My Rant...

Tonight is Oscar night and everyone seems to be talking of nothing else...I have never seen the same enthusiasm for the Geminis or even the Junos. This all comes back to my previous posting about the present CRTC hearings on New Media in Canada.

We already subsidize artistic endeavors here in Canada, we were also the first country to nationalize its cinema. While I totally agree with arts grants I think we are going too far with subsidizing the film & television industry as we have been up until now. No incentives are given to actually produce quality films and television programs, we fund solely based on the ability of producers to bring a project to fruition and what economic benefit they bring to a region. While I agree that in these hard times stimulus is needed and greatly appreciated - our films and television programs, for the most part, never go into profit.

I have benefited from these subsidies, being both a producer and having also worked on various productions funded by these agencies, but sometimes I wish that those I have worked with had the passion for their projects like our American cousins do. American filmmakers are not subsidized, yet they dominate our Box Office and our television ratings and radio play. Many argue that it is the millions more they spend on marketing that allow them to prevail and that Canadian producers don't have access to that kind of money to promote their projects.

If we look at the history of American Cinema, it was the risk takers that stood to make the greatest profits based on their belief that their projects were worth the risk. These risk takers built Hollywood with both their profits and the knowledge gained through their losses.

The Canadian system of funding film and television seems, from the perspective of the average canadian, to be a very complicated welfare scam. "What? They keep making shows that no one watches and films that no one goes and sees and they keep getting tax dollars????"

I believe that Canada has produced some of the greatest talent in film and tv in history - I am not even going to start and name names - but how many of these have actually benefited from government money to make their mark?

I'll leave that for you to comment on.

I have one suggestion to make to all my fellow filmmakers and producers in this country - let's start making stuff people want to see and maybe we can get "off the dole" and leave these funds for the next generation to use.

Think about it.