Right, Ron MacLean.
So Ron MacLean would go around to different communities, and during commercial spots he would talk to the audience about the great film they were watching. All of us, a little group of us Canadians who are going to watch movies tonight...what are we watching? We're watching American blockbusters. I can get American blockbusters at every theatre in Canada, on every broadcaster in Canada--everywhere. Yet the CBC's Movie Night in Canada is basically promoting American blockbusters. That seems absurd.
Secondly, when you look at how they program Canadian feature films currently--and again, respectfully, I am speaking about the English programming because I know that Radio-Canada does a great deal--they have a lousy middle-of-the-night block where they play ancient Canadian films or films that have been around for so long there's no longer the sense that they connect to what's out there.
Why is that important? Why is it important for the CBC to play a role in celebrating what's currently happening in the cinema scene, the feature film scene? I think it's an important cultural issue. I think film is an internationally respected cultural medium and it has a role to play with our national broadcasters. So the first point is let's get them programming Canadian feature films.
Another thing that could happen, which would be amazing and I think would really help everyone.... I had a conversation in Paris with the woman who was running Radio-Canada in Quebec at the time--I can't remember her name and I can't remember the specifics, but it gives you a sense of what the CBC in French Canada is doing--and she said to a panel in Europe, “Yes, we have discretionary funds to promote Quebec cinema on Radio-Canada, and we work closely with distributors to lay the groundwork for promoting films that are currently playing in the theatres.” When I heard this, I was the biggest fan. I thought, what country is this and when can I move there?
We have a really hard time on English Canadian CBC affording ad space for current feature films. There's a movie opening this Friday called Fido. It's the first film I've seen in 10 years with a prime-time advertising placement. It was on Global, in the middle of the show 24.
Why is it that the CBC cannot be mandated to at least work with the distribution community to create better placement for the promotion of a Canadian feature film? The reason they don't do that is the biggest point I'm going to make today. The CBC plays no role at all in pre-licensing the movies. This is an important point.
When you're a producer making a feature film in Canada, this is what you do. I'll give you the layman's “how to”. You run around the country and meet with all the broadcasters. Why? Because broadcasters have a CRTC mandate to pre-buy your movie. Without even reading the script, The Movie Network, Movie Central, which is Corus Entertainment, and all the CHUM channels will give you a piece of paper that says when you deliver this movie they'll give you $100,000 or $150,000 or $250,000, whatever they think it's worth.
You take that paper, which is the thing you need to get your movie in the theatre, and you run off to your distributor, who says okay, what do you have in licences? You say you have The Movie Network over here, Movie Central over here, and CHUM television over here. And just so you understand, that means you go theatrical, home video, and then it goes right to TV. In Canada, it goes first to pay TV for a six-month window.
Am I going too fast? You are following, right? Okay.
So it goes for a six-month window on pay TV, and then it goes to conventional TV, which, in the case of Canada, is CBC, CTV, Global, CHUM. The second window is on the cable channels like Showcase and so on. You use these licences to finance your movie.
Now you go to a distributor like Alliance Atlantis or TVA or whatever, and you say, “Guys, I have all these letters that say I'm going to get x for this movie.” They say, “Fine. You assign all those broadcast rights and we'll give you a minimum guarantee. We'll give you an advance.” Basically, they'll give you money that you use to make your movie.
The reason you give them your licences and take their money is that you need the money quickly to make a movie. A television licence is only good when you deliver to television. If I'm a conventional broadcaster, I'm only putting it on the air after it has been in the theatres, after it has been on DVD, and after it has been to pay TV, if you follow what I'm saying.
So you can't really use the money. No bank is going to give you interim financing on that money, because it's prolonged. It takes three years sometimes to get the money on it. So the distributor swoops in and plays the role as a kind of guarantor, a sort of interim financier of your movie.
Anyway, I'm getting to the point.
What happens is they give you about 50¢ on the dollar currently. Their rationale is, “Look, Canadian films don't make any money--we all know that--so why should I buy your movie?” You go, “But I have licence fees.” And they say, “Fine. If you have a dollar worth of licence fees, I'll give you 50¢. Take it or leave it.” And what do you do? You take it, because you can't defend the case that your film is going to make a lot of money theatrically. You can't. So you need licence fees in order to push distributors to advance you money to get the movies made.
Now, in Quebec, it's a totally different story, right, because in Quebec the films are making money theatrically, the licences aren't discounted by the distributors to the same degree, and Radio-Canada is also involved.
Now, what I'd like to know is, why can't the CBC be a part of this food chain? We've been making...all of us in my group, but me in particular.... I'm starting my sixth movie right now, a feature film. Not one of my movies has ever had a dollar of CBC financing in advance. They may have ended up on the CBC at some point--maybe. Why is that? Why is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation not interested in getting involved in the business of making feature films?
I asked Slawko Klymkiw, when he was the head a few years ago, when he was at the Halifax film festival promoting the mini-series about the Halifax explosion—which seems a little ironic to me, but anyway.... I said, “Why don't you guys ever get involved in feature films?” He said, “Oh, it's not our thing. It's not something we're mandated to do; it's not something we want to do. We're going to put drama on television as series, as TV movies, whatever.”
The reason this is important is if the CBC were mandated to pre-license films, we would have a lot more money going into the making of these films. My partner is one of the producers on the show Intelligence. It's a great CBC show. The amount of money that CBC puts into that show is quite significant, and the amount of money that the CBC puts into all feature films in English Canada is nada. They don't put any in.
And if they did, see how it would work hand in glove with promotion. If I were the head of the CBC and I pre-licensed your film, Jacques, then I would have a vested interest in making sure your film got promoted. I would still charge the distributor to advertise on my network because I need the revenue, but why not give him a little better deal? Because it's my program, too, and it behooves all of us to get the audience to show an interest in this stuff.
When I was asked about whether I had something to bring to the committee, I was feeling, well, this is really about broadcast, it's not about feature films; we should just stay out of this. Then I thought about it a little more, and I thought, no, the CBC could play a really significant role. The end result is going to be that more Canadian feature films get made, more Canadian feature films get promoted, and more Canadian feature films get seen by the public.
Why should we bother? Because we're spending a hell of a lot of money making these movies. Every taxpayer in this room has contributed to all of my films, and everyone else I know and work with. But can we name the films?
We can argue about exhibition and distribution till we're blue in the face, but the exhibitors and the distributors don't care. They're making lots of money selling American movies back to Canadians. They're happy.
The CRTC and the mandate to show Canadian content is the only way we can help the Canadian feature film. And they know this in Quebec. They do. I think we should start paying attention to what they're doing in Quebec and start doing a little more of it here.
Thank you.