Hollywood Babble On & On #1229: Tax Credit Where Credit Is Due...

Nova Scotia's growing film and television industry may have narrowly dodged a bullet.

A few weeks ago the provincial government released their annual budget, and one of the big items was the slashing of the Nova Scotia Film & Television payroll tax credit, a move that threatened to destroy an industry that in the last twenty years had grown from $6 million a year to between $125-$139 million a year.

Basically before the budget if you were a film/TV producer in Nova Scotia you could claim 100% of your payroll expenses as a credit toward your taxes. After the budget that amount was slashed to 25%, which threatened destroy the profit margin and competitive edge of many Nova Scotia film/TV companies. Naturally those who make Nova Scotian film and television protested, loudly and passionately, and even got rapper Snoop Dogg to back them to save his favourite show The Trailer Park Boys.

Recently a tentative agreement was reached to save the industry and end the stream of bad press bombarding Nova Scotia's Liberal government. The tentative deal will keep the credit/rebate at 25% but expand what qualifies for it from just payroll to include all of the company's expenses. 

Why did this new deal become necessary?

Why did the Liberal government come close to destroying one of the few economic success stories the province could boast of?

The ruling Liberals fell victim to three fundamental fallacies that threatened to do more harm than good.

FALLACY #1: THE TAX CREDIT IS A SUBSIDY:

If you believe that, you couldn't be more wrong if you climbed Mt. Wrong when you were supposed to be exploring the Grand Canyon. To understand why you need to know exactly what is a subsidy, and what this tax credit really is.

NS Finance Minister Whelan.

A subsidy is when you go to the government and ask them to give you money in exchange that you will do something with that money that will allegedly benefit the province. If the ruling party likes you, they will give you that money. If the ruling party doesn't like you, you don't get a dime.

The Nova Scotia Film and Television Tax Credit was basically a bit of relief on the taxes paid by businesses in the film and television industry for the privilege of creating taxpaying jobs based upon the size of the payroll the business is shelling out. Under the old system film & TV businesses in Nova Scotia got 100% of their payroll taxes back, to the tune of about $24-$25 million a year. Under the new system, they will only be able to claim a 25% credit on their payroll taxes, which will pretty much kill the profit margin and competitive edge for many Nova Scotia based film and television companies.

So the credit is not really a subsidy, it is, in fact, a relief from a tax that exists not so much to earn revenue, but to suppress wages and job creation.

FALLACY #2: THE TAX CREDIT COSTS NOVA SCOTIA MONEY:

As I said, this not a subsidy, it's a form of relief from a counterproductive tax.

But what about the revenue, the roughly $24 million, that the Nova Scotia government "loses" every year, isn't that an expense when you come down to it?

Well, probably not if you crunch the numbers.

Remember, the Nova Scotia government regularly and gladly drops tens of millions of dollars on a "make-work" project like a customer service call centre that will create about 100 jobs until the company running it goes out of business when that money runs out. Then tens of millions more taxpayer dollars have to be doled out to subsidize another company's purchase of the make-work project, this time to keep 50 jobs running.

Meanwhile the $24 million not taken by the NS government in the tax credit has led to the creation of about 2100 full time jobs that work every year, year in, year out, and about $139 million being spent in the province by productions every year.

The companies that employ those 2100 people all pay corporate income taxes.

Those 2100 employees all pay income taxes.

A percentage of every dollar of that $139 million spent on anything that isn't groceries in Nova Scotia is collected in "Goods & Services" sales taxes. Half of that money goes straight to Nova Scotia's treasury.

The vendors who supply everything from food to furniture to these productions also pay sales taxes, as well as their own corporate and income taxes.

I'll bet dollars to Doritos that the Nova Scotia film industry results in more going into the province's coffers than the $24 million "lost" by the tax credit.

If something pulls in more money than you're allegedly putting out, it's not an expense, it's an investment.

FALLACY #3: THE MONEY GOES TO RICH HOLLYWOOD FAT CATS:

Foreign productions don't pay income and payroll taxes in Nova Scotia. Hence, they don't get the tax credit.

The myth of the crew coming entirely from Hollywood is just that, a myth. It's too expensive and awkward to bring an entire crew and their equipment all the way from Hollywood. Instead, foreign productions just bring in a handful of "above the line" personnel and everything else is done by hiring local subcontractors.

Those local sub-contractors who provide equipment, crews, casting, and a myriad of other services pay taxes, and are the people who get the tax credit. Also, unlike the big Hollywood studios and TV networks, these subcontractors are usually small businesses who rely on the tax credit to be competitive with other locations and the services they provide.

Once you get past these fallacies you might get to the truth that the tax credit is more of a positive than a negative. So let's hope this new tax relief deal helps keep the industry growing.

__________

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Hollywood Babble On & On #1225: Farewell To Nova Scotia?

The Finance Minister of Nova Scotia is planning to slash the payroll tax credit for film and television jobs by about 75%. Local producers naturally object to this, because it burdens them with extra costs, and even American rapper Snoop Dogg declared his support for the tax credit because it makes his favourite show, Netflix's The Trailer Park Boys, possible.

Now you're probably wondering what all the fooferall is about, so I'll do a little explaining.

A little over 20 years ago the Nova Scotia government instituted what's called a payroll tax credit program for film and television productions that shoot in Nova Scotia and employ Nova Scotians. At the time, there was about $6 million a year spent in film/TV production in Nova Scotia, but it has grown to about $130-$140 million a year.

That's a lot of jobs created by taxpaying companies, and held by taxpaying citizens.

That's not counting the secondary and tertiary jobs created by the spending of those same taxpaying citizens. Usually an industry creates between 2-3 secondary and tertiary jobs for for every one of their jobs.

That's a lot of jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist.

I'm betting that the Nova Scotia government breaks even on the income taxes at the very least, but more likely turns a profit when all the numbers are crunched.

And dropping the tax credit would be really stupid since without it the province would probably lose Tom Selleck's freshly revived Jesse Stone TV movie franchise, The Trailer Park Boys, and CBC's flagship political satire series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. For many productions the credit makes Nova Scotia affordable, and in many cases possible. 

Now you're probably wondering why I'm defending what many see as a government subsidy, since I regularly state my opposition to government subsidies in the film business.

Well, it's not a subsidy when you look at the facts, and it's not run like a subsidy.

You see, the tax credit is basically a refund of all or some of the payroll taxes employers in film and TV would normally have to pay the government for the privilege of employing Nova Scotians.

That's right, the payroll tax is a tax on anyone who is creating taxpaying jobs.

That's a stupid tax.

It's also not handled like a normal film subsidy. You don't have to go to a funding agency and kiss the ass of bureaucrats in Toronto to prove your worthiness of taxpayer's money by employing the same-old same-old pack of cronies you see in 90% of Canadian productions. All you had to do for the tax credit was prove that you were making film and television programming that was shooting in Nova Scotia, and that you were employing Nova Scotian taxpayers.

Then you didn't get a subsidy, you got relief from a stupid and counterproductive tax regime.

And let's not forget that it's not just foreign productions shooting on location getting these benefits, there's also a hell of a lot of 100% homegrown work that wouldn't otherwise exist without it.

So save the tax credit and save Nova Scotia's fledgeling industry. A quick way to make your voice heard is via social media, like Twitter, so let the Nova Scotia Finance Minister know what you think.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1221: Can-Con-Can-Can

The Canadian government has changed the rules regulating Canadian content on television, specifically, daytime television.

They're eliminating the rule forcing Canadian television stations to air a specified amount of Canadian made daytime TV content each day.

Now there were reasons for the creation of the law, and reasons for reforming it.

Back in the day if you were a Canadian looking to get on television or radio you had one option: The CBC. The privately owned TV network CTV, and private radio stations avoided Canadian material like the plague. The Guess Who had the number one song in the USA and the UK, but couldn't get played on radio, or get an appearance on television because they were from Winnipeg, and Canadian media executives believed that Canadians didn't want to see or hear other Canadians, no matter how successful they were everywhere else.

So the government put in rules that broadcasters had to play a certain amount of Canadian content, or CanCon every day.

At first, this meant that a lot of substandard material got on air solely to meet the CanCon quotas, but over time market forces started to take effect.

The quantity and quality of Canadian television began to improve. And with the growth of specialty channels it began to explode and Canada became a major exporter of content. 

The government now thinks that since many daytime shows are commercially viable on their own, they don't need any special protection, and they may be right.

They also may be very wrong.

Canadian media has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As a business culture it can be excruciatingly stupid and self destructive for reasons that do not make sense on any level.

One of the first examples of Canadian media stupidity was Don Messer's Jubilee. It was a music program out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was corny, it was old fashioned, but it was a massive ratings winner for 12 years.

Then CBC cancelled it while it was still pulling in big numbers.

They cancelled it because it was old fashioned and corny, and the CBC wanted to be more hip. The show then went into syndication and ran right up until Messer's death in 1973.

Another example I mentioned before was Cinar. It dominated huge portions of the kids TV market with shows airing all over the world. They destroyed themselves by running a penny-ante scam where they were getting Canadian government grants to hire Canadian writers, and then spending the money on American writers. It was stupid, it was unnecessary, and it opened up a can of worms that destroyed the company.

Then there were some events I was personally involved in, in one case somewhat peripherally.

In 1999 I got a phone call from a very successful Canadian comedian. He had co-starred in a classic Canadian sketch show in the 1980s, and made out quite well in the 1990s as a producer, writer, and occasional performer on another comedian's show that they sold all over the world, and was putting together a starring vehicle for himself.

It was a sketch-show and he needed material, so he calls me up tells me he read my work and wanted to hire me to contribute material for his show. Having been a fan of his first show I said "Yes." He got my e-mail and said he'd send me the details as soon as he got back from his two week vacation.

He never did. Which struck me as extremely callous and unprofessional to offer someone a job, and then walk way without so much as a goodbye. However, such behaviour is pretty much standard operating procedure for people in Canadian media. Those who are in, are in, and are expected to treat those who are out with all the humanity they'd show something they found on the sole of their shoe.

Back in 2000, Salter Street Films won the licenses to set up several new specialty channels including a Canadian version of IFC.

Meanwhile, Alliance-Atlantis had grown from a tiny gaggle of producers & distributors into a massive media giant, that even owned the CSI franchise, the number one show in the world. They also got licenses for new specialty channels, but they wanted more.

Back in the Batcave I got a phone call from the newly minted boss at IFC Canada. He had read some articles I had written, saw that I lived nearby, and wanted me to make some short videos about the movie business to serve as filler between films.

I was game for a paying gig and said yes. The IFC Canada president then said he'd call me in a week to set everything up.

During that week Alliance bought Salter Street Films for some seriously big money.

The next day I got another call from the president of IFC Canada, or, to be more exact, the Ex-President of IFC Canada. The new owners immediately fired EVERYONE and cancelled or sold off EVERYTHING they were working on. This went from tiny projects in development like mine, to shows that were big worldwide hits, like CSI, which they sold to CBS.

Alliance then announced that since they now owned all these new channels, they were getting out of making television, and dedicate themselves 100% to broadcasting it.

Within about 6 years Alliance had collapsed, and the scraps were then picked apart by other companies.

So, as you can see, if there's an opportunity to be self-destructive, unprofessional, incompetent, or just plain idiotic, Canadian TV will go for it with both hands.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1189: Sexual Perversity In Toronto

Trigger warning: The following post contains reference to kinky sexual behaviour, allegations of sexual violence, and mental image of a middle-aged hipster in a gimp suit.

However, that trigger warning doesn't cover what I found the most shocking part of this story. The taxpayer funded and long running Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (aka The CBC or Mother Corp) actually fired someone.

That someone is 47 year old radio/TV host Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired from his show Q, over accusations of sexual violence against women.

Ghomeshi's defence is that he admits to being a lecherous creep, but that the alleged violence was in the form of consensual BDSM games, and that he believes that he's been unfairly fired and deserves a payout from Canada's public broadcaster of $50 million.

But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Ghomeshi started out as a singer in a folk/pop band called Moxy Früvous in the late 80s, but the band never really made it big outside of its home base in Toronto and Ghomeshi was recruited by the CBC to be one of their "youthful" on-air personalities. At the time he was considered a perfect match for the CBC, he was just ethnic enough to tick their diversity box, but his middle-class British born/suburban Toronto raised background made him fit right in with the CBC's dominant corporate culture like a hand in a heavy latex spanking glove.  

He bopped around from various shows on CBC TV and radio before finding his niche on Q, an hybrid radio/TV arts and pop culture interview show that plays nationally in Canada and on over 200 public TV and public radio stations across the USA.

Now Q needs a new host now that Ghomeshi is out, and while it's unlikely that Ghomeshi will return, a case may be made for him getting at least some kind of payout from the CBC, or to be more accurate the Canadian taxpayer.

It all hinges on whether or not what he got up to with the women was consensual BDSM, and thus a private matter, or a non-consensual criminal case. If the CBC and Ghomeshi's accusers can't make a legally acceptable case proving that he acted criminally instead of just lecherously, they may have to cut him a fat cheque.

Why?

Because then he'll claim that he was fired over private sexual business being made public, and then he'll mention a name and a title.

The name:

Sook Yin Lee

The title:

SHORTBUS

Sook Yin Lee hosts CBC Radio's long running cultural show Definitely Not The Opera, and she also starred in the 2006 indie film Shortbus from director John Cameron Mitchell. Shortbus' is best remembered for featuring graphic, uncensored and un-simulated sexual acts performed by the cast, including Sook Yin Lee.

The CBC threatened to fire her over the film for pretty much the same reasons they fired Ghomeshi, conduct they consider unbecoming an on-air CBC employee. However, the CBC backed down and let her keep her job after being bombarded with accusations of sexism, homophobia, and "censorship" by Sook Yin Lee's defenders.

I'll bet dollars to Tim Horton's donuts that if they fail to prove any sort of felonious activity on Ghomeshi's part, he will claim that the CBC is engaging in a double standard by punishing him for doing in private what she did on screen.

Is Ghomeshi a creep?

Probably. I've yet to hear anyone say anything in his defense that didn't make him sound like a lecherous douchebag.

However....

I don't know what really happened between Ghomeshi and his accusers. That means that I won't declare him either guilty or innocent until after a proper investigation has been done by people who know how to do proper investigations. I don't have any evidence either way, and, the odds are, neither do you, so let's not jump to any conclusions based on accusations and rumours.

Does he deserve a $50 million payoff?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

However, that doesn't mean that the CBC won't have to pay him anything. Unless they can prove some serious wrongdoing by Ghomeshi beyond being creepy, Ghomeshi will play the double standard card, and they don't have much of a defence against that.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1157: CBC Does Canada, Lohan Does Mamet!

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES IN TORONTO

The venerable and long tumefied Canadian Broadcasting Company, Canada's taxpayer & commercially supported national broadcaster announced that they will trim their staff by 20% by 2020.

Now this will be played in one of two ways.

The most sensible way to handle these reductions through simple demographic attrition. That means that a lot of in-front-of and behind-the-scenes people that have been working in senior high-paying jobs in CBC's Toronto HQ since the government of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson would retire and collect their pensions.

However, that sensible way is also the most unlikely way.

The CBC and its employees have a rather unique status. It's considered not only a bureaucratic position, promising lifetime employment & benefits, but also the centre of Toronto's elite society as well as what passes for celebrity in Canada.

That means that some people get branded as "institutions" and stay around long past their sell-by date. Every show, whether drama, news, or general entertainment have to involve the same mostly Toronto-based troupe of actors, journalists, and performers. A classic story was when CBC inked a deal for a Canadian franchise of Antiques Roadshow. They announced that they were looking for a young, hip, and previously unknown host for it. They ended up hiring a fifty-something host who has worked for the CBC off-and-on for the previous 25 years.

So here is what's going to happen.

The CBC will not use retirements and sensible fat-trimming in the executive suite to make these cuts. Instead they will lay off the younger, popular on-air personalities, arbitrarily cancel shows that people actually watch, and find other ways to punish the audience. All the while saying through their allies: "Don't blame us, blame the evil Tory government that we actively campaign against who won't give us unlimited money."

This is explained by something called "Public Choice Theory," or as I like to call it, PCT.

PCT explains that people in government, politicians and bureaucrats, are still human beings despite their claims of working for "the public good."

That means they spend most of their time catering to the special interests that will protect, promote and extend their own personal fiefdoms, whether that does anything for the public they're supposed to serve or not.

LINDSAY'S NEW BEGINNING ON THE WEST END?

Actress and professional club-hopping train-wreck Lindsay Lohan has been cast in a West-End production of David Mamet's 1988 play Speed The Plow.

Now it seems an odd choice since, unlike movies, TV shows, or fashion shoots, a live play can't really tolerate someone who is prone to show up 11 hours late if she shows up at all. In fact, movies and TV can't tolerate that behaviour for very long, since, as Einstein discovered: time is money, which is why she's considered unemployable.

However there are up-sides to this casting:

1. PUBLICITY: People on both sides of the Atlantic are talking about a non-musical production in London. Which is probably why the producers cast her. Schadenfreude is a great ticket mover.

2. OPPORTUNITY: Lohan's understudy will most likely get lots of stage time and media exposure.

So, barring Lohan burning down the theatre and all inside it, this stunt is not much of a gamble for the producers, more of a scam, but not a gamble.

__________________

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Hollywood Babble On & On #1121: Diversity & The Soft Bigotry Of Hollywood

Canadian actress Ellen Page has come out as gay.  It's a brave move, finally putting an end to speculation that's dogged her since her Hollywood career exploded with her Oscar nominated role in Juno, it gives hope to gay kids who feel like outcasts, and as we speak Hollywood is already working out how they're going to  pigeonhole her career into oblivion.

You see, Hollywood has a problem with diversity. They're the first to demand it from others, or use it as a cudgel to smack down people they don't like, but they are the last people to actually practise it in their own house.

Now it's not because Hollywood is a den of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Far from it, in fact, they'll be the first to tell you that they are the vanguard of openness and that it's the outside world that seething with hatred.

Hollywood believes that it must teach the world how to be as open-minded as they are.

And that's where the trouble begins.

You see, when you're a member of a "minority" in Hollywood's eyes you stop being just an actor, or even a human being, you become a REPRESENTATION.

When Hollywood brands you as a "Representation" it means that every role you play must represent the entirety of the minority/community/demographic you are deemed to represent. Also, the characters played by these representations cannot dare reflect negatively on any facet of the community the representation is supposed to represent.

This can become a death sentence to an actor's career, since the point of being an actor is playing a diversity of roles in a diversity of situations. This must include being allowed to play characters who may not be perfect role models or representations.

But show Hollywood a character that might be a great role, but has some negative trait they don't want branded onto an entire community, they just give the part to the straight white guy.  This is why all villains these days seem to be Russians played by British actors. There isn't a Russian activist group, and British actors like the easy work.

The craziest part is that Hollywood doesn't even know they're doing this. They honestly believe their own hype. If they say they're doing wonders for diversity, then they must actually be doing wonders for diversity, they put a black guy in a Robin Hood movie, that's gotta count for something.

It's delusional, but Hollywood is a realm of delusion.

But it's not all lost.

A form of organic diversity is arising in genre filmmaking, where actors of a variety of races, religions, and orientations can be characters that are seen as just characters instead of representations. Also some actors successfully fight Hollywood's subconscious pigeonholing and build careers based on their own talents.

I hope that's what happens to Ellen Page, she's a  very talented actress, with natural comedic skills, and deserves to be a real actress instead of a representation.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1106: Random Nuggets

SHOULD I REPEAT MYSELF?

A piece in Variety about the dearth of female directors making money-making feature films reminded me of the piece I wrote about the dearth of female feature film spec-writers which wondered if it was sexism or something unseen.

RIP RUN RUN SHAW

Legendary producer Sir Run Run Shaw, who with his older brother Runme Shaw, helped turn the Hong Kong film industry into a major international force, has passed away at the age of 106.

He started out in 1926 at the age of 19 helping his brother produce and distribute first silent films, and then some of Asia's first "talkies."

After World War 2 they helped revive the Asian film industry with Shaw Brothers Studio that brought the modern Martial Arts movie to the world.

He expanded from movies to pretty much all facets of media and in his later years became well known for his generous philanthropy.

EONE HUNDRED MILLION

EOne the fast growing Canadian media company has set up a $100 million fund to acquire independent films for them to distribute. 

This is good news for Canadian and British producers looking for a distributor since both lost some outlets in the recent spate of takeovers and mergers, including EOne's takeover of former Canuck juggernaut Alliance Films.

Good luck to them, I always like it when a company puts its money where its mouth is.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1027: Canadian Protectionism & Alien Bigotry?

PROTECTIONISM & FAVOURITISM?

Congratulations to Simon & Schuster Canada on being allowed by the Canadian government to publish Canadian authors in Canada.

Hmmm.... That doesn't make much sense... I think I need to do some explaining.

Simon & Schuster Canada, the North of the Border division of big international publisher Simon & Schuster, was restricted by the Canadian government. In the name of protecting Canadian culture S&S Canada was, until recently, only allowed to distribute American titles, but were not allowed to publish Canadian authors in Canada, even though the company obviously wanted to.

How did the old regulation that denied S&S Canada the ability to publish Canadian authors protect Canadian culture?

Terribly.

In fact, it probably did more harm than good.

When you want your culture to be vital and alive, the arrival of someone with deep pockets and an interest in investing money, time, and effort into putting more of your nation's authors on bookshelves should be seen as a good thing. 

Not in Canada.

Or to be more specific, not in certain offices in Toronto.

You see, the regulation had nothing to do with protecting Canadian culture. You see, Canada has a lot of space, but not much population, and the bulk of that population is laid out in a strip alongside the border of a massive pop-culture juggernaut called the USA. That means that in the areas of pop culture, movies, television, and books, already have natural market forces tipped against them.

In music and television things got really screwy with radio and TV broadcasters refusing to air anything Canadian made. In radio this included songs that were huge hits in the USA and UK, but couldn't get any airplay in their native country.

That all changed when the government imposed the Canadian Content regulations (AKA CanCon) which said that if they wanted a license to broadcast in Canada, they needed to air a certain amount of Canadian made material. This caused an explosion in Canadian music and television actually reaching Canadian audiences. At first a lot of the television was pretty crappy, but a lot of great music was finally able to find a domestic audience.

Now that's protectionism structured to protect Canadian culture, and you would think that an international publisher wanting to do business in Canada would follow similar guidelines. You would expect them to say to S&S Canada to say: "If you want to put out American books in Canada a percentage of your output should be Canadian authors."

But not so.

Why?

Well the answer is simple. The regulation wasn't about protecting Canadian culture, it's about protecting the elite group of Toronto publishers who were in positions of influence with politicians and bureaucrats when the regulations were put into effect. Those publishers didn't want competition for government arts grants and hopefully avoid paying fair market prices for Canadian authors.

But with the whole Random/Penguin merger there was an opening, and S&S Canada was allowed into the club.

IS DOCTOR WHO RACIST?

That's a question no one has ever asked until a group of Academics did and the answer is YES!

The Doctor, last of the Time Lords, is more than just a raging Dalek-aphobe, these experts say he doesn't like black people because he plays cricket... or something...

The whole thing doesn't make a lot of logical sense since the Doctor is an alien, and fictional, and the knee jerk reaction to this report is to say that the authors should save a seat at the funny farm.

But the authors are not crazy.

They're not right, but they're not delusional.

This whole thing reeks of cold opportunistic calculation.

Let's look at these 3 basic facts:

1. The BBC is an obsessively politically correct bureaucracy. If someone who happens to belong to one of their pre-approved socio-economic-ethnic demographic groups says they were offended by something on the BBC the Beeb will bend over backwards to win their forgiveness.

2. Doctor Who is one of the BBC's biggest exports bringing in millions in sales to foreign networks as well as DVDs and merchandise.

3. The BBC is notorious for arranging lucrative sinecures with their myriad boards, commissions, and bureaucratic offices for people who provide some sort of political advantage for the BBC.

It's simple math, attack the BBC's biggest cash cow with the BBC's own liberal guilt and the BBC will have a nice little freak out. Fighting it too hard will only make the critics scream louder which makes the pale princes at the top of the BBC food chain feel bad about themselves so that's out of the question. This leaves BBC management two permissible options they must either plead guilty and cancel Doctor Who, losing all that sweet, sweet revenue, or save their money-maker by essentially buying off the critics.

I fully expect the authors of the damning tome to get well paid low work jobs at the BBC that have the word "Diversity" somewhere in the title.

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

Some readers had some comments that I think are worthy of a response.

Ken Begg asked... I'm increasingly surprised that Disney hasn't released remastered editions of the original versions of the older Star Wars movies on DVD / BluRay. Get rid of all the lousy additions George Lucas shoved down the fan's throats. This would result in instant money, and make the fans happy, buying Disney further cred. 

Hell, release the Star Wars Holiday Special. It was always incredibly petty of Lucas to have had just a bug up his butt about that.

While I didn't like the changes Lucas made to his movies, I will acknowledge that he had the right to make those changes. The movies were his property.

What I didn't like was that he constantly refused to release a decent DVD version of the unsullied originals, and declared that the memories of the original fans didn't matter because it was his toy and they could go pound sand. Which was a tart blend of hypocrisy and arrogance since back in the 80s he fought so hard against Ted Turner colourizing the black and white classics he grew up watching.

Disney could release a "Classic Edition" DVD/Blu-Ray and probably make a few gazillion easy, but knowing George Lucas and his love of micromanaging and denying that he ever made a mistake might have made him put something in the sales contract to keep them from doing it.

If there isn't some poison pill in the contract, just pressure Disney to release the originals. If they can make money off of it, they will do it.

As for the Star Wars Holiday Special, I have to say that I have to agree with George on that one. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I remember seeing it as a little kid, and thinking: "This doesn't make any sense, and it's making my brain hurt."

Next comment...

Rainforest Giant here,

How hard would it be to combine the budgets from two or three of those scyfy channel abortions they churn out?
I mean they put up one or two new ones a week. So why not take some time and actually do one half-assed right? Or combine some of their properties into one show? Have 'Face Off' do the makeup for a couple movies and cross-promote with tie-ins all around. Give some money to people doing decent web shows like 'The Guild'.

I watched the first episode of 'Defiance' and it wasn't too horrible but there were no surprises. I am not sure if I'll keep watching. 'Continuum' was simply boring I quit watching that already.

They didn't have to reinvent the wheel with their Battlestar Galactica prequel thing. I guess they thought that having a fifteen year old girl who is too stupid to stay away from murderous morons was the way to go.

Somebody could produce some scifi for kids Saturday morning tv (do they still do that?). It wouldn't have to be too perfect kids don't demand that (look at 'Power Rangers') but they do want it to be engaging and fun. Any reason that cannot be a gateway drug to good science fiction/horror?

I don't think it's about money when it comes to the crapulence of the SyFy originals and their ilk. Only the major studios think massive amounts of cash are necessary to make decent science-fiction and horror.

There are ways to make those kinds of genre films on a budget, but they require resources that SyFy and other straight-to-DVD-cable producers have a shortage of.

Those resources are imagination and the ambition to create work that does more than just fill time on a schedule.

If they had those resources they would have put together something involving their other shows, which actually is a pretty good idea. They also wouldn't butcher popular science fiction novels into unrecognizable messes.

But they don't. Instead they clog the airwaves with crap, and those who actually do make good genre movies on a budget are lost in the shuffle.

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And now a moment of RAGE!

Speaking of lazy b-movies. Last night I was channel surfing and came across a movie called Swamp Devil with Bruce Dern. Though I was only able to force myself to watch about 10 minutes of it I can say without a doubt that it was a perfect example of lazy b-movie making.

Why?

THERE WAS NO SWAMP!

The titular 'swamp' was a pond in the middle of a forest of gently rolling hills in Quebec.

Now if you're going to put out anything with "Swamp" in the title, you better deliver lots of watery places teeming with all sorts of biting things. If you can't afford a swamp then you have to ask yourself:

What would Roger Corman do?

Corman would have hired some eager kid with talent looking for a break into the industry, like a young Robert Towne, or Francis Coppola, tell him the script needs a rewrite because they can't afford Louisiana, they have to shoot it in Quebec. Then he'd lock the writer in a room, like he used to with Robert Towne, and let him out when he was finished. The writer, hoping to make his mark would then change it from a swamp monster, to a forest monster, and make up something that sounded like Quebecois folklore as local colour so they can save money by not trying to make it look like America, contrive a reason for an American hero, and they're off to the races.

It's not rocket science, it's just using a little imagination.