Frantic Films loses deal, still keeping busy

Local special-effects house Frantic Films also lost their contract to do the effects work for the CBS film, which officially was cancelled last week.

Frantic's CEO, Jamie Brown, says the kind of effects work Frantic did for the John Travolta film Swordfish (a devastating explosion in downtown Los Angeles) and planned to do for Fall From the Sky (the destruction of a super jumbo jet) is no longer going to be treated lightly by Hollywood.

"The reaction is understandable," Brown says, adding that the widespread fear of flying following the attack may hurt Frantic's chances for landing Hollywood contracts.

"That would be a concern for anyone who wanted to work with us knowing that we're not on the other side of L.A.," he says. "We're not a drive, we're a flight . . . notwithstanding the statistical probability that you'll be killed on the Los Angeles freeway."

Fortunately, Frantic's fall schedule is crammed, including effects work on the upcoming films Rats and Twice Upon a Christmas. Also looming on the horizon for the company is their third "living history" series, in the wake of Pioneer Quest and the upcoming History Television series Quest for the Bay.

The tentative title for the show will be Klondike, and will require people to live under the conditions endured by those plucky pioneers who sought riches in the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1896.

"It's an incredibly interesting period of Canadian history," Brown says. "The stories are fantastic — people buying dance girls literally for their weight in gold, the champagne that flowed, the fortunes won and lost, and the chaos of that town going from zero to 40,000 people in a summer."

Don't volunteer for a role just yet, Brown cautions.

"It's not finalized," he says. "We're not in a position to give any information (to applicants) except to say phone back in four or five months. All I can say is we're in development."

BETCHA DIDN'T KNOW . . . Zoolander star Ben Stiller has a Winnipeg connection.

Stiller actually visited Winnipeg in the winter of 1990. He came to visit his girlfriend at the time, actress Leslie Hope, who was at work in the lead role of the Gail Singer-directed comedy-drama True Confections.

His principle memory of our fair city was that it was cold.