Keep in mind, Please, as you read the following story that Bill C10, has not, in fact, even been passed yet.
Canada Border Services officials recently held up footage from the film Love and Savagery, a tale of passion and longing set in Ireland and Newfoundland, because they suspected it was pornography, its producers say, and they blame legislation currently under review by the Senate.
The movie's producers shot scenes in Ireland last month, including some in a Catholic church, and had sent footage to Montreal for processing. The film was held for days by border officials at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.
"All of a sudden this batch of rushes got held up day after day after day at Canadian customs," a bemused John N. Smith, the film's director, said in an interview from St. John's, where shooting on the Ireland-Canada co-production continues.
"There was a big kerfuffle and they suspected us of being involved in the pornography trade. They were insisting they were going to send it off to the RCMP lab to develop it to see if we were engaged in pornography."
Both Smith, who directed The Englishman's Boy and the award-winning The Boys of St. Vincent, and Kevin Tierney, the producer of Love and Savagery, suspect the menacing arm of Bill C-10 was at play.
The controversial bill, currently being debated in the Senate, would allow the government to withhold tax credits from film and television productions it deems offensive.
"There's now a kind of attitude that permeates the bureaucracy based on the signals they're getting from the elected ministers," Tierney said.
Niiiiiiiiiiicccce.
20 comments:
At first I was wondering "Why the heck does his link lead to craiglist listing houses in L.A?"
Then I got the joke.
My favourite part is how that makes it seem like Canada Border Service being asshats is a new thing.
At the risk of going straight to a lesbian shitfit, and with the proviso that in the long sad tale of little sis, I'm on the side of the store, you're kind of missing the point of the story.
The long war against that store is well known, and possible because it's a niche. This is a huge mainstream film, and the idea that a new vigilance is already in place. This is exactly what the Tories are saying the bill won't do...and it already is having a new effect. You can still be on little sisters side yet parse the difference in these cases.
You're not serious, are you? With due respect, this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with a bill that hasn't passed. Stuff gets held up at Canada Border Services all the time. That's their job.
At my old student newspaper (back when C10 was just a twinkle in a seemingly perpetually opposition-bound Harper's eye), we used to subscribe to the quarterly list they publish of videos and books seized at border. We always found it amusing to imagine the earnest officers of the Prohibited Importations Unit watching these hours and hours of porn and suspected porn and deciding that, yes, Backbacking with Jack Surf was admissable to Canada, but no, not Between the Semen. We also puzzled over why certain seemingly innocuous publications - an issue of Giant Robot, for instance - were seized in the first place.
(THese are actual examples, see a sample here)
And having just wait an extra three weeks for my boxes I shipped from England to pass muster with with the CBSA, I have no sympathy for a filmmaker whose film was delayed by a few days.
I have sympathy, because this was unprocessed footage, and I imagine I would freak the fuck out if they told me they wanted to develop my film in an RCMP lab. You can only develop the film once, and you want it done right.
That said, the idea that C10 caused this doesn't seem logical to me. I think they are both symptoms a similar attitude, but I don't think one causes the other.
I'm willing to bet that Smith knows it's not logical, but also knows that a journalistic hook doesn't need to be logical. And the more people hear about C10, the more people will realize it's a bad idea.
I love the internet. Where anybody can have a PhD in "knowin the score" without having to be burdened by either knowledge or context.
j. kelly, if you'd like to publish a list of unprocessed film reels of major motion pictures that were detained by Canada Customs in the past, that is, in fact, germane. If not, you're comparing apples and oranges.
Sure, they could be scoring points. Or, you know, this could maybe be one of those cases where the quote from the person on the front lines, who hears the scuttlebutt and is privy to the stuff you're not, and gives a quote like:
"There's now a kind of attitude that permeates the bureaucracy based on the signals they're getting from the elected ministers," maybe, just maybe might have said it because that's what they've observed, and believe.
Or maybe you're right. Maybe it's exactly the same as the things that are completely different...
Take a deep breath, turn on the logic portion of your brain and turn off the emotion part and try to find a connection between this incident and Bill C-10. There is obviously none. Border services officials doing their job... an unpassed bill about tax credits for film production. And I'm accused of comparing apples and oranges?
Crying wolf doesn't help in the fight against C-10.
i was of the understanding that the border guards prime responsibility was infiltrating terrorist cells, battling gangsters and engaging in small scale firefights with nefarious villians. Why would the be checking the possible illegality of goods entering Canada. That seems like kind of small potatoes to me.
Take a deep breath, turn on the logic portion of your brain and turn off the emotion part and try to find a connection between this incident and Bill C-10.
Okay, I'll try to be brief and forceful so it punches through the heavy plate of patronizing at the front of your brain.
Present the many cases of undeveloped rushes stopped by customs. Name the films, when they were stopped. Show how common it is.
If you can't do that, then you don't know what you're talking about.
The Conservatives, have been advised, and fully operate from the U.S. Republican playbook.
The history of the last eight years has showed example after example of agencies being politicized, and choosing political or ideological expediency over mandate; no matter how much of a departure that is from previous example.
If you don't think that happens in Canada, you're terribly, almost adorably naive.
You want to prove your point, provide the data.
But just stating that the article is wrong is foolish.
I don't know if it's right.
I dont' know if it's wrong.
I know how it looks. And I know that it's to pattern.
The entire debate of this bill has been about stated intent versus true intent. Your charge is to accept it at face value.
You're welcome to do that if you want.
But aside from casting aspersions, you haven't actually proven your point.
We don't know.
And that's all we know.
You don't know if it's right or if it's wrong. Great.
Then perhaps you shouldn't blow it out of proportion, allude to fascism and threaten to move back to the US until you are sure one way or the other.
As for me, I've read what the Canada Border Service job description is and I see absolutely no contradiction in them inspecting unprocessed films as well as processed ones. Why would unprocessed footage be exempt from the Customs Act and cross the border without examination? I don't see how it is apples and oranges. (Maybe prunes and plums, or raisins and grapes?)
The references to C-10 remain absolutely baffling to me.
These guys got their film in the end after a relatively short delay, it wasn't harmed or processed, I don't see the deal. I imagine their tax credits are still in place. That dealing with customs and the border services is a pain in the ass is not news, nor is it new.
I'll leave this here, as I doubt I'll convince you. I'm a regular DTOS reader and will continue to enjoy your blog. Cheers.
Still waiting for that list of undeveloped rushes from major motion pictures stopped by CBSA as a matter of course because they "sounded like they might be pornographic," Kelly.That's what was at issue here. That's what the article was about.
Anytime you want to post them, I'll admit, "yup, I jumped to conclusions. This is just CBSA doing their job, same as usual."
But if there isn't such a list, and if this, is, in fact a new or watershed event, then the timing is no more coincidental than the FCC starting to use their long-on-the-books power to fine more aggressively only after the Republican government "encouragement" for such action -- which has been heavily documented.
Tangent to the whole political point:
Why oh why would a film crew in this day and age want to ship unprocessed negative across the ocean to another country to go through Border Control/Customs when there are several reputable divisions of film processors (Technicolor, Kodak, Deluxe)only a short drive away right there in the UK?
Unprocessed negative = risky business. Processed = much less so.
Maybe, just maybe that's what made the shipment "suspicious" in the first place - a package which must remain sealed and all that. But we won't know until someone comes forward from the Customs office.
However you slice it - it does look a bit suspicious (from both sides) and it's a shame the producers were stupid enough to put themselves in the position of having to risk their negative in the first place. Even with negative insurance it's just short-sighted.
Once again, Bill, what seems illogical to you is only so because you don't understand the rules.
No fault of your own. The rules are kind of silly. Welcome to the wonderful precarious world of Canadian film and TV production.
I'm fairly sure that the only reason the producers WOULD ship unprocessed film was because of the tax credits involved in the spend. Ie: post -- including developing the negative -- has to be spent in Canada.
The film in question is an Ireland-Canada copro. Which means that the film has to be processed in one of the treaty countries.Sending it to the UK for processing sounds logical, but that means the money's not being spent in Ireland or the UK. If there was a suitable lab in Ireland, I'm sure they would have used that.
...unless they were overspent on the Irish side of the copro, in which case...
...see how this whole thing is a jenga tower? Do you understand why people who know how precarious it is are livid at the government's blithe attempts to add one more hoop?
Shipping unprocessed negative is done all the time. (actually,it's rarely shipped -- someone usually travels with it.) The fact that this is a story proves how unusual it is. This is done all the time, and what happened to this film never happens.
above: "not being spent in Ireland or Canada" not "Ireland or the UK."
The short version: they can't process the film in the UK. Because that's not spending the money in either copro country.
Sorry to be coming to the story late, but having a lot of experience in this area, I can say that Kelly, Cunningham and DMc are all somewhat correct.
Unprocessed dailies get stopped all the time at all kinds of borders, not just Canada. I've had dailies shipped from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean stopped in Canada that were labeled with far more innocuous titles.
I doubt there are records because 99% end up going through eventually. The other 1% probably never gets claimed.
The problem is usually the documentation that accompanies the shipment.
My bet is that somebody tried to ship without using a brokerage service to save some money, or didn't bother to pre-clear their shipments.
Most reputable or experienced productions do one of the two, allowing their footage to zip through no matter what title is written on it.
It might be as simple a problem as somebody not attaching the waiver that shippers like Fedex now require to assure Customs officials that the material is not pornographic.
And what do smart film producers do when they've screwed up? They get a publicist to spin the story in a way that'll get them the most pre-release press.
Cunningham and DMc are also correct. Shipping negative is incredibly stupid and potentially disastrous for a production.
There are superb labs in Ireland, so this is obviously a tax credit decision -- and a bad one. Processing abroad doesn't make that much difference to the final co-pro calculation.
Personally, I doubt this is related to C-10. It's always been my experience that Border Guards operate by their own rules -- which sometimes seem to have little relationship to either local laws or common sense.
Jim,
Thanks for a very clearheaded and interesting response. To be honest, it hadn't actually occurred to me that maybe it was a pre-clearance or paperwork issue. In that case it would change the complexion of things.
I have never heard of the film possibly being directed to be developed at an RCMP lab.
The point is that we don't know.
And "this has nothing to do with C10" is sort of on the same tack as "C10 is not about censorship."
If you accept everything at face value then that could indeed be the case. The problem, of course is that so rarely are things actually at face value.
The chill that people feel over this thing being law is real.
The skittishness from banks to lend money to productions where the tax credit might be pulled is real; so when that happens the idea of "pre-censorship" will be real too.
The fear over this being yet another overreaching attempt to implement a Conserv cultural agenda is real too -- which makes this related to C10 whether you like it or not.
I mean, tax credits are supposed to be the most boring, rock solid, industrial part of the filmmaking process, right? And yet there's precariousness suddenly attached to them.
To be told that "your fears are emotional and not realistic" is pretty offensive when you've got a government that insists on emotionalizing and politicizing the most arcane, boring, industrial part of the process -- the end resulting Tax Credits, for feck's sake.
I agree with most of that, DMc. The skittishness is palpable and your read of the emotional tenor of the industry is dead on.
It's certainly a climate in which somebody might feel they can garner favor with the boss by doing the unspoken bidding.
During John Gotti's Mafia reign in NYC, his son was killed riding his bicycle in a traffic accident that was completely the boy's fault. That didn't stop a few of the crew whacking the hapless driver because "that's what John woulda wanted".
Bill C-10 needs to die and Harper has to make it die hard or there will be more government clerks deciding they have a right to make our choices for us.
The fear over this being yet another overreaching attempt to implement a Conserv cultural agenda is real too -- which makes this related to C10 whether you like it or not.Related I'll buy, but not caused by.
At the same time, I know they would never print, "Confiscation of footage reminds director of Bill C-10" so I can't blame him for playing it the way he did.
Also, last I heard, the filthiest porn usually isn't shot on 35mm. So it's also a case of them going after easy targets to look busy.
And I'd have no problems saying the problems that Little Sister also feel like an overreaching attempt to implement a Conserv cultural agenda.
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