By Malcolm Azania / Photograph by Andrej Kopac
I’M MAPQUESTING MY WAY into the ’burbs in search of fear. More specifically, in search of Fear Itself, the NBC horror anthology with as many star actors and directors as the U.S. flag. I want to find out what a big American TV production is like on the ground, and whether imported showbiz shoots can become an economic force here in Oil Country. But there’s a snag: fate and global warming have dumped the biggest April snowfall I can remember, pushing the weather back to December and the production schedule back to “Why did we come to Ed-mawn-tawn again?” To hear the pre-productio hype, you’d think Hollywood was about to pop us the question and toss us a diamond ring. Given the ice and cold and unseasonable snow, I just hope we don’t wake up with five bucks on the pillow and the coffee maker empty.
I arrive at the house and find out half the crew are locals I worked with recently on a sketch comedy series. It’s like a high school reunion, except I actually like these people. Inside, roll-out rugs cover the carpets and cardboard shields protect the corners of the walls. Monitors flicker in the dark and skull-sized lights shine bright enough to blind you; there are red LED clapboards, microphone booms and walkie-talkies everywhere. I find the man I’m looking for: six feet tall, 250 pounds, sneakers, a thick mane of thin dreadlocks tickling the shoulders of his black tracksuit. Ernest Dickerson, a star “get” for Fear Itself, the director of features such as Never Die Alone and the Tupac Shakur debut Juice as well as episodes of ER, Heroes, The Wire and more. He’s the opposite of the stereotypical Hollywood big shot. Soft-spoken. Gentle. Lives up to his first name.
I’ve been chatting with Dickerson by phone for nearly four years, starting after he read my 2004 sci-fi novel, which he wants to make into a movie or TV series. This is the first time we’ve met. He’s come north to direct an episode titled “Something With Bite,” a revisionist werewolf tale written by Max Landis, son of John “An American Werewolf in London” Landis (who, coincidentally, is directing an episode himself). “Bite” has also bitten Wendell Pierce (Det. Bunk Moreland from HBO’s The Wire) as the world’s first veterinarian to become his own patient.
Hosting this crew is like having your big-city cousin visit for the summer and drive you around in his convertible while your friends gawk behind their zits and braces. From the early January prep until the mid-July wrap – 13 hour-long episodes in total – hundreds of locals were gaining pay and credits in everything from set-painting to training as assistant directors. This is the first time any big-four American network has shot here, so it’s potentially The Big Deal. Which is why the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation was practically howling about Fear. “Greater Edmonton hotels, restaurants, caterers, lumber yards, hardware stores, tradespeople, car rentals, transportation, personal services and other businesses all stand to benefit from the series’ $20-million production budget,” the EEDC website rejoiced. “The series will generate 150 to 200 local jobs and provide valuable skills training through more than 20 apprenticeship positions associated with the project.”
But is this truly a harvest or just hype? Will Alberta be able to resurrect its filmmaking past and join the Vancouver-Toronto Axis of Entertainment. Or will our filmic Lazarus stay in the cave, collecting no trophies other than bat guano?
A FEW DAYS LATER the snow is gone and everything’s getting green. Inside a Tudor-style house just off the main downtown drag, I’m watching an aging biker discuss the veterinarian’s lycanthropy. “If you’re a good man,” he says, growling the episode’s signature line, “then you’re a good dog.” This monster production feasts on $5.4 million in grants from the province and $3.5 million from the city.
When Edmontonians talk film and TV, the biggest fish that swims to net is usually the 1980-81 season of SCTV, the comedy colossus which birthed Bob and Doug McKenzie. But Edmonton is hardly the only location in Alberta’s production history. According to the Internet Movie Database, more than 600 productions have been shot whole or in part in-province (the government body Alberta Film cannot track projects it does not fund, so the number could be far higher). That includes early notables such as Marilyn Monroe in 1954’s River of No Return, superheroes in three Superman and three X-Men movies, cowboys in Brokeback Mountain and The Assassination of Jesse James, belly laughs in Cool Runnings and Shanghai Noon, and family fare such as Snow Day and Snow Dogs. There are also homegrown crops such as Bye Bye Blues and FUBAR, and TV series like Destiny Ridge, Jake and the Kid and Mentors.
But don’t get your pride – or hopes – up too high. If Alberta’s filmic history stretches at least back to 1948, our 600-plus productions over 60 years average out to a meagre annual total of just above 10 for the entire province. We’ve had boom times. A few years ago, Calgary alone had enough work to support five film crews. But now there are only five working the entire province.
So what, you say? We’re oil people! Farmers! We get our hands dirty! We don’t need any blow-dried Hollywooders here, right?
But wait a minute. Filmmaking is expensive not only because of big-name actors and directors, but also because it’s a massive job-creation project: hairstylists, makeup artists, cooks, lamp and generator operators, drivers, special effects artists, costumers, continuity checkers, sound recorders and mixers, grips and production assistants – they’re all essential, not to mention all the people in the hospitality industry. Film is largely a blue collar world, joined by white collars in accounting, editing, writing, production and more. So film and TV is bread and butter. And even if some stats seem low, Alberta’s Film Commissioner points out that it’s tough to track exactly how many people work in the industry. Jeff Brinton notes that not all production companies are members of the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association (AMPIA), but all told they employ around 3,000 people in guilds and trades, not including actors.
Back in 1981, during the red-Tory days of Peter Lougheed, the government subsidized the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation (AMPDC), moving about $16 million annually into development, resulting in staple series such as North of 60 and features such as Angel Square. Fast-forward 15 years and that fund had paid out a total of $150 million, which translated into nearly 1,300 jobs. But then Premier Ralph Klein declared that no matter how much his Tories loved business, as a government they weren’t in business. Klein killed the AMPDC, crippling domestic production, which fled to provinces and states with better grants and tax credits.
The Tories eventually offered patches, including a vastly overdrawn fund that made producers wait two years before seeing any money. As Calgarian producer Tom Cox (Brokeback Mountain, The Assassination of Jesse James) told the Calgary Herald, “When we started, every film we did led to two or three others. Every film that withdraws has exactly the opposite effect…. They will send a project in any direction on the planet in a heartbeat. And once that cycle is set in motion, it is doubly hard to get them back.”
Category: Work
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