Star Power
The results are in! The 31st annual Genie Awards recently honoured achievements in Canadian cinema. This year our acclaimed actors included Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Lubna Azabal and Minnie Driver. Let’s hear it for these bright shining Canadian stars.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Dustin Hoffman’s Canadian? Sure! He’s from Thunder Bay. No. He’s not. None of them are.
And here’s the thing – I don’t care. I doesn’t matter. These folks may truly be deserving of the accolades. I wouldn’t know. As a Canadian filmmaker myself, I can rarely afford to go the cinema, let alone one that’s playing a Canadian film. Hell, America’s best actors are British, so it almost makes sense that Canada’s best actors are American. And British. And Belgian.
The joke here that you may not be aware of is that the chief government-run financiers and guilds in Canada have stringent safeguards against this exact thing from happening.
Here’s an embarrassing little tidbit about trying to get a movie financed: You have to give the prospective backer a cast wishlist. Literally a simple list of the biggest stars you can think of that remotely suit the roles in your script. It doesn’t matter if the proposed star really does suit the part or if you know of a super talented “unknown” actor who would be stellar in the role. You just have to give them names they can visualize on a poster. The movie could be 90 minutes of colour bars and tone as long as you have a name brand star on the poster.
Now I get it. I get it. I can only spread my artistic righteousness so thin. It’s the business part of “show business” that rules the day and until the guys with the deep pockets nut up and take some risks they’re going to stick with what they think works best. However, in Canada your wishlist normally means a wishlist of Canadian movie stars. And guess what? Even if they’re holding their Genie awards while bathing in maple syrup and watching hockey, Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman don’t qualify.
Would you like a brief overview of the entire Canadian star system of lead actors in the 20 to 30 year old age range? Here you go:
Ryan, the other Ryan, Rachelle and Ellen. Maybe Michael and Jay if you’re rocking a “quirky” comedy.
That’s it. That’s who you have to choose from unless you’re flexible about turning your male lead from a kid in his late twenties into either Christopher Plummer or Gordon Pinsent.
This isn’t me, incidentally. This isn’t my opinion or assessment of talent, it’s what I’ve been told by people with much shinier cars than me.
What’s the solution to the lack of a homegrown star system? I don’t know. I’m just a self righteous artist. I do know, however, that in times like these I do what all Canadians do. Like an acne-covered fat kid sitting at the fart table at lunch hour and watching the cool kids across the cafeteria, I look South to the Americans for answers. And the good news seems to be that star power is starting to fade in general. Perhaps before long we won’t be asked for cast wishlists at all. Perhaps eventually the names on the posters will be reserved for those who spend more than only four weeks on the film. And perhaps the range of those that do spend those four weeks acting their hearts out before the cameras can be expanded to include the multitude of “unknowns” who currently fall by the wayside.
