I like what Paul Grossman has to say

"Dumb. Dumb, Dumb, dumb." Thats what Paul has to say about bill C - 10. If readers can't connect the name of this famous Canadian actor, they'll definitely connect the face. Paul Grossman is arguably one of the top 5 most well known Canadian actors in Canada, if not as a Canadian actor internationlly.

As an actor/producer, there is likely no one who knows the consequences of what this bill will have on Canada's film industry better than Paul. Paul tells it best at around the nine minute mark of a CBC interview found on the link below:

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=2046

Coyne

They are both being complete hypocrites. Government, to them, is a bad thing, until their side gets control.

I think Harper is doing a great job of creating an image of himself as an uptight, suburban, church-going, churlish, mean, nerdy, super-white guy. Rick Mercer must be thanking his lucky stars.

Facebook opposition group re c-10

For anyone in the industry, or who otherwise wishes to register their disapproval of C-10:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9036150977

Censorship

Censorship, under any name, is the last bastion of the ignorant. Knowledge, good or evil, is a right of everyone.

The present government displays its collective ignorance by trying to censor art and artistic license.

Paul GROSS, please.

Thanks, The Brain, for pointing out the essential brilliance of what Paul GROSS says: Bill C-10 really is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

Paul GROSS is not just a pretty face, although there's no doubt about it, he sure as heck is that.

Paul GROSS speaks on behalf of the Arts, and CBC, and Canadian programming. Best of all ...

Paul GROSS stays in Canada and keeps right on being an actor and an activist.

BC Mary

And I, for one, am truly grateful that Canadian taxpayers get to pay more than a Billion dollars towards support of his lifestyle and those like him........who do I get to see about a refund?

Taking Dinosaur Steps in a Minority Shoe

As ME2 aptly points out, these aren't the traditional Tory/Conservative values of not so long ago....when the world was still somewhat sane....

No, these are just more goofy whacko and anal values now surfacing from the mutant Reformer swamp that brought us Doris, The Man Who Walks with Dinosaurs - and then went on to reward him with a starring role in their own C-10 rated movie, Mr Harper Goes to Washington.

It should also be noted that as is often said, censorship is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. This realization made even more alarming by the fact that Bill C-10, like other bills before it in recent years, is being brought forward under a mere minority government. Which should make all of us not want to go where a majority Harper government would take this country.

I'm a girl who largely only swears in print, only out loud when the grocery bag rips open and oranges spill in all directions.... and one lodges behind the fridge.... and I can't quite reach it - but I like this quote by Lenny Bruce. It says a lot in a short space (something I should learn to do ;-)) about the growing use of things like tasers and the quelling of free speech through censorship.

Lenny Bruce

No right nut either

NoLeftNutter said:

Lifestyle? Oh, you see the glitter and the makeup his career]/i] requires he put on airs about, which is part of the value of entertainment. You know, escapism, the kind you get from the 'net or girlie magazines or horse racing. When he's on camera he's not in mufti, he's gotta be "on", as in on-stage, on-camera. So what you see as a lifestyle - and very typical of redneck Canadians to snit their noses at people in performing careers - but it's part of the game, [i]part of the work. That's probably beyond you, maybe not. He has the dough and the connections, and the work obligations too, that allow/require him to move around all over the place, all the time, and work with and schmooze with famous people. It's the job. Be jealous and crappy-minded about "his lifestyle" all you want, Gross is anything but a Hollywood-oid and effaces that lifestyle, like many actors these days.

But you think it's lazy man's work, don't you? Being a famous actor, jetsetting around, hanging out on set while you have your toenails clipped and latte fetched, basking at the Riviera or partying wild in the mysterious rooms beyond the red carpet.

Get a grip. Even for a star, a day on set - especially TV - is all day, from dawn onwards, "hurry up and wait", incredible hustle, incredible boredom, rain, group dynamics-tension and administrative stress within the various departments; which is why actors get trailers and other special treatment, to insulate them from the crap of running the crew and the budget wrangling and all the interpersonal bizarreness that the industry is about; anyone who's worked on a chaotic set especially knows what I'm talking about.

(cont.)

No right nut either cont.

When you hear about someone working on a film, it's very rarely hopping out of the limo, quipping a few lines, smiling for the stills guy, shaking the supporting cast's hands, hitting kraft services for some low-fat creamcheese donuts, dodging eager extras and jumping back in the limo. It's a slog, it's nerve-wracking, it's doing the same thing over and over and over into the dozens of times. In the rain, in the cold, in the heat, on no sleep.
At least with TV it's usually all done in one day or just a few, as opposed to weeks on weeks of, well, weeks and weeks. And through all that you have to maintain character, wear funny clothes, have people be ingratiatingly nice to you you'd rather not talk to at all, and try and be cool at all costs, unless you're already super-famous in which case tantrums are part of the film's presskit. Gross isn't that famous, and his lifestyle ain't Brangelina's....

Acting's not easy work, and beyond the hard work on set it can be just as hard navigating the minefieldss of the industry; casting, style, press/p.r. and so on. It's why they take tranks and other drugs, and why some of them wind up dead from it. It's rougher work than you know. That they can buy nice houses and fancy cars and see the world is part of the perks, but the same is true of being a successful investment banker or accountant or, god help us, politician. (how many of the current BC cabinet own land in Maui, I wonder? Just curious...

And you don't just get to be an actor by being pretty, either. Gross and others go through things to get where they are that make psychiatrists cringe. All to entertain middle-class people, some of whom like yourself think they're just lazy rich people. But watch them anyway, huh?

Life of Brian

Methinks that if Mel Gibson made his Christ movie in Canada it would have been well funded.However the Monty Python life of Brian would be thrown out! Any takers?

authoritarianism.

As Ed Deak has so aptly pointed out, nothing is as suited to the authoritarianism the neocon dearly loves as is introducing legislation that protects the moral climate they claim their "Moral Majority" seeks.

It doesn't matter whether or not such strictures violate basic personal freedoms, what is more important - or so they say - is that our moral climate is preserved or enhanced. But as Ed has further pointed out, once a foothold has been gained, there's no end to the "immoralities" they will further seek out.

The curious thing is that if properly done, even those who oppose them and/or their legislation are rendered helpless, for once a moral drive is underway, opposing it is akin to opposing motherhood.

Campbell is a past master of the art, as best seen in his mis-use of pro-aboriginal sentiment in the recent ALR scam.

The campaign against second-hand smoke is another such. Once the campaign against Tobacco was well underway, it seemed logical to many to proceed towards prohibition, and so we see the progression of the campaign onward to second-hand smoke in a political climate which has swung to the Right the world over.

For those who would contest my assertion that proof of the health risks validating the new campaign does not esist, I would suggest reading the article in Skeptic Magazine "Science and Second-hand Smoke" Vol. 13, # 3.. This article has plenty enough authoritative references to satisfy anyone but those who would rather believe regardless of the evidence against doing so.

What I find scary is an ad in my local paper today which accompanies the new rules. It suggests:

"To make a complaint about violations of the new rules for smoking in public places, tobacco sales and/or advertising, or for more information, please call the Northen Health Tobacco Reduction Team"

I expect next to see kids in school being instructed to inform on their parents, or some such equivalent.

Entertainment?

The histrionics here are laughable….Skookum’s moaning about how hard the poor entertainers have it, and, who is Paul Gross anyway?

Brain trying to draw a straight line from my comments to -

. Boy that’s quite a leap of faith and BTW, if the CBC is so darn valuable how come their programming can’t fund their overhead, you know, like real entertainers do?

And Woody, shouldn’t that be “too funny?”

Frankly, the Tyee has about the perfect balance of what it costs and its entertainment value for me……

NLN

It's not hard to extrapolate that if a party doens't know the difference between right and wrong, they will continue to blow it and if they actually do anything right, as one of Ed Deaks expressions go, "even a blind hen can peck a few kernals". Translated, if this Reform excuse for New Cons don't know why censorship is so wrong, they'll never understand the term "free will". Its not hard to extrapolate from there what kind of future this nation has under them and arguably, it isn't just Bill C -10. Democracy is at risk here. They've been like this since the beginning when Harper, on his first day, appointed an unelected cabinet minister.

The examples of authoritarian rule are daily in the media. Yesterdays examples are likely unprecidented as most have been:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080327/nato_summit_080327/20080327?hub=QPeriod

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080326/Duncan_Flaherty_080326/20080326?hub=QPeriod

This one is inexcusable. Its a 3 million dollar absuse/waste of taxpayers money on propaganda, ranking right up there with big money Harper gives to think tanks for war propaganda.

http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2008/03/27/memo-to-doug-finley-3/

Hard Work?

I don't think this bill is a good idea but I don't know how acting can be construed as hard work. Nor how that false assumption (IMO) connects to the bigger picture of censorship.

I've seen this movie before

What happened to the tax credit days of the late 70s, when you could get federal money for making just about any movie in Canada? That's how David Cronenberg got started, along with a lot of "maple syrup porn" and schlock horror movies.

The "it's not censorship, it's judgement" argument is a reprise of the old Robert Mapplethorpe/NEA battle, and just as disingenuous. As always, this is about control of other people.

Not nuts at all....

Moaning? No, telling it like it is. You were the one moaning about Gross' "lifestyle".

Who's Paul Gross? Gee, for someone who knows so much about how to deal with Canadian film you don't know very friggin' much at all do you? Sounds to me like you only know Canadian actors if they've gone and been successful "somewhere else" (i.e. the US) - the Sutherlands, Jim Carrey, etc. "Who's Paul Gross?" infers you didn't know any blasted thing at all about him when you bitched/moaned about "his lifestyle".

When the time comes, Gross might be our answer to Ronnie Raygun and The Governator; i.e. an actor who reaches high political office. In the meantime, he's our counterfoil to right-wing nutbars who think the only decent human pasttimes are crunching numbers (for the one class) and digging ditches (for the other).

Look up the name and history

Look up the name and history of the most famous censor in American history, Anthony Comstock, who and whose Code were banning and prosecuting film makers and publishers for the use of single words for decades, after he died in 1915.

Like when they wanted to ban a David Niven movie for the word "seduce", and "Never on Sunday", among hundreds.

Couples were not permitted in the same bed, unless one leg of each was on the floor, no long ,or open mouth, tongue kissing.

I seem to remember reading that when he died, a batchelor, they found stacks of so called "pornography" in his room. (?) Which would be typical of many of these holy crusaders.

Now there are thousands of sites and millions of pictures on the Net, showing that there's a great demand for sex, mostly as a relief from stress.

As one prominent Vancover psychiatrist told me over 35 years ago: "Ed, there's no such thing as pornography, only good and bad erotica. And bad erotica is still better than no erotica at all. If people could freely express their erotic dreams and feelings, I would be out of business, because the majority of our patients are the victims of their suppressed erotic thoughts."

I often wonder what the dreams and suppressed thoughts of Harper and Day are, and how much of their time they spend .....?

Ed Deak.

control freaks

My favorite tee-shirt reads: "I'm one of those people"!
There is no need to specify what kind of people that is, because the control freaks do not discriminate, they are against anyone who does not conform.

Obviously we need some reason for funding art projects, but we do not need anal-retentive freaks telling us what is good.

"A not implausible reality" considering the traitors at our helm

Speaking of film and Paul Gross:

The Trojan Horse is part political thriller, part cautionary tale. Gross co- wrote the four-hour miniseries with Governor General Award-winner John Krizanc. Filmmaker Charles Biname, who helmed the original H20 miniseries, directed the sequel. The Trojan Horse's cast includes Greta Scacchi, Tom Skerritt, Martha Burns, Kenneth Welsh, Clark Johnson, Saul Rubinek and, in his final role, legendary stage actor William Hutt.

The Trojan Horse airs March 30 and April 6 on CBC at 8pm ET/PT

...hey, what a great cast.

Now we will return to our regular Tyee programming....;-)

A little disingenuous

Steve Burgess makes a solid point that a bureaucratic commission making decisions about what kind of pseudo-artistic garbage is still tolerable to subsidize, and what is entirely beyond the pale, is not an entirely principled position.

But it is a little disingenuous on his part to call Coyne and Steyn disingenuous:

If I recall correctly, neither Coyne nor Steyn argued against "a complete withdrawal of all tax credits and government support for the Canadian film industry". If such a proposal was made, I suspect, it would be just fine with both of them.

What they did argue was that not robbing Peter to pay for Paul's expensive hobby is something quite different from censorship, not to even mention authoritarianism. Confusing not paying up with censorship either shows deep ignorance, at best, or displays reckless narcissism, somewhere in the middle, or at worst, represents a shamefull attempt at fraudulently misappropriating the status of an oppressed victim for personal gain.

Ahhh memories.

Further to Ed Deak's comments re censorship in the US - and Canada usually follows the US - the Comstock Laws were superseded by the Hays Law in 1930, out of which came the notorious Hay's Office which went to extravagant lengths to ensure that its new Motion Picture Production Code resulted in the most prissy content possible.

It's enforcement was largely given over to prominent Catholic clerics, watchogs who wielded immense power through the Church organisation, The Legion of Decency.

http://my.brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=105052&show_release_date=1/

Beginning in the early 50's, the film industry began to chip away at the Code, but my recollection is that Playboy Magazine spearheaded the anti-censorship attack with its now-tame frontal-nudity pictorials, the iconoclastic Playboy Philosophy discussions, the many interviews with leading thinkers of the day plus many stories written for he magazine by writers such as Ernest Hemingway.

A standing put-down of Playboy readers was to ask..."I suppose you buy Playboy just for the reading?" snicker, snicker. But the fact was that we did buy it for that TOO, and IMO, without Playboy, we'd be at least 10-20 years back in the fight against censorship.

The following Wiki site gives an outline of Playboy's 56 year history, but what I find very interesting is the resistance its introduction has met with in so many countries, primarily Catholic ones (There's a listing of dates). I note that the Phillipines, with its very strong Catholic majority and supportive Muslim groups, is only this year allowing Playboy in, but without nudity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy

In '67 the Industry gave up on the Code and brought in the saner but still doubtful rating system. And the Fanny Hill book censorship case finally broke the censor's icy grip on "lewd" depictions of sex in print.

Researching info for these Tyee postings is often a voyage of discovery for me, and this time I came across the name of Father Coughlan, whose pamphlets had upset me when I picked them up in church somewhere around the age of 15, though I wasn't too sure then just why.

Father Coughlin was indeed highly involved with censorship, but it seems that he had political views too, and leanings toward the far Right which included some not quite kosher views on other races and religions. Hmmm. All of a sudden it becomes clear to me why my mother refused to discuss politics with me and accounts for her somewhat cryptic remarks concerning Jews, Blacks and Indians. Had her son become infected with "communism"?

And so this next site holds special significance for me.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/christian_identity/christianidentity19.html

Me 2..... Come to think of

Me 2.....

Come to think of it, it may have been Hays
whose room was full of photos he was trying to ban and preached against, and of course also responsible for the film and magazine censorship. I was wrong about Comstock, with the exception of his influence.

There were a lot of girlie mags at the same time as the Playboy, but the first frontal nudity came in with Penthouse and the imported Danish magazines.

I've been drawing and painting the nude figure, both as a student and artist, since 1949. It was never outlawed in artschools.

Pubic hair was commonly shown in European magazines even in the 30s, but censored in North America until about 1970, when Penthouse broke the rule and then also the film industry, but now it once again seems to be taboo. After all, it is a truly "indecent" feature , that only exists on immoral, dirty people.

Look up the story of the painting "September Morn" on google. I have known about it for many years. There are all kinds of stories on Comstock's involvement in making it a famous work of art.

Ed Deak.

September Mom

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/September_Morn/

Errrrr....

September "Morn" that is. :-)

Gloire de Dijon

It's a beautiful painting...I have never heard of it or the story behind it before.

Just to further annoy the "no sex,please," Reformatories, I'll post a favourite poem of mine, "Gloire de Dijon" by DH Lawence ( a guy whose whole life and art was a constant battle against censorship). It seems almost written for "September Morn":

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.

She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.

DH Lawrence

taxpayer subsidies

That phrase is just SO GALLING when it's used to target only one industry. As noted, forestry would have been (and should have been) flat on its as thirty years ago if not for endless government bail-outs, never mind the opening up of the Government Reserve in '76 to give most of the province's trees virtually away for free, just to keep MacBlo in town. Don't tell me being a lumber broker is a 'real job', if you're claiming that film industry jobs aren't.....and now as it turns out the government, according to the courts (Xeni Decision), didn't even have the right to declare the Government Reserve "Crown Land", and no right at all to sell/give away what was on it. And HOW MANY pulp mills and sawmills were bailed out, or written off, and/or given heavy subsidies just to get going HOW MANY miles of roads were built to supply trees to those mills? HOW MANY parts of the province were thereby stripped of usable timber, in Lillooet's case reaching "fall-down" within 15 years of opening? And how much money was spent subsidizing the forest industry's "p.r." account, the lobbying against tourism development, against recreation, against diversification? A whole damn lot, that's how many.

BTW "no balls at all", that line is from my British army captain/bandmaster's rendition of Colonel Bogey:

But back to redneck propaganda. Nobody said people have to be in real estate either. Let's do away with all THEIR tax breaks......

Subsidies and the arts...

For these paleo-con artist types, it all much depends on whose ox is being gored. The reality of capitalism is, whether it's so-called P3'S, all the sundry tax breaks made readily available to again, so-called "free enterprise", forgivable loans, research and development grants, govt guaranteed low interest loans, or market development assistance to "free enterprise" attempting to break into foreign markets, "business" has ever been at the public trough gorging itself, decrying government assistance in the "good times and ever whining poverty and cries for help in the "bad". These con artists who always spring to the defence of the corporate/business interest would have us forget that when one "defends" capitalism, you are defending these "corporate/business welfare" practises as well. Capitalism is in reality a package deal from which no part can be really separated.

From the time that rising capitalism first wrested control of the state from the landed feudal aristocracy in their revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, and launched their Industrial Revolution, that new bourgeois state and the capitalist ruling class have been joined at the hip, each indispensably needing and assisting the other, with the state being and expected to be the guarantor of capitalism's success in peace and war.

They may out of one side of their mouths decry "all subsidies", but never so loudly as to make waves in the daily subsidies that go to "free enterprise"-, demonstrating in practise, contrary to their words, that it is not really subsidy to business that they are opposed to, only anything that smacks of helping ordinary working class folks endure and survive, which has to include the struggling arts and artists as well.

Continued next post...

Subsidies and the arts 2.

From previous post...

I, on the other hand, accept that "public" subsidies to all aspects of economic
activity, including the arts and the medical system etc., are, as real economic history demonstrates, an indispensable and unavoidable part of real social life. The only caveat to that is that, especially in the case "private business enterprises" of all sorts, those public funds which come to the start-up, rescue, or other forms of "aid" that flow to business, should come with a "public and worker share ownership" price attached. (Which, where the case is made, doesn't mean that it is never time for some business and sectors to be allowed to pass from the scene. It has to be based on a "public" as opposed to "private interest" judgement.)

It is unlikely that capitalism could even continue to exist if all forms of "state assistance" were withdrawn from it for all time and situations-, and it is indeed, in my judgement, in an orderly and over time fashion, for us to allow that to happen, and for other forms of "democratically owned and managed" enterprises to be encouraged to flourish, including the arts. :-)

Nonuts is just trying to pull the wool over our eyes here. :-) He just wants your ox gored, not those interests to which he is so loyal and apologist.

Bulletin From the New Moral Suasion Committee

"We here at the NMSC have decided that any filmmaker wishing to portray God-fearing, hardworking Albertans putting the oil into the ground at the behest of their divinely inspired Social Credit government will be given oodles of Torontonian taxpayer money.

We have also decided that any film portraying Tommy Douglas as an addle-headed jerk will be given the green light and even more oodles of damn easterner taxpayer monies.

God Bless Stephen Harper, Canada and all of us here at the NMSC."

Bill C-10

The important word in this whole discussion (which has careened off in many directions, mostly sexually-oriented) has been overlooked by the posters.

That word is the seemingly innocuous "offensive" and which is then circumscribed by the phrase "...such as anything of an explicit sexual nature..." thereby apparently limiting the powers of the legislation.

But not really. Unless the final version of the law actually forbids its application to any situation except sex, the Conservative government will have an excellent weapon to wield against any and all portrayal of political dissent from its own rigid control, by making it "offensive."

It will be just a small step for a repressive government to withhold tax relief from a movement's efforts to publicize itself, to making the very existence of such a movement verboten (and I use that word deliberately). Remember the late and un-lamented Joe McCarthy.

The C-10 Hypocrisy

I'll start by saying that I'm opposed to Bill C-10 because of the effect it will have on the projects which are made, the de facto cencorship/chill, and the retroactive aspect which is especially problematic.
I'm about as far to the left on social and economic issues as one could be; but I'm also honest. The fact is that the potential conservative bias of C-10 pales in comparison to the overwhelming liberal bias of the government financed film-funding bodies that exist now. Projects which are certain to offend (social) conservatives are not only acceptable, but strongly favoured (I've sat on some juries). The chill/censorship facing someone who would seek to make a film with a conservative perspective, and which would offend liberals, gays, feminists, etc, is the same, only much greater in scope and even more exclusive than anything contemplated by C-10.
Even though I personally like many of the films made under the existing system (although many of these films and filmmakers have used sex and nudity as a crutch for decades), it doesn't surprise me that the most vocal opponents of C-10 are the very same people who benifit from an even greater bias on the funding side.

If we really wanted to fund film in Canada without defacto censorship, we would subsidise the inputs to filmmaking (or match the box office, making Canadian films more attractive to distributors and exhibitors), without picking winners and losers.