A Schur thing

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This article was published 27/08/2020 (2244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When one door closes, another opens.

The quote, attributed to inventor Alexander Graham Bell, applies to the local movie industry at a time COVID-19 is chasing big Hollywood releases from audience-diminished, social-distancing cinemas.

It was proved this past weekend when Sean Garrity’s Winnipeg-lensed film I Propose We Never See Each Other Again After Tonight earned the No. 1 box office spot at Cineplex McGillivray (more than twice the box office of the No. 2 film there, Garrity says) and at Cinema City Northgate (more than 13 times higher than the No. 2 film there).

“It sold out at both cinemas last night, too,” Garrity told the Free Press Wednesday morning. “Cineplex is, therefore, holding us at both cinemas, which is amazing, seeing as they originally told us we would only get a week at McGillivray in order to make way for (Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited) Tenet, which opens this week.”

“Obviously, we intend to mop the floor with Tenet this weekend,” Garrity says jokingly, adding that dates are now forthcoming for Toronto and Vancouver (Sept. 4) and Edmonton (Sept. 11) “and other cities in the works.”

Tenet is a bit of an outlier, of course. Most big Hollywood movies are being postponed until next year, when vaccines might ensure full movie houses once again.

But in the meantime, there are opportunities for smaller films to find a place on American screens.

Danny Schur hopes to seize that opportunity with his cinematic adaptation of Strike: The Musical.

Stand!, released last year in Canada, is on the verge of a huge push in American theatres. During an interview in Schur’s Riverview backyard, the music maven says Stand! may be released in as many as 1,200 screens across the U.S. in early December, the result of a deal with Fathom Events, the American company that specializes in broadcasting events to theatres, such as Metropolitan Opera Live!

Schur says he was in the midst of taking Stand! on the film-festival circuit in March when COVID started shutting down cinemas altogether.

“There were eight film festivals that we were to have gone to and I just presumed we were dead in the water,” he recalls. He tried to get the film in the door of various studios, to no avail. So he opted to find a sales agent to act as a distributor, deciding on Michelle Mower of the firm Imagination Worldwide.

“She absolutely loved the film and she said, ‘You know, I think there may be more opportunity for us than one might otherwise think,’” Schur says. “Sure enough, the day we signed the deal with her, the exhibitor Fathom contacted us.

“Where COVID was very much a deal-killer for most of the big movies, it was an opportunity for us.”

It helped that the movie was a musical, a rarity in cinemas these days, even in the musical-friendly holiday season. The content of the film, a drama set against the backdrop of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, may also strike a chord in a time when social justice issues are at the forefront of the national consciousness in the U.S., especially in this election year.

“I’m really excited that it’s going to be so timely,” Schur says.

With that in mind, Schur has been at work on a new music video in which local actress-singer Lisa Bell sings the rousing title track.

“It will be very much of-the-moment,” Schur says. “It will have lots of archival and recent footage of every social justice issue ever. Martin Luther King, the climate change movement, the women’s movement, the march on Washington and of course some of the recent George Floyd marches.”

Schur would like to see the song adopted by the Democratic campaign in the U.S.

“We can’t get the song to Joe Biden’s campaign fast enough,” he says. “I don’t know how I will do that, but it certainly is worth trying. Unlike the Rolling Stones with Trump, we’ll be like: ‘Here, take it!’

“I find it heartwarming that our 101-year-old story should be so plucked from the moment.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing