“The Great Canadian Comedy Sellout”

by Aaron Feser

A sense of humour is probably one of the most attractive qualities a person can have.  It’s more timeless than looks and more entertaining than brains.  A good sense of humour is probably the number one ingredient in popularity.  So if humour is so popular why aren’t there more funny movies made in Canada?

To find out the answer to this question and procrastinate from writing the comedy script I’m working on, I attended “The Great Canadian Comedy Sellout” at the Plaza Theatre on October 1st.  It was a film talk that took place during CIFF 2011 and consisted of a panel of industry experts who were assembled to help advise indie filmmakers on how to produce and sell a comedy movie. The guest speakers were Michael Petersen (Lloyd The Conqueror), Aaron Houston (Sunflower Hour), Michael Sparaga (Servitude), Dave Lawrence ( A Legend Of Whitey, Fubar, Fubar II), and independent sales and distribution consultant Angie Burns, formerly of Maple Pictures (now bought out by Alliance Films).

Michael Sparaga in particular was very excited about the comedy genre in the Canadian film industry but did admit that most Canadian filmmakers still prefer dramas over comedies.  The reasons for this range from the traditionally inhibited nature of Canadians to the fact that dramas are far easier to sell because humour is “culturally specific.”  According to the theory what’s funny in Calgary isn’t always funny on the other side of the world.  Sometimes even what’s funny in Calgary isn’t necessarily funny in Edmonton.  Especially when it comes to hockey, football, and murder rates.  However, according to Angie Burns, a severed head is a severed head.  She said that horror films are the kind of thing you can market anywhere because violence translates well internationally.  Horror films have such a cult following that she said it may be the only genre where you don’t need a star.  But unfortunately comedies do, because humour is rarely strong enough to carry a film.  “Napoleon Dynamite” being an exception to the rule.

This debate made me wonder what the definition of a comedy movie was in the first place.  Let’s say you were planning on making a comedy.  How funny does it have to be to classify as a comedy?  It’s a good question but no one asked it during the Q&A, including me.  Maybe I was the only one who didn’t know.

At this juncture a good writer would take the time to consult an authority on the subject of comedy but since I’m not, I just asked my good buddy Wikipedia.  The lazy writers best friend.  Especially when entertainment value is more important than the truth.  According to Wikipedia, for about the last 2500 years there have technically been only two kinds of stories you could tell.  Comedies or tragedies.  All other stories were branches of these two categories.  Tragedies had sad endings and comedies had happy endings and that was that.  Whether the story was funny or not, didn’t really matter.  Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” is classed as a comedy but it certainly isn’t funny. Usually if they make you read it in High School you can rest assured that it’s not funny.  Because that would make learning fun.  It’s the same reason why they don’t let comedies compete with dramas at the Oscars.  Having fun is generally considered wasteful, if not immoral, and thus it can’t be rewarded.

The definition of a comedy has changed over the years and modern comedies are far different than the original Greek, Roman, or Elizabethan comedies.  Nowadays most people define a comedy by asking themselves if the story is funny, or not.  If it’s funny it’s a comedy and if it’s not, it’s not.  The ending is irrelevant.  In Stanely Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” the entire world was blown up but it was still kinda funny.

Most people don’t care about what kind of humour it is as long as it gets a laugh.  A laugh is a laugh and sometimes the entire story is sacrificed just to get another one.  Like with most Hollywood sequels.  Good comedy requires a good story to create it and filmmakers ignore this relationship at their own peril.  Good comedy is a dance of exquisite timing and delicate touch that is so difficult it makes drama look like a drunken walrus shuffling along the beach in search of another beer.  How many laughs you technically need to make a comedy is unclear but the standard rule for television sitcoms is three-five laughs per minute.  However this rule doesn’t necessarily apply to feature films.  The water is further muddied by sub-genre’s like romantic comedies and action comedies which may require a smaller percentage of humour to be classified as funny.  As a rule an indie filmmaker will just make a movie they love and leave the navel gazing to someone else.  Besides no one cares what the filmmaker thinks anyways.  In the end it’s the gate keepers who will label the film.  If a filmmaker is trying to get funding, or get a star, or get a distributor, these people will read the script or watch the movie and then decide what it is or isn’t.  Even if the filmmaker is able to bypass all these people the audience will always have the final word and the problem is that their opinion changes with the generations.  All of Ed Wood’s films were conceived as dramas but are now considered comedies.

Shakespeare had it easy because in his day a comedy only needed a happy ending.  The fact that he didn’t need to be funny was a good thing for him because if he’d made plays with actual jokes in them no one would probably get them today and then Shakespeare would just be a nobody like the rest of us.  Unless he just told fart jokes because those never seem to get old.  The message from history is that the less humour in your movie the more likely it is that people will get it.  Both now and later.  So the question is, do we avoid making comedies because they are more ephemeral in nature, if not disposable, will make less money, reach a smaller audience, and probably won’t stand the test of time.  Or do we make them anyways because a sense of humour is important for a society to develop or it runs the risk of taking itself to seriously.  Then we land up with things like Wall Street, the English Monarchy, the Military Industrial Complex, the Oil & Gas Industry, and pretty much every religion on Earth.  If you want you could probably add quite a few filmmakers to that list too.     Making fun of that which you cannot control has always been the best way to deal with the frustration of being alive.  The part where you die is especially frustrating.  Without the relief valve of comedy I think most of us would lose our minds.  Every actor you talk to will agree that being funny is way harder than being sad.  Just as it’s easier for everyone to be depressed instead of happy.  You’d think comedies would get more respect because of this fact but instead this adoration is reserved for movies that make us cry.  That’s fucked up.  Maybe it’s not surprising that our world is too.

Michael Sparaga made a really funny observation about Canadian movies but I forgot what it was because I forgot to ask questions, or take notes.  The good news is that Michael makes comedies for a living so I’m sure he’ll find it highly amusing if I butcher his quote and slander his name at the same time.  Basically he said something to the effect that most Canadian films are usually about being touched by your Uncle when you were a child and it’s usually winter and really cold and everyone’s depressed and then someone kills themselves and it doesn’t make sense because it’s not supposed to and only two people ever see the movie and they’re both related to you.  It was hilarious.  And so true.

Michael S. didn’t elaborate on why Canadian filmmakers don’t have a sense of humour but he claims the tide is changing.  The industry is starting to loosen up a bit.  Even Telefilm, notorious for funding only dramas, is supposedly sinking more money into comedies and has this thing called the Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab which helped to create Michael’s film “Servitude.”  Which also showed at CIFF this year.

Michael Petersen went in a different direction and funded his movie from entirely private sources.  He raised about 1.2 million from about a dozen investors to make “Lloyd The Conqueror” which was his first feature and it premiered at CIFF this year.  Of note was the fact that Michael raised the money based solely on the script alone.  Not on the talent attached to it.  Which is unusual as investors place a lot of value on the actors.  Usually a movie is the actors.  And writers are a dime a dozen.  Even if Shakespeare wrote a movie script tomorrow the first thing the investors would ask is…who’s in it.    Michael P.’s explanation of the casting process was interesting in that he had originally wanted to cast people who had better name value as this would make the movie more commercially viable.  But after some soul searching he realized he didn’t think these people were very funny and he didn’t want to make a movie he didn’t believe in.  So instead he cast actors he felt passionate about.  Actors like Harlon Williams and Mike Smith.  Fortunately his production team backed him up on the decision, so it was all good.

Dave Lawrence also had a challenge casting “Fubar II” and he told us this story about how hard it was to cast this one girl who played someone’s girlfriend in the movie because Dave’s production team wanted a name actor and Dave liked this other girl because he thought she was right for the part but she was unknown and had very little experience.  I forgot all the names because I was too busy listening to the story but it was a great story and in the end Dave’s instincts were right and he got the actor he wanted and it was all good.

Aaron Houston went hard core and funded “Sunflower Hour” with his own money, about 29 grand.  Even though he scored some finishing funds from Telefilm later on the genius to making a movie this way is that you can film the movie your way and get a rough cut or finished movie done that will show funders what kind of movie you’re trying to make.  And this will help trigger more money for editing or distribution or whatnot.  Although this approach gives a filmmaker the absolute freedom to make the movie they want, it also has to be a small movie.  Because freedom has a price, as they say.  Luckily digital cameras, laptop computers, and the internet are making the cost of movies a lot cheaper these days.  So freedom is getting cheaper by the minute.  It also helps if believe that you can actually make good movies without expensive stars and big budget special effects.  Which the panel seems to believe you can because that’s how they made their movies.

What the panel was not entirely clear on was how to actually make money with your film, other than the obvious method of selling DVD’s out of the back of a van.  Marketing has traditionally been a rather grey area where most filmmakers tend to get hosed by distributors, broadcasters, lawyers, etc.  Dave Lawrence said he didn’t make much on “Fubar” but the distributor did amazingly well. The consensus was that the process of making a profit is still harder than making a movie, but it’s getting simpler.  The internet is clearly the way forward and when it finally does take over completely there will be far less middle men, if any at all.  The panel also stressed that your movie trailer is very important.  It should be cut by a pro, if possible.  How many ‘hits’ it gets on YouTube or how many ‘likes’ it gets on Facebook will play an important part in gathering a fan base and convincing distributors that your movie is worth buying.  Through social media you can actually prove that a movie has an audience and even narrow that popularity down to certain cities or parts of the world where marketing can be focused.

The funny thing was that we were sitting in a movie theatre and the panel was telling us that of the many distribution routes, theatrical distribution was the most difficult avenue to pursue.  “Fubar” was quite popular and had a large fan base so Dave Lawrence felt that it would be a slam dunk to distribute “Fubar II” in theaters.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The competition for theaters is extreme and if your movie doesn’t post good numbers immediately, they’ll pull it.  Even with the cost saving benefit of digital projection your film still has to compete with Hollywood blockbusters so it has to be an instant hit or your dead.  There is no such thing as slowly building a theatrical audience like they did in the 70′s.  There’s just too few theatres, too many films being made in the world, over 40,000 a year claims the panel, and too many other ways to see a film.   The demise of movie theaters is the result of many factors but the worst of them all is social media.  Whether it be via TV, telephone, or the internet it has created a world where people expect and demand convenience.  Especially when it comes to information.  Which is what movies have now become because they travel in an information pipeline.  They are information first and entertainment second.   People might wait in line to get into a popular night club and they might even spend all day traveling to a mountain just so they can ski down it.  But when it comes to information…they want it yesterday.  Information must be available on demand or people won’t consume it.  But if information is convenient enough people will consume anything.  And theaters are not convenient.  Yeah, the screen is thirty feet tall but people would rather have the convenience of watching it on their three inch iPhone screen whenever they want.

One could argue that at one time movies were more than just information and the theatre was a unique experience that was not available elsewhere.  But the convenience of social media has reduced the value of movie theaters to the point where bedbugs find them more attractive than people do.  Social media has done a lot of good but it has also become a virtual black hole that is sucking in all of reality and transforming it into data.  Social media has become a filter through which our entire life flows.  If it’s not on the net it doesn’t exist.  And we like it that way.  Because it’s convenient.  Instant gratification is like crack cocaine to the human brain and social media is our number one dealer.   The beauty of the internet for filmmakers is that it’s also convenient for them too. It allows a filmmaker to take their time and create/fund/publicize a movie at a convenient pace.  And then sell viewings of the movie to an audience at that same convenient pace.  Over an indefinite period of time.  If your budget is low enough you don’t even need to make a hit movie to make money.  You just need to make enough money to pay expenses and fund the next movie.  For most people filmmaking is about lifestyle, not getting rich.  Kind of like farming and every other branch of the arts.

The film talk was a good idea and I’d like to see more of them in Calgary because there’s a shit load of things you gotta know in order to produce movies.  It’s overwhelming to say the least and it’s why no one wants to be a producer.  It’s the hardest job in the business and probably the most important one because producers create all the other jobs in the industry.  If we want to develop a home grown feature film industry in Calgary we have to figure out how to encourage more people to become producers.  Which is not any easy task because it’s kind of like asking someone to stand alone in a dark room and set themselves on fire by hitting two rocks together so they have enough light to poke themselves in the eye with a stick. The panel didn’t explain all the things you need to know make a movie but they did point out the most important thing of all.  Don’t get into show business for the money.  They didn’t say it out loud but from the way they talked and the stories they told it was abundantly clear that passion is what inspired them to start making movies and it’s what kept them going when the chips were down, the money was gone, and all that was left was a dream.
Everything is a head game in the end and passion has to bookend your life together or you’ll never get out of bed in the morning, let alone make a movie.  Passion is what they’ll talk about at your funeral, not the money.  And the nice thing about passion is that it’s the only thing in the budget that’s free.