introduction to Katie's family and then to her illness. It could, however, use more snap. Creator-writer Angus Fraser infuses the series with a seriousness that often overtakes the humorous situations Katie and her family find themselves in. Even as the opening credits roll, Thomas Burstyn's cinematography offers serious, natural images that collide with Schaun Tozer and Ben Mink's rather lighthearted music.

Hmm. There it is again, that critique that does seem to be pretty common about Canadian shows -- they start too slow and take too long to get going. (I can clearly remember, with horror, several development meetings where a Canadian D-exec asked, "could we maybe slow this down a bit, and get to know them more?" Canadian D-execs sometimes seem to be allergic to plot.)

Anyway, I actually found myself thinking quite a bit about Terminal City in the last few weeks, even though it's been three years since I've seen it. I think that has to do with Breaking Bad.

(Spoilers for Breaking Bad, eps 1-5 ahead)

I wrote about Breaking Bad right after its premiere. But it was a few episodes later when it dawned on me that it followed a lot of the same thematic script as Terminal City. Bryan Cranston's character in the first episode, Walter, finds out that he has terminal lung cancer.

He, too, makes an odd choice. But unlike Katie's choice -- deciding to become the host of a reality TV show, Walter's choice -- using his knowledge of chemistry to go into the crystal meth manufacturing business -- actually seems more plausible, even though really, at the heart of it it's just as outlandish.

There are two craft things that set the two series apart, right off the top. You find out that Walter character is definitely terminal barely ten minutes into Episode 1 of BB. Katie thinks she has Cancer, but isn't really diagnosed for sure (she won't call her doctor back) until Episode 3 of TC.

So much for starting fast.

Where Breaking Bad also pulls away, I think, is through finding a away to tack away from the expected. Once Walter makes the choice to start cooking meth, things spin wildly out of control. You think this is going to be a show about freeing yourself through transgressive behavior, a la American Beauty. But Creator Vince Gilligan throws an interesting curve ball. You might even call it a very Canadian kind of curve ball -- he slows the action down in the next few episodes to deal completely with the implications of the actions Cranston takes in that first episode. It makes the series zig instead of zag. And though I've heard from several people that they found the detour into cancer drama offputting -- I was held by the inexorable series of circumstances that drove the character back to the place we shockingly saw him in Episode 1 -- deciding to transgress completely, and set up shop as a meth dealer. To me it didn't feel like a backtrack. It took a character who made a choice that most of us would never make, and bit by bit, sucked you in to make you see why, and how, he's making the only choice he could make.

(The final piece of the puzzle, that makes the main character flawed and compelling? He's actually offered an easier way out, which he doesn't take because of pride. Which you learn, more or less, has been his problem his whole life. Neat.)

Episode 5 of Breaking Bad contains as wrenching, as emotional, and as real a dramatization of the agonizing choice of the Cancer patient as I've ever seen on Television. To me, it rang true and delivered in a way that nine out of ten hours of Terminal City did not.

I've been trying to figure out why for a couple weeks now.

As near as I can figure it, I think it's a question of focus. Breaking Bad wants to be about a man dealing with Cancer, and about the politics of meth, and the insanely difficult choices people face in dealing with the cruelty and dysfunction of the American health care system. Those are all big, huge, potentially enormous capital S subjects. But the stew that Gilligan cooks works because all of these issues are writ small: the scenes of family drama are small; the choices made on the way to becoming a meth dealer are small (except for one huge choice, which, fittingly, takes most of two episodes to play out.)

In contrast, everything in Terminal City attempts to be huge, and writ large. Katie is larger than life to begin with. Cancer doesn't really seem to change her. There are subplots about hate crimes and holding onto ancient hatreds, and (this being a Canadian drama -- a weird sex subplot or two... gotta get those in before C-1o.)

All of these huge actions seem to happen independently of each other, without any sort of connection. And oh yeah, we also try to indict the entire genre of reality TV.

Breaking Bad, in contrast, is a story about a man who never really lived up to his potential, finding out that he's run out of time. Cancer, and meth dealing, and the vagaries of marriage all find their riffs and rhythms in the drama -- but the big issues are given weight through small, easily understandable choices leading to outrageous, but inevitable actions.

And that to me is the essential difference, that makes Breaking Bad far more thoughtful about Cancer, and life, than Terminal City. We are asked to walk in the main character's shoes. In Terminal City, Katie is always kept at arm's length.

But you know, that's just my opinion. If you get the Sundance Channel, tune in tonight and see what you think. Terminal City premieres at 9pm.

Breaking Bad airs on AMC Sundays at 10pm.

John Doyle On Canadian Self-Censorship

IN MY NOTE below that the rhetoric should be cooled, I did not mean to suggest that the time had come to be conciliatory. Today in the Globe and Mail, John Doyle wrote a very clear, concise, and measured summation of the situation of Bill C-10.

I would hate to think that my suggesting that Nazi and Soviet comparisons were offside might be interpreted as suggesting the fight not be continued. I agree with Doyle's every word. And at the risk of raising the ire of the Globe and Mail and their firewall, I'm reproducing it here, verbatim.

Doyle writes:

Yesterday morning on CBC Newsworld, a reporter in Alberta was giving us the gist of the election results there. As footage of the Premier of Alberta rolled, viewers saw him walking into a victory celebration and the reporter informed us that Ed Stelmach "looked a bit like a rock star."

No, he didn't. There is hardly a middle-aged man anywhere in Canada who looks less like a rock star. Barack Obama looks like a rock star at his campaign events. Stelmach looks like some guy nervously counting the days until his vacation.

What the TV reporter was doing was engaging in subtle self-censorship by gravitating toward the winner and gilding the lily. It's what TV reportage in Canada so often does.

Self-censorship is the great weakness of the Canadian culture in general. This is a relatively small country and everyone knows where the power resides. The powerful don't need to make big threats. They just need to let it be known that they're watching. Suggestions are made, and too many people - especially in the TV racket - respond by subtly gravitating toward the point of view of the powerful.

Me, I see a connection between the rantings of cable honcho Jim Shaw and the implications of that complicated tax bill that might see tax credits being rescinded for TV and film productions deemed to be what is being loosely defined as "offensive."

What Shaw has wanted is an end to Canadian TV programs funded by the Canadian Television Fund that he deems offensive to his personal taste and sensibility. He regularly cites Trailer Park Boys as a show he doesn't like, which gives the public a sense of his taste and sensibility. With the breathtaking gall that seems to arise from control of a powerful cable company, Shaw and his staff make the assumption that they are speaking on behalf of many people. At last month's Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings in Ottawa, Shaw's representatives spoke as if they represented all their subscribers.

It's all part of the same package - a right-wing government is in power, albeit in a minority government - and the right-wing agenda on culture comes to the forefront. Those forces in the minority Conservative government and their allies make the case that they are not indulging in censorship, but in the close examination of how public funds are spent and tax credits allowed.

To some extent, they are correct. It's not outright censorship. It's a warning that there are new people in power, new rules in place, and if the TV and film industry wants to continue to operate, it'll have to engage in self-censorship.

It's a matter of creating uncertainty about what might pass the test as worthy of funding. Create the uncertainty, and the screenwriters and producers begin to self-censor.

Now, it might seem like too large a leap to jump from a TV reporter in Alberta referring to the Premier as "a bit like a rock star" to the complaints of Shaw, to the proposed new rules that would allow the federal government to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other "offensive" content. But it isn't.

At last month's CRTC hearings, I could feel and hear the commission's deference to Shaw's position. At every opportunity, it seemed to be suggesting to TV writers, actors, directors and producers that they'd just have to get used to new rules. And in the past week, I haven't heard any authentic outrage from the Liberals or NDP about the new tax-credit legislation. This is a controversy in which the opposition will defer to the government, minority though it is.

The opposition is gravitating toward the winner, like that TV reporter in Alberta. To the winner goes the spoils.

"The Cooling Factor on Financing Is Real." - Danny Iron, Producer, "Slings & Arrows"

THERE'S AN AWFUL lot of movement on the Bill C-10 front again, so rather than do a bunch of separate posts, I'm gonna collect them all together here to talk about where things stand today.

Firstly, I want to call your attention to a column in the Toronto Sun by Bill Harris. Harris' column is important because it points toward a real and persistent problem in the communication being put across by opponents to the Tories' back-door attempts to control culture. I'll return to Bill at the end of this post. But that column is the reason why I -- from the beginning -- have said that the economic arguments are the stronger ones to make.

Those arguments, briefly?

• Tax Credits are meant as economic stimulus, not as element of social policy. They are a poor method of influencing content.
• Any uncertainty surrounding how a tax credit might be retroactively pulled means you will not have banks risking making the bridge financing loans ALL productions need to start up. This will seriously cripple the industry.
• What are the concrete examples of shows that were financed under the current, unspecified structure, that shouldn't have been. If this is indeed a loophole that needs to be filled -- point to who got through the loophole. And why it's a good thing that this loophole be closed.
• It discriminates against Canadian production, and gives American productions applying for tax credits an advantage. The complete absurdity of this last point was well illustrated in this article in today's Globe:
  

Under the proposed changes to federal tax legislation, Canadian films that receive public funding may be scrutinized by the government for their moral suitability. Yet Hollywood films shot in Canada that have applied for tax credits will get a free pass.

Film director David Weaver (Century Hotel, Siblings) said yesterday that he finds it preposterous that the Department of Heritage would apply this only to Canadian producers, not to Americans or other foreign parties. "The message seems to be big-time American producers can come and produce anything they want, but [Ottawa is] going to undermine and perhaps make impossible smaller Canadian productions. It's outrageously discriminatory."

Toronto lawyer David Zitzerman said the controversial Bill C-10 - the federal government's proposal to cancel tax credits for films or television programs deemed too offensive - deals only with the Canadian film or video production tax credit (the "Cancon Credit") in Section 125.4 of the Income Tax Act.

The proposed amendment does not apply to the Canadian film or video production services tax credit in Section 125.5 of the Income Tax Act (the "Services Credit," through which Hollywood studios and producers from other countries can apply for labour tax breaks).

I simply do not see how you can read the full article and conclude that this is anything other than a hamfisted and unfair burden on the domestic industry. Any similar provision, applied to any other industry that put our homegrown suppliers at such a disadvantage would cause a huge storm of protest.

In fact, if you take the case of something like Climate Change, isn't that the main argument the Tories make against things like trying to make our Kyoto targets? That it puts our homegrown industries at a disadvantage? So you won't take steps to curtail an industry for a reason that's probably our greatest challenge in this century -- a clear case of weighing economic impact versus worldwide good. But that distinction isn't a problem for you whatsoever when it comes to Film and TV?

Well. Um. Why? Why is that good public policy? Or even...consistent, in like, any way?

Now I want to call your attention to something else. Here is a transcript of an interview between a Conservative MP and host of CBC Radio's The Current, Anna Maria Tremonti. An excerpt:

— The same guidelines that are already applied to books and magazines. Again, we don’t see why it is that Canadian taxpayers should be forced to pay for porn films. But I’d like to –

— Well, in fact, Canadian taxpayers buy a lot of pornography. We should get that straight. It’s a big industry. But that’s not the issue.

— But they pay for it themselves.

— Are you saying that all Canadian filmmakers are making pornography? I mean, what are you saying here?

— Of course not. In fact, of the roughly thousand films that have got this tax credit, a very, very, very small number would ever be denied it because of the new rules contained in Bill C-10. Movies like Eastern Promises, Borderline, Ma fille, mon ange, those kinds of films would not have been touched. I don’t think that anything that was at the Genies last night would have seen any difference in its treatment if the bill had been in effect when those movies were produced. But, you know, we believe that – and all the movies that you see in the theatres, that you can order, you know, from your home –

— A lot of those movies, of course –

— Those movies will all, largely, with very minor exceptions, continue to receive the tax credit. All we’re saying is that the same thing that has been done for books and magazines for years in this country, that porno or extreme violence should not be paid for by the taxpayer.

— But again, who decides that? You say “the movies in Canadian theatres” – but a lot of those movies are of course American movies distributed by American-owned distributors. A lot of the Canadian films that are made we don’t get to see – not because they’re not popular, because they can’t squeeze into the theatres.

— Right. You say “Who decides?” Again, there is a board that is already in place within the Heritage department, and that board already decides which companies – sorry, which productions get the tax credit. That is an independent board. It is not a partisan operation. It has existed prior to the arrival in power of the Conservative government. And that group already makes the decisions of who gets the tax credit. If this bill passes, effectively the guidelines that exist for books and magazines will be added to their list of criteria. So an independent group of public servants, separate from the political arm of government, will make those decisions based on rules that already exist for books and magazines.

— So you’re basically concerned about pornography.

— And extreme gratuitous violence. And I think Canadians can distinguish between incidental violence or incidental nudity that forms a part of a broader plot in a movie and something that is produced exclusively for the purposes of pornographic gratification or gratuitous violence. And the latter description –

— But you’re saying they won’t get the chance to distinguish. You’re going to distinguish for them.

— Absolutely not. Canadian filmmakers will continue to have the right to produce anything they want and Canadian viewers will have the ability to watch anything they want within the existing Criminal Code. The only thing we’re saying is that if it’s nothing more than senseless pornography or gratuitous violence, then taxpayers are not going to pick up the tab.

That transcript, by the way, was prepared and sent by Joe Clark. Joe (not the former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister once known to one and all as "Joe Who?") is an activist who writes frequently about accessibility issues. He's also not a big fan of mine -- and I find him to be, shall we say, contrarian. But I'll say this about Joe: he does good, important work for people who really could use it. He is consistent in arguing for openness from government and organizations...and the guy has a highly developed bullshit detector.

The amazing thing about that transcript is that when you see it in Black and White, you really do see the strings of what's behind this. The guy keeps repeating the same two phrases over and over -- "gratuitous violence" and "pornography."

It's awesome that Tremonti keeps trying to nail the guy down -- "what exactly do you mean?" and he can't answer, because of course he doesn't have the answer. He's merely been given the talking points. Remember, the Conservative party is absolutely disciplined when it comes to staying on message. So he's been told to hit that stick over and over. Why?

It's good politics. I mean, really, who in heaven's name would stand up and say, "you know, I really would like tax credits (not dollars, remember -- tax credits) to go to pornography and gratuitous violence?"

But here's the thing: those things are already illegal. They are already ineligible for the tax credit. Pornography has always been specifically excluded. And gratuitous violence -- whatever that means -- is surely prosecutable under the criminal code.

Again -- stick to economics. What movies with grauitous violence received tax credits in the past? What is the actual, real world, provable, discernible problem that the rule change is trying to solve here? And why does it require a wording change giving that power to the Heritage Minister or a body appointed by the Heritage Minister?

In short, there are three options that are really on the table.

• The Tories actually think there's a real problem with pornography and snuff films with horrific violence getting tax credits.
• They don't think this, but they've got data that says it'll poll well with their base, and it's a chance to do something symbolic -- but they didn't really think about it beyond that. So all this is catching them by surprise.
  
• They know exactly what they're doing; they know that this is likely to have a chilling effect on what gets made, and that's exactly what they're going for, because they know that chilling the sector before the fact is a far more effective, and plausibly deniable way of controlling content, than actually trying to fight the cultural fight.

The secrecy inherent in burying the change, the fact that the "guidelines" that were supposed to be ready are now, um, not...the fact that they lean so heavily on two things they know that Canadians couldn't possibly be in favour of, and the fact that anybody who knows anything about things like production, or tax credits, thinks this is a unnecessary and onerous change would seem to argue for that latter interpretation.

Which is why there's such an outcry -- and why most people who object to C-10 think this is really an attempt at censorship by another name.

Now. Back to Bill Harris.

To me, Bill Harris seems like a regular guy. He writes for a right-leaning populist newspaper. He's only been the TV critic there for a few years. And in his column today, he gets some things a little wrong, but the point he makes is really well worth listening to:

The Canadian TV and film industry's reaction to the existence of the bill has included references to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China and the Guantanamo detention camp. And while I share some of the industry's concerns, it's that type of terminology that strikes me as inappropriate.

The average Joe should understand something: This is not about censorship. Censorship means you aren't allowed to make a certain TV show or movie. No one is talking about that here. Everyone in Canada is completely free to make whatever TV show or movie they want, provided -- and herein lies the heart of the debate -- they pay for it themselves or secure private financing.

If the government gives you a tax credit for an artistic pursuit, how much of a say, if any, should the government have in what you create with that money? That's the debate, people. Simple as that. So let's throw away all the talk about censorship and dictatorships and prison camps, okay? That's an insult to anyone who ever really has experienced censorship, or lived under a dictatorship, or been detained in a foreign land.

Hey, maybe carte blanche on subject matter should apply when the government hands out tax credits. I don't know. I understand the concept of the slippery slope when governments slide from artistic assistance to artistic regulation. And I understand that on a level playing field against the risk-taking financial behemoth that is the United States, habitually nervous-to-spend Canadians wouldn't invest very much in TV or film if the government didn't do it for them, and our culture would get swamped even more.

But isn't this a debate worth having? Shouldn't we be talking about this every five or 10 or 15 years, just to make sure Canadians still feel the same way?

Bill Harris correctly summarizes the change to C-10 as a sneaky attempt to add a "morals clause" to the administration of Tax Credits. He's right. That's exactly what it is.

He's also right when he talks about the rhetoric getting out of hand. I think we should all agree on a new rule. Unless you're talking about people en masse actually getting hauled off to Concentration Camps or Gulags, comparisons to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are...overheated.

I describe myself, when I'm forced to, as generally centre-left in my thinking. (I know, to many Americans who read regularly, you might think, "uh, really?" to which I punt to a description from 1960's "Beyond the Fringe" about the American system: "you have the Republicans, who are the equivalent of our Conservative party, and the Democrats, who are the equivalent of our Conservative Party..") People on the left very often shoot themselves in the foot by going to a place that's shrill. And that simply isn't necessary here.

There is no good economic argument for the change proposed. The idea that it's censorship by another name is simply the most plausible option. And the reason why, it's great to see, that it looks like the Senate will now send C-10 back to the House of Commons for further debate. Because that debate is clearly needed.

The thing that Harris gets wrong is also on the economic argument: the tax credits he's talking about are breaks that are given to productions by just about every country, besides the United States. It is a common precept that in order to compete against the much larger American machine in culture, homegrown productions need some help. Canada is not alone in this.

But I'll tell you this much: if Canada actually implements a policy that penalizes its own shows over U.S. shows -- well, that's gonna be a unique, Only-in-Canada folly.

Finally, Maureen Parker of the Writers Guild of Canada had this to say today:

I just received a phone call from the Stephane Dion’s chief of staff who advised me that the Senate has now officially (controlled by the Liberals) decided to address the issue of Bill C-10, in particular the requirement for guidelines to ensure that an film, TV or digital program is not contrary to public policy.

Should the Senate decide an amendment is required (and this seems likely), the entire Bill will be sent back to the House for another reading as an amended Bill. If the government manages to raise enough support amongst all of the MP’s it seems that this could mean a non confidence vote for the government. But given that the Liberals, Bloc and NDP are supporting an amendment to this Bill, it doesn’t seem likely that it will become an issue that will bring down the current government and force us into an election. But if it does, we say bring it on.

Maureen is off to Ottawa again tomorrow. Maybe she can ferret out the disappearing guidelines that supposedly don't exist yet. We'll see.

In any case, I leave you with this:

In Montreal last weekend I did two things that you wouldn't think would have bearing on C-10, but they do.

First, I went to Mass for the first time in a long while at the Notre Dame Basilica. Mostly for the novelty of it. The service was in French, but you know Catholics, it's all hard wired in there somewhere. As I struggled to catch snippets in my imperfect French, I looked around the faces in that church -- young and old, and I reminded myself that this was not a fight of the secular versus the religious -- even thought that's the way that the McVety's of the world want to paint it.

This is a fight of one religious minority trying to impose their will on a Canadian populace who simply does not support their radical views of what is and what is not acceptable. They can't go in the front door -- because it won't work. They have to stealth this through.

So that means that the only way we can lose this thing is if we somehow manage to piss off the average Canadian.

It's easy these days to demonize people of faith. But they are not all (if you'll pardon the expression,) cut from the same cloth. You go to the shrill rhetorical place and you put your argument on the level of those who currently have neither social support, or economic sense on their side.

The second thing I did was walk through a very interesting exhibit of Cuban art from conquest to the present. There is an island that's endured much, and the swings of politics and politics trying to sway culture. Some of the strongest pieces were wildly propagandist in nature. Pretty interesting stuff. But the show also had a fatal weakness, in that the cooperation of the Cuban authorities and the Havana Museum meant that there could really be no inclusion of anything that even slightly criticized Castro.

So in a sense, like when I saw RockN'Roll last month, I was struck by what is lost when you can't make part of the argument.

There's nothing -- nothing at all -- that says we have to fall into the rhetorical traps the Conservatives set for us. Make the argument. The full argument. Do it with passion in your heart. Demand answers, and proof that this change is needed.

Truth. Economics. And the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are on our side. The only way we lose this one is through apathy or by turning freethinking, reasonable Canadians against us.

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!

YOU WANT ABSURDITY? The Toronto Star's Martin Knelman breaks it down for you. Don't let ANYONE tell you that this was just an "innocent misunderstanding." They've been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now they're trying to backtrack.

Keep the pressure on.

Call it the Mystery of the Disappearing Guidelines for Bill C-10. It's the latest dramatic development in a struggle in the land of cultural politics, featuring a head-on collision of tax reform and film censorship.

Matters took a turn into comic absurdity yesterday at a heritage committee meeting with a startling statement by Jim Abbott, parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Josée Verner.

Only days before, Abbott had undertaken to come back to the committee with the guidelines for implementing the proposed changes to the Income Tax Act, under which the heritage minister could deny tax credits to productions judged contrary to public policy.

In fact, it was the guidelines that started the controversy when a heritage bureaucrat described them to a journalist. And then the leader of a religious right group claimed credit for pressuring the government to adopt these guidelines, supposedly targeting any material that God-fearing moralists might finds offensive.

That nightmare scenario induces Hitchcock-like anxiety in those who care about the arts industries and the government funding that makes it possible for them to exist.

But yesterday, Abbott reportedly said the guidelines don't exist yet, claiming they won't be drawn up until the legislation is passed.

"It was just before the meeting had to adjourn because the bells were ringing and we had to go to the House for the vote on the budget," says Bill Siksay, the NDP heritage critic. "There wasn't time for anyone to react to what Abbott said. But I have trouble understanding how it's possible the guidelines don't exist when just a few days ago he undertook to produce them for the committee."

Abbott could not be reached for comment.

So what about the bureaucrat who referred to the guidelines? Abbott's explanation is the bureaucrat was mistaken. He misspoke.

That leaves some big questions.

Bill C-10 "Supporters?" It's Time to "Come To Jesus"

WHY ARE YOU wasting your time here when Uncle Jim explains it all for you here?

Canadian Drama By The Numbers

THE CRTC RELEASED their report on Canadian Broadcasters' Financial Results, and WGC responded. But the numbers themselves paint an interesting picture.

Ratio of money spent on foreign drama to homegrown drama, in dollars: 12.6 to 1

Amount spent on foreign: 461, 770, 968. Homegrown: 36, 500 000.

That's almost 462 million versus 36 and a half million.

Broadcaster profits in 2007: stable

profit before tax income, 5.2 %

increase over last year's profit, 1.3 %

And you pay twice on your cable bill for these programs -- once for the U.S. networks where you'd get them anyway, and once for the Canadian nets. Nice. Racket.

Breaking The Bank

PEN CANADA has reported that the Senate banking committee is meeting today to talk C-10. They're not hearing from the WGC or other groups. In fact, the Heritage Minister's ducking behavior and assurances that "all this is nothing new" is probably going to carry the day. Just in case, an email blast to Senators wouldn't be the worst idea in the world. Feel free to adapt my letter below, which I adapted from the PEN letter. Do it tonight.

Details and addresses can be found here in this Facebook group.

I'm also posting them here:

Senate Commerce, Banking and Trade Committee.

General email:
banking_banques@sen.parl.g

c.ca

General mail:
Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce
The Senate of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1A 0A4

anguswd@sen.parl.gc.ca, goldsy@sen.parl.gc.ca, bironmi@sen.parl.gc.ca, rokosg@sen.parl.gc.ca, harbm@sen.parl.gc.ca, jaffem@sen.parl.gc.ca, massip@sen.parl.gc.ca, meighen@sen.parl.gc.ca, moorew@sen.parl.gc.ca, ringup@sen.parl.gc.ca, tkachd@sen.parl.gc.ca

Angus, W. David Chair - C - (Alma - Quebec)
Goldstein, Yoine Deputy Chair - Lib. - (Rigaud - Quebec)
Biron, Michel - Lib. - (Mille Isles - Quebec)
Eyton, John Trevor - C - (Ontario)
Harb, Mac - Lib. - (Ontario)
Jaffer, Mobina S.B. - Lib. - (British Columbia)
Massicotte, Paul J. - Lib. - (De Lanaudière - Quebec)
Meighen, Michael A. - C - (St. Marys - Ontario)
Moore, Wilfred P. - Lib. - (Stanhope St. / South Shore - Nova Scotia)
Ringuette, Pierrette - Lib. - (New Brunswick)
Tkachuk, David - C - (Saskatchewan)

My letter:

Denis McGrath
(full address and postal code)

March 4, 2008


Senator W. David Angus
Chair - Senate Committee on Bank, Trade and Commerce
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6


Dear Mr. Angus,

I am writing regarding Bill C-10: An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, including amendments in relation to foreign investment entities and non-resident trusts, and to provide for the bijural expression of the provisions of that Act. I am writing to ask you to exercise judgement to preserve an industry.


I strongly, in the most strenuous terms, urge the Senate to hold public hearings on Bill C-10, with witnesses from the arts community, and to present an amended bill to the House of Commons removing those provisions that would subject film and television productions to censorious and redundant assessment according to so-called "public policy" criteria.


I am also deeply unsatisfied with the Hon. Minister of Heritage's statement on this matter, released yesterday, and with her reluctance to face the arts community at the Genie Awards last night. This is an issue of great import to our country's artists and content creators, which is why I am desperately appealing for your help on this matter.


I am a professional film and television writer, and an immigrant to this great country. I was born in the United States, and have watched with dismay as concepts and ideas that were once freely expressed on television and radio in the 1970's, cannot be broached today due to the pernicious and unyielding pressure of religious zealotry there. Canada has a tradition that is more tolerant, and evenhanded -- and yet we seem to be repeating the same mistake.


I have written episodes of CBC Television's THE BORDER, as well as comedies for SHOWCASE. I co-created the series ACROSS THE RIVER TO MOTOR CITY, which explores issues of Canadian identity from the 1960's through to the post 9/11 world. I strive every day to try and make entertainment for Canadians, that speaks to them and offers them a view of themselves that differs from the prevailing worldview of our neighbour to the south. Television and film are the most influential media of our times -- just as we've made space for Canadian literature, we must make the space for a Canadian voice on TV. That voice cannot be made without the tax credits that producers rely on to make their shows here. I have seen that first hand. This is an industry that employs thousands across Canada. This bill plays politics with both their jobs, and the very concept of Canadian culture.


The issues noted above as contained in Bill C-10 mark a major departure from past practice and is simply not acceptable as a policy to be applied in determining which film projects can receive favourable tax treatment.


There is a longstanding principle that in funding the arts, government does not interfere in artistic expression. Nor does it dictate what has artistic merit; that has wisely been left in the hands of artists themselves which is where it should reside. For one example, I know several people who write for the programs THIS HOUR HAS 22 MINUTES, and the RICK MERCER REPORT. Both of these programs, as satire, are required to be skeptical and sometimes critical of the government. How can this be accomplished if the arm's length principle of arts funding is abandoned?


Although the offensive provisions of this bill got through the House of Commons and most of the way through the Senate before they were noticed and publicized, fortunately there is still time to act to ensure that Parliament does not end up as the agent restricting freedom of expression in Canada.


What's more, I wish to call your attention to the depth of feeling out there, the concern that this change that grants new power to the Heritage MInister, has been slipped past in a fundamentally undemocratic way. Over twenty thousand Canadians have joined a group on a social networking site to oppose this bill, in only five days. These sites represent a revolution in communication for a newer generation of Canadians. You are the steward of policy that can affect people and their artistic choices long after you, and I are both dead. I ask you to err on the side of protecting future expression.


I urgently request the Senate to amend Bill C-10 and return it to the House of Commons where there could be a real debate about the reasons for and the impact of this attempt by government to restrict freedom of expression and artistic merit in Canada. Professional organizations such as the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, the Writers Guild of Canada, ACTRA, and the Directors Guild must be heard from on this matter before you proceed. To allow this bill to pass into law without doing so will be viewed as an act injurious to the culture of this country. And it won't be forgotten.


I trust you and all others Senators will support and vote for freedom of expression on this issue.

Sincerely


D McGrath


cc Senator Yoine Goldstein
Senator Michel Biron
Senator John Trevor Eyton
Senator Mac Harb
Senator Mobina S.B. Jaffer
Senator Paul J. Massicotte
Senator Wilfred P. Moore
Senator Donald H. Oliver
Senator Pierrette Ringuette
Senator David Tkachuk
Maureen Parker, Executive Director, Writers' Guild of Canada

Planes Never Take Off On Time

SIGH. WHILST I WAIT in a dingy bar in the Toronto airport, the Heritage Ministry just passed a press release where they swear they never meant to suggest that they were gonna do ANYTHING with the tax credits...

Bill C-10 has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the integrity of the tax system. The goal is to ensure public trust in how tax dollars are spent. The modifications in question will affect a very small number of the over 1000 productions that receive tax credits annually. We will act with great care to ensure there is no adverse effect on film financing practices in the industry.

The movies we go to see at theatres and film festivals will continue to be eligible for tax credits. The measure contained in Bill C-10 addresses only the most extreme and gratuitous material, not mainstream films such as Eastern Promises, Borderline, and Ma fille, mon ange.

It is the role of government to support the efforts of our artists, creators, and key players in our cultural industries. Canadians can be assured that we will continue to do so with passioon, respect and transparency.

Well, it's nice to know that they'll be approaching it with passioon.

I still have yet to hear a logical, clear argument about what the change is meant to block -- what was getting tax credits before that won't now? It wouldn't affect Eastern Promises, fine. Then what?

Frankly, the whole thing sounds to me like the Tories have decided that they're shocked - shocked! that anyone would think they'd try to mess with culture... Not when they have such a good record with same...

Yup. It's Captain Renault's World. I just blog in it.

One More As I Head For The Door...

REGARDING BILL C-10...

Nothing's been won yet. We still have to keep the pressure on. And we should do it by making the very real, very logical economic arguments, and by making only the most high-minded of the censorship arguments.

The government here is out of touch with the entire country, and the values of that country besides a small conservative rump. This is not a left wing versus right wing issue. There is no need to be smug. We have fact, society, truth, and sense on our side.

We also have an election coming up. Look south, to the stirrings of hope, and ask yourself if now is really the time to go backwards.

Fifteen-thousand members in the Facebook group. In four days.

The Tories are going to wish they never picked up the culture war stick.

Well, That Explains a Few Things, Then

OKAY. I KNOW. It's for an article deliberately targeted for the gay demographic.

But quotes like this -- or the long-ago CBC launch event where the creator of the new show said, "we wanted to make a show for people who don't watch TV..."

These things, they just...

...they just don't help.

"The thing about me," says Kent Staines, writer and cocreator of CBC's new series MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives, "is I know nothing about hockey. Nothing. Zero."

Sigh.

MVP is a show that, had it been executed well and consistently, could have triangulated three demos that could have made it a hit: gay men who respond the way that Staines is speaking of in this article, women who watch even though they don't really like hockey because they love hockey players, and 3 -- the men and the women who ACTUALLY LIKE THE GAME, TOO.

The L Word is not a hit because it's just lesbians watching. And talk to them writers on Queer as Folk all those years, and try to tell them that they didn't pull from the straight audience too.

I swear, does every one of us in this industry -- every single stinkin one of us, need serious media training? Gagggguuuggh!

I need a break. I'm going to Florida. Might check in. Might not. We'll see.

Gaaah!

C-10 End of Friday -- Where It Stands

THIS IS NEAR as I can tell, as of about 5 p.m. ET.

According to Gary Harvey (Robson Arms,) who's had direct contact with the Senate, C-10 is now going back to the banking committee. (The relevant thread is here, in the comments.) Others are saying this means that the bill has been suspended from its third reading. That's not confirmed, but that's my understanding of what happens under our parliamentary system when something is referred back to committee. Remember, the Liberals have a Majority in the Senate, not the Conservatives. So this may be one of those few cases where the Senate actually is able to do something.

This afternoon, the Writers Guild of Canada sent out this release:

Writers Guild of Canada Calls for Public Consultation

on Film and Television Tax Credit Guidelines

For Immediate Release

February 29, 2008 – Toronto – Among the amendments to the country’s Income Tax Act currently before Senate is legislation charging the Department of Heritage with the creation of new guidelines that could bring further instability and bureaucracy to the film and television industry in Canada. The proposed new guidelines will define what is “contrary to public policy,” and provide the power to retroactively revoke tax credits for those productions deemed to fall within that definition.

The WGC learned in a conversation today that the Department of Heritage has already created these guidelines, expanding the criteria used for denying tax credits. These guidelines will come into effect as soon as Bill C-10 receives royal assent.

“Given that the guidelines could have far-reaching implications for the industry, we want input into the process,” says Rebecca Schechter, President, Writers Guild of Canada. “The reality is that, in Canada, securing tax credits is an essential step to a project being financed. It is not for the Department of Heritage to decide in isolation what films and TV productions will get made.”

Maureen Parker, Executive Director, Writers Guild of Canada, says that “without the ability to have confidence in the tax credit piece of the financing puzzle, there will be fewer productions in Canada. The new guidelines could cost the Canadian economy thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of production dollars each year.”

The WGC calls on the Government of Canada, the Heritage Committee and the Department of Heritage to go back to the creative community before issuing the new guidelines to discuss their necessity, and to get input on the direction they should take.

A couple of anecdotal things:

• Apparently the Governor General's office has been going crazy all day from people writing in about this. They were seriously caught off guard.
• A Facebook group that was formed soon after this broke on Thursday, Keep Your Censoring Hands off of Canadian Film and TV! No To Bill C-10! which I joined as the eighth member, has grown to over 3, 249 members. In 24 hours. There's full info there on who to write, and example letters of what you should write.
  

That, in itself is incredible, when you consider the power of the social networking site to mobilize that many people, that quickly. Here's another thing. That group of 3, 249 members (and growing) are young, educated, and urban. They are plugged in and connected. I doubt there's more than a handful of Senators in Canada who've even heard of Facebook.

The demographics of Canada are shifting -- to more urban, more sophisticated. This cohort is only going to grow in the next few years. And in Quebec, where the Conservatives made inroads last election, they care about culture pretty deeply. This thing has the potential to turn into a millstone issue for the Tories. They thought they were throwing a little culture war red meat to their base. There could be some reaping and sowing in their future.

Also, through the WGC again, I learned today that part of the changes in the Income Tax Act actually grew out of industry consultations, including some changes to rules that the WGC was in favor of. But typically, in the execution, the government went for top-down and hamfisted:

The Income Tax Act has contained a provision that permits CAVCO to deny certification to any film or video production that is “…contrary to public policy” since 1997. In 2003, CAVCO and other Departments, including Heritage and Finance proposed amendments to the legislation which included a few things the WGC lobbied for.

#1 Section 125.4 (1) of the Act outlines an expansion of the base of the tax credit to now include development of script material within two years before the first day of principal photography, whereas previously, it was only the final draft included in the tax credit. This will encourage more to be spent on Canadian writers in development because the producers will get an enhanced credit for it.

The other thing we lobbied for is that the identity of all film and video productions that receive tax credits be made public . Bill C-10 now contains this much needed transparency. This is another personal win for us because the WGC specifically asked for confirmation from CAVCO of films or TV productions certified as a Canadian. We have been very concerned about productions written by non Canadians (and less than 6 points) qualifying as Canadian content. We want to ensure that our tax dollars are supporting productions written by a Canadian citizens or “true” landed immigrant - those who actually reside in Canada.

It's typical that something that started with a call for greater transparency somewhere along the way led to the Heritage Committee drawing up guidelines, by themselves, behind closed doors. Welcome to Canada.

The WGC, through back channels and official contacts made the following request:

We would like a formal assurance that the artistic community will have input in the guidelines and that the guidelines will not by influenced a particular ideology or social agenda.

They also spoke to various MP's and political party staff. Letters are coming in from all over. The advice the WGC received was to request an appearance in front of the banking committee. That's what they're doing.

Brian Anthony of the Directors Guild of Canada sent out this release this afternoon:

When we became aware of this legislation yesterday, we immediately sprang into action and wrote to the Minister of Canadian Heritage expressing our concern and urging her in the strongest possible terms to reconsider and revoke this amendment. We also issued a press release, which has been posted on the DGC web site for your reference. I then contacted a number of Senators, including a couple of members of the Senate Banking Committee and its Clerk. The good news is that Bill C-10 has been referred back to the Banking Committee and its members will decide next week whether or not they wish to hear witnesses. I have asked to appear before the committee if it does indeed decide to hold hearings, and other interested parties from our sector will want to be involved as well.

The concern that we raised in the letter to the Minister and in the press release is that this broad provision could not only have a chilling effect on artistic expression but could also discourage investment in film and television production. You will be interested to know that the proposed measure applies only to Canadian film and television productions and not to service productions.

So that's the answer to that question. In other words, this bonehead government is actually trying to make the burden on Canadian producers harder, while giving U.S. producers a pass.

The optics just get worse and worse on this thing.

In any case, now's the time keep the pressure on. Write the P.M. and your MP and the Culture Critics for all the major parties, if you haven't done so already. Call into talk radio. Write letters to the editor. Call your constituent office and ask what they're doing about this. For Godsake...speak up!

This thing almost, almost went through without a peep. And if we've learned one thing about this government is that they have no problem acting like they have a huge majority, when they don't.

Now I hear rumors that there may be YouTube videos about to be made of those most offensive, gratuitously violent tales -- you know, from the Bible and stuff. Exxxxxcelllent.

Poor Tories. They really have no idea about this whole 21st century thing, do they?

Keep the pressure up. Remember -- these guys have to fight an election in a few months. Let them do that wearing the censorship scarlet letter.

While Senators Snooze, There's Some Heap Good Movie Makin Goin On.

ALL THE FOOFERAL over this Bill C-10 thing has prevented me from writing a proper review of The Englishman's Boy.

The adaptation of the Guy Vanderhaeghe novel, which he adapted himself, is Directed by John Smith (The Boys of St. Vincent.)

I've seen part one. And Holy God it is good. It's REALLY good. How good? Well, let me 'homage' a bit from John Doyle's review today in the Globe and Mail:

The Englishman's Boy (Sunday, CBC, 8 p.m.) is lavish, convincing and superbly done.

This is no small achievement. The novel is dense and layered, with three levels of story operating in different time periods: the present, Hollywood of the 1920s and Saskatchewan in the 1870s. The TV miniseries (continuing a week from Sunday on CBC) is adapted by Vanderhaeghe himself and distills the epic story into two interwoven tales.

The central event, occurring in 1873 and based on fact, is the massacre of 36 Assiniboine Indians in Cypress Hills, Sask., by a band of Canadian and American wolf hunters. In Vanderhaeghe's version, one of those involved is Shorty McAdoo (Michael Eisner), whom we meet first when he is the servant to an Englishman in Montana. When the Englishman dies, the boy falls into the company of one Tom Hardwick, a ruthless, psychopathic wolf hunter and leader of a local hunting crew.

Skip forward to the 1920s and a Hollywood film set, in the age of silent movies, where a western is being made. A stunt goes wrong, because of the ineptitude and uncaring attitude of the director (Don McKellar). An elderly man (Nicholas Campbell), whom we learn is the older Shorty, takes swift and concise revenge on the director. From there we see a writer, Harry Vincent (Michael Therriault, who starred in Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story), make contact with Shorty and gradually extract from Shorty the story of his long and strange life. Vincent wants the story so that Hollywood mogul Damon Chance (Bob Hoskins) can make a "true" American epic from the tale.

The first two hours move swiftly and elegantly through the twin stories. The pace is perfect as the full force of Shorty's life emerges. This is a gripping, tense and sharply made western drama.

Here's why it's important that people watch this movie: as much as I'm generally in favor with the CBC's new direction in trying to go for younger, accessible shows, that shouldn't come totally at the expense of this kind of rich, layered, epic production. This was commissioned under a previous CBC regime and it's been on the shelf a long, long time. There's a danger like with October 1970, or the Levesque movie, this is going to get dumped and "prove" that there's no audience for bigger, more serious movies on the CBC. Watch it, and prove'em wrong.

And if you want a little more meat to chew on while you decide, read Brian Johnson's ASTONISHING, honest, searing profile of Nicholas Campbell (DaVinci's Inquest) in Maclean's this week.

The actor starred in Da Vinci's Inquest for seven seasons, followed by one season with Da Vinci's City Hall, which the CBC cancelled in 2006. He figures his salary ranged from $16,000 to $30,000 an episode. "I thought it was a paycheque that was never going to end," he says. "I was on a successful show. But I was totally irresponsible in my financial dealings. I was living a fool's paradise."

Campbell swears he never gambled large amounts at the track. But between jobs he would spend the whole day there, handicapping 70 or 80 races around the world, and the dollars added up. He also bought horses, owning more than 60 in partnerships over the years. "When I started to get negative energy from the tax people," he says, "I was on the hook with the horses and had to pay my end until they could replace my investment. I thought I'd eventually be able to catch up. It didn't work out that way."

It goes on. Unbelievable article. Wow.

You know, between Mayerthorpe, and Tassie Cameron's Would Be Kings, this has been a HELL of a month for Canadian TV movies.

Not bad for a format everyone says is dead.

I'll try to get my thoughts up about Englishman's Boy before Part 2 airs. Meantime, Sunday night, Please, please, please tune in. To not watch something this good would really be offensive. And you know how Daddy with the helmet hair feels about that word...

Oh Yeah. It's a Brave New World Post Strike.

OR, UM, ER....not.

NBC has pulled the plug on its Internet-to-TV experiment "Quarterlife" -- a decision that apparently won't bother its creator too much.

After a premiere that pulled in historically low ratings on Tuesday, the series from "My So-Called Life" creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick has been pulled from the 9 p.m. Sunday timeslot where it was scheduled to air for the next several weeks. "Deal or No Deal" and a "Law & Order" rerun will fill the hour for the next two weeks.

"Quarterlife" drew a CW-esque 3.1 million viewers in its debut at 10 p.m. Tuesday -- the worst in-season performance in the 10 p.m. hour by an NBC show in at least 17 years.

...but, you know, we're gonna cancel the upfronts and we're not gonna pay a lot for hits or anything anymore. No suh. Not us. Sez Jeff Zucker.

And we're sure enough not gonna get into any bidding wars for....heyyyyy:

ABC is reportedly interested in picking up "Scrubs" for next season -- which is news to NBC, the network that currently airs the hospital comedy.

The showbiz trade papers say that ABC Studios, which produces the series, is in talks with its sister network to produce an 18-episode season of "Scrubs" for 2008-09. Here's the rub, though: NBC says it's still in a period of exclusive negotiations with the studio about the show's fate.

Oh yeah.

Jeff Zucker needs his milkshake drunk.

Does Mary Darling Owe You an Apology?

Mary Darling is the Executive Producer of Little Mosque on the Prairie. She has a specific talent for saying really unfortunate things in print.

But we'll get to that.

When last we left the Bill C-10 story, the industry was caught flat-footed by a sneaky Tory plan to open up a Canadian front in the U.S.-style culture wars through an amendment to the Income Tax Act. This amendment, now in a bill at 3rd reading in the Senate, (ie: it's almost law) would allow them to retroactively deny funding to films and television shows the Heritage Ministry deemed "offensive." Have the words "Heritage Ministry" ever sounded so ominous?

Last night, I was at an industry grad for outgoing writers for the Canadian Film Centre. Of course, everyone was talking about this latest travesty, and the conservative war on culture in general. Notably, several Producers I talked to related nervous conversations they'd had yesterday with American producers, asking if this "crazy new rule change"was going to apply to them. The short answer, as I wrote yesterday, is that it might, which is bad. And it might not, which is worse - at least for us. Make no mistake, though. Yesterday Hollywood definitely took notice.

Also, last night, The Canadian Press moved an article where Tory spinners at the Heritage Department tried to suggest that this this was really no big deal:

"The amendment replaces a similar provision that was in the income tax regulations between 1996 and 2005. Therefore it is not a new concept," Heritage spokeswoman Annette Gibbons said Thursday.

"Cultural funding program criteria have always included certain kinds of material such as hate propaganda, excessively violent material or pornography."

However, the department has occasionally received material that raised questions and it decided to update the criteria.

The added criteria will include child pornography, gratuitous violence and the denigration of an identifiable group.

This is a fairly transparent dodge. First, if pornography already isn't eligible for tax credits (and it's not) then surely child pornography isn't, either. Anyone with any experience with the culture wars will tell you that it's the "gratuitous" in violence that gives you the fun fights. It sounds like something nobody could object to, right?

Unfortuntely, that gentle little spin couldn't even hold up for one night. So we come today, and this story:

Evangelist takes credit for film crackdown

Christian crusader says he pressured cabinet ministers and PMO officials to deny tax credits to productions deemed too offensive

BILL CURRY AND GAYLE MACDONALD

From Friday's Globe and Mail

February 29, 2008 at 4:00 AM EST

OTTAWA, TORONTO — A well-known evangelical crusader is claiming credit for the federal government's move to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content.

Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, said his lobbying efforts included discussions with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, and "numerous" meetings with officials in the Prime Minister's Office.

"We're thankful that someone's finally listening," he said yesterday. "It's fitting with conservative values, and I think that's why Canadians voted for a Conservative government."

Aha!

So, why do I think Mary Darling might owe you an apology?

Well, in that same CP article where the Tories tried to put out the innocuous spin, Darling, beneficiary of your tax dollars and a half hour a week on the public broadcaster, had this to say:

"There are a lot of things on TV today that, I think, have gone too far," said Mary Darling, executive producer of "Little Mosque on the Prairie," which airs in over 80 markets globally, including French-speaking Africa, the Middle East and several European countries.

"If something comes along that helps us to at least discern what is acceptable . . . then I think, as a producer, I'd be willing to look at that and explore it."

Now, I would love to think that maybe Darling was misquoted here. And I'll be more than happy to correct myself if that turns out to be the case. But she does have a history of this kind of thing.

It was Darling who, in the first days of the WGA strike, led the charge of giving interviews saying how great the strike was going to be for Canadian producers. One of the most egregious to the Canadian creative community was this one, which a lot of creatives refer to as "the sparkle dust incident," where she managed to, in one fell swoop, insult the talent that she works with every day, and suggest that it would be great if Canadian born WGA writers, you know, broke their own strike rules and came home to work.

Mary Darling, head of Westwind Pictures, the production company behind the CBC hit "Little Mosque on the Prairie," says such a reverse brain drain to the north can only be good for the Canadian industry.

"We've heard some whispers from some talent down in Los Angeles, people trying to cover their butts who shall remain nameless," she said.

"This strike could end up spilling a little bit of sparkle dust on the Canadian community. There's so much Canadian talent down there ... there may be some really interesting, wonderful opportunities for Canadian producers as they draw on the experiences of people who have done volumes and volumes and volumes of writing in L.A. who are coming back home and want to stay home."

Translation: Oooh, we get to work with American writers?

Now, of course, that didn't happen. There was no mass exodus up north.

Darling was also quoted in just about every article about how many Canadian shows were going to be sold to the USA. In the end, three sold. (and I'll admit, I got quoted in some articles too, saying I didn't think any would sell. I was wrong, too.) But, of the three shows that sold, only one had been made already: Sophie -- and that show sold to a cable channel, not an over the air network. The other two shows were in an early stage of production, and therefore more attractive (since the U.S. nets will actually be able to help shape the content.)

Little Mosque, Darling's show, did not sell to the U.S.A. It still hasn't.

Okay, so she managed to piss off Canadian talent and give a bunch of hyperbolic interviews. She wouldn't be the first person to do that. But this latest quote is chilling, because if you go back to this morning's coverage, here's the kind of "limits" that people are talking about:

Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign.

"There are a number of Conservative backbench members that do a lot of this work behind the scenes," he said.

Conservative MP Dave Batters recently urged the new president of Telefilm Canada, Michel Roy, to block federal funding for objectionable films, listing Young People Fucking as a recent example.

"In my mind, sir, and in the minds of many of my colleagues and many, many Canadians," said Mr. Batters during a Jan. 31 meeting of the Canadian Heritage committee, "the purpose of Telefilm is to help facilitate the making of films for mainstream Canadian society - films that Canadians can sit down and watch with their families in living rooms across this great country."

Ahh, so there we go. And there it is.

The most shocking thing about Young People Fucking, of course, is the title. The movie is actually quite sweet, and winds up coming down firmly on the side of monogamy, and the need for people to form lasting relationships. But in order to come to that conclusion, you have to watch it. And absorb it. If you get bent out of shape by words, and titles, and the surface of things -- you never get that far.

The people want to set the limits which Darling feels she could consider are the people who never get that far.

Question: how long before those backbenchers start asking why we're spending tax credits to "make fun of Christians" and "promote Muslim propaganda?" Don't tell me it can't happen and that those people aren't out there. Not when I have to turn on comments moderation every damn time I write about Little Mosque. Darling should have known better. She should have known where this kind of thing leads.

It's not like there aren't producers who don't understand the implications. Marvin Kaye is a young writer-producer, and a guy I play Poker with. His half hour comedy, Less Than Kind, starring Maury Chaykin, with Mark McKinney writing and showrunning behind the scenes, just finished shooting in Winnipeg. It will air on Citytv stations later this year. The show is a family comedy, based on his experiences growing up in Winnipeg. But when I say "family comedy" I don't mean the kind of "family comedy" Conservative back benchers mean. I mean the kind of raucous, brutally funny, and occasionally uncomfortable experience a lot of us had when we were growing up.

The show's shot. It's in the can. And to get it made, Kaye watched as the production company squeezed every dollar till it screamed -- including the tax credits. So how does he feel about the possibility that those credits could be retroactively pulled?

"Terrified."

And what about Mary Darling's idea that she's willing to "look at" their ideas of "what's acceptable?"

"It's frightening to me that she would say that," says Kaye. "This should strike fear into the hearts of anybody who wants to create quality tv. If she's happy to be put in a box that's great for her, I don't want to work within a box that's defined by a bureaucratic committee. Judge the quality of the work. Not the content."

In an email exchange with one of my Showrunners on The Border, the ever patient David Barlow, he pointed out that tax credits are an extremely poor way to try and influence content. There are plenty of other mechanisms, from Telefilm to the CTF, to try and have an impact on the content of shows.

Tax credits are intended as an industrial subsidy for an industry that employs hundreds, thousands of people. And it's not really a subsidy, it's more of a stimulus - the governments get back far more tax dollars because of these credits than they give up.

So get this -- this even goes against what should be stated Conservative principles -- to stimulate the economy. Politicizing them in this way is not just destabilizing to an industry that can ill afford it...it's bad policy.

I sometimes give Producers a hard time on this blog. (A couple even kidded me about it last night.) But I respect and admire what they do, and that's the truth. Because I couldn't do what they do. And I wouldn't want to. That's not where my talents lie.

Lord, putting together a show in Canada is not an easy proposition. Finding that last bit of money can be torturous. Everything's wait and wait and then hurry up and get it done. You have to jump through hoops and regs that are ever-changing. You wind up deferring your fees half the time to get the thing made. And if you go over -- you pay for it. It's nervewracking. It's heartbreaking, difficult, sometimes tedious work, and the tenacity and good humour I've seen from some of the people who manage to keep doing it year after year, is truly incredible.

If I was Sandra Cunningham, the head of the CFTPA, I would be placing a call to Mary Darling today to ask her, "why would you go on record and say what you said?" If I was another Canadian producer who meticulously structured my cobbled together budget like jenga sticks, I'd want to know if she knew the implications of what she was saying. And If I was an Executive at the CBC, who just received a vote of confidence from Parliament where, predictably, the Conservatives dissented, I would be calling the Executive Producer of my highest rated comedy, to ask her how she thought she was helping.

And if I were you, I'd write Mary Darling at Westwind Pictures and I'd ask her the same thing.

marydarling@westwindpictures.com

Please write your MP, and tell them that tax credits are no way to influence the culture. That's the important issue here.

Canadian Viewers: How You Can Oppose The Tories' Sneaky TV Censorship

READ this first.

Then, find your MP (Member of Parliament) by searching by Postal Code here. It's especially important to do this if you live in a riding represented by a Conservative MP.

Next, write a letter. It should be faxed or emailed -- this bill is in its 3rd reading, which means that it could become law very soon. There's no time to mail. I would also call your constituent office to express your displeasure directly.

I would also suggest writing a letter to your local newspaper. Tell them how you feel about censorship. Try not to do so in a way that will get you censored.

If you have a call-in talk show on the radio in your community, call in. Tell them how you feel. Make sure to emphasize how sneakily this is being done. Along with a whole bunch of other changes to the Income Tax act.

While you're at it, you may want to write the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Tell her you don't appreciate her trying to pull a fast one like this. Remind her that she serves as part of a minority government -- a minority government by a party who's not getting a ton of great press right now.

You can also write the Leader of the Official Opposition.

Good luck, and if you do write a letter, thank you.