Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/12/2001 (8929 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A cast of hundreds!
A budget of $50 million and counting!
Featuring Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Shannon Doherty, Sam Neill, Brian Dennehy, Brendan Fehr, Beau Bridges, Blythe Danner and with a special appearance by Harrison Ford!
One year in the making!
It’s ? Manitoba Film: 2001.
After a less than stellar 2000, the Manitoba film community bounced back this year with a mix of TV movies, home-grown theatrical successes, and even a brief liaison with big-budget Hollywood movie-making. Crews were employed, local talent got a chance to shine and Gimli hoteliers got to play host to Indiana Jones.
“We had a really terrific balance between Manitoba production and U.S. production,” says Manitoba Film and Sound CEO Carole Vivier.
“That’s something we want to maintain. It keeps the crews working and the infrastructure supported.”
Sixteen independent Manitoba productions ? from documentaries to films and TV programs ? were shot in the province this year. Though the fiscal year began April 1, the total amount spent on locally made movies is already hovering near the $46-million mark. In comparison, the total for fiscal 2000-2001 was $50 million.
“I expect us to surpass that,” says Vivier. “We’re not anywhere near the end (of the fiscal year) yet.” She believes 2002 will be equally successful, if not more so.
“The calibre of offshore (American) production is improving,” she says. “Both with budgets and scripts. And the local community has worked hard to build itself. Our local film-makers are really shining forth, too, so I expect next year to be better.”
Already tentatively in the works for 2002 are two adaptations of Carol Shields novels ? The Republic of Love and The Stone Diaries ? and a filmed version of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel.
Below, monthly highlights from 2001.
JANUARY
Winnipegger Guy Maddin’s short film The Heart of the World is named the world’s top experimental film by the U.S. Society of Film Critics.
Local film-maker Noam Gonick’s first feature is accepted into January’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Hey, Happy!, the story of DJ Sabu’s quest to bed 2,000 young men, screened as part of the festival’s Midnights showcase.
FEBRUARY
Winnipeggers are starstruck when Patrick Swayze arrives in town with wife Lisa Niemi. They were here through April while shooting Without a Word, the flick they co-wrote about a couple of dancers revisiting their past.
Manitoba farmer Chaloem Pasak’s wild boars make their hair-raising big screen debut in Hollywood flick Hannibal. “They’re not really dangerous, like in the movie,” Pasak said after viewing the movie on opening day.
The National Screen Institute’s third-annual Local Heroes Canadian Film Festival debuts four made-in-Manitoba films ? Kanadiana, Law of Enclosures, desire and Hey, Happy! Canadian film heavyweights John Greyson, Sturla Gunnarson and Don McKellar lead festival master’s classes.
MARCH
Former Winnipegger and Roswell star Brendan Fehr and MovieTelevision’s Terry David Mulligan host the biannual Blizzard Awards, which showcase the best in Manitoba film and TV. CTV movie Milgaard and low-budget indie Heater pick up a slew of awards.
In need of a Russian-like frozen landscape, producers of multimillion-dollar Hollywood submarine flick K-19: The Widowmaker set up shop in Gimli for a few days. Star Harrison Ford flies in for less than 24 hours to film his part; women line the frigid shores of Lake Winnipeg and scream.
APRIL
Celebrated Canadian filmmaker Anne Wheeler shoots her latest project, A Wilderness Station, at Lower Fort Garry. Brendan Fehr and Quebecois Caroline Dhavernas star in the story of shady goings-on near the 1851 trading post.
The guys at Winnipeg’s Frantic Films finish up special effects work on Swordfish, starring John Travolta and Halle Berry, and the movie hits theatres. Frantic’s 40-second shot is called the biggest of its kind ever done by a Canadian effects company.
MAY
The city benefits from the threat of a Screen Actor’s Guild strike in the U.S. ? TV producers were anxious to shoot last-minute movies and bigger centres such as Toronto and Vancouver were already overrun with productions.
Rob Lowe and Sam Neill arrive in town to shoot the $9-million TNT thriller Framed. Portage and Main, the Great West Life building and the Wellington Crescent home of CanWest Global exec David Asper are among the locations used.
Around the same time, Shannen Doherty arrives in the city to shoot Another Day amid the controversy of having left her TV show Charmed.
Pioneer Quest, the locally-produced History TV show that followed the lives of two couples as they lived like homesteaders near Argyle, wraps up. The show is History’s highest-rated program ever.
JUNE
Max and the Lioness, a Winnipeg-Montreal-Moncton co-production starring former disco diva Patsy Gallant, arrives in the city for a two-week shoot.
Winnipeg gets a TV series ? and dependable work for its crews. 2030 C.E., a half-hour YTV show for pre-teens, is set in the not-so-distant future, where kids rule the world.
Winnipeg animator Cordell Barker unveils his long-awaited new film. Strange Invaders, the eight-and-a-half-minute follow-up to his 1988 Oscar nominated short The Cat Came Back, picks up a Special Distinction award at the International Film Festival in Annecy, France ? the oldest and largest animated fest in the world.
JULY
Controversial playwright Brad Fraser makes his directorial debut ? in film, that is ? by shooting an adaptation of his play Poor Super Man in Winnipeg. Though the play takes place in Calgary, Fraser set the film here.
AUGUST
Local film-maker Jeff Erbach shoots his first feature, The Nature of Nicholas. The film tells the story of two boys dealing with the trials and tribulations of puberty. Actor Tom McCamus has a small role as Nicholas’s father.
Guy Maddin directs the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Dracula: Page From a Virgin’s Diary. The film adaptation of the ballet is set to air on CBC’s Opening Night series on Feb. 28.
Eight modern-day Yorkmen land their 12-metre boat at York Factory at Hudson’s Bay after a gruelling 61 days negotiating 1,200 kilometres of Manitoba rivers, lakes and punishing portages, all performed utilizing the technology and materials of the 1840s ? more or less. (The paddlers had crash helmets, but no toilet paper.) It’s all been documented for Frantic Film’s real history show Quest for the Bay, which will begin airing on History Television in January.
SEPTEMBER
Two Winnipeg film-makers make big waves at the ever-growing Toronto International Film Festival.
Writer/director Sean Garrity picks up the award for Best First Canadian Feature for Inertia, his filmed-in-Winnipeg, set-in-Winnipeg comedic love story. deco dawson, meanwhile, picks up the award for Best Canadian Short Film.
Cordell Barker’s Strange Invaders also screens in Toronto, as does Century Hotel, which stars former Winnipeg chanteuse Chantal Kreviazuk in her acting debut.
Vincent Pastore (a.k.a. Big Pussy Bompensiero on the hit series The Sopranos) has $400 worth of illegal Cuban cigars seized at U.S. Customs in Winnipeg after he and director Paul Borghese check out the city as the location of Borghese’s comedy Agida, which is planned to film here next spring. “Vincent is constantly getting cast as a gangster and a wiseguy and he loves the idea of being able to do something different,” Borghese says.
z Plans for a Winnipeg shoot for Fall From the Sky, a $7-million CBS movie about a plane crash starring Forest Whitaker, are cancelled in the wake of Sept. 11.
OCTOBER
L.A.-based von Zernick-Sertner Films bring Blythe Danner (a.k.a. Gwyneth’s Paltrow mom), Beau Bridges and Tammy Blanchard to town for an intensive four-week shoot of the TV movie Change of Heart, a $4-million adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates novel We Were the Mulvaneys. Like von Zernick-Sertner’s previous film Inside the Osmonds, the action is set in the ’70s, a period for which Winnipeg is rich in resources. “Your Value Village is an untapped gold-mine,” says producer Peter Sadowski.
NOVEMBER
Change of Heart star Tammy Blanchard is in a downtown Winnipeg hotel room when she learns she has won an Emmy award for outstanding supporting actress in a mini-series for her work as a young Judy Garland in the TV movie Me and My Shadows: Life with Judy Garland. She tearfully calls her mom.
Brian Dennehy is confirmed to play controversial Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight in A Season on the Brink, ESPN’s first telefilm.
Funding glitches alter plans for the planned production of Fear X, a Danish-U.K. co-production written by cult novelist Hubert Selby Jr. (Requiem for a Dream). Tom Sizemore, initially interested in the lead role, drops out to appear in the Lawrence Kasdan-directed Dreamcatcher. The good news for Winnipeg is that where the shooting was originally going to be divided between here and Rio De Janeiro, most of the film is now scheduled to be shot in Winnipeg, with some additional shooting in Copenhagen.
DECEMBER
Winnipeg is getting jaded. An urgent call for 750 extras to play basketball fans for Season on the Brink yields only 600 volunteers.
Low-budget quickie film-maker David DeCoteau (Creepozoids, Beach Babes from Beyond) comes to Winnipeg to cast his next film, which is budgeted at less than $1 million and has a shooting schedule of five days.
Suddenly, Harrison Ford seems so far away . . .
