TIDELAND: English Director, American Writer, Telefilm Canada Loses $7.6-million

(Toronto) TIDELAND, the latest misfire from English director Terry Gilliam and based on American author Mitch Cullin’s novel of the same name set in Texas, has recently been released from Capri films and is being savaged by the film critics. But that aside, the worst thing about the film is that it is being trotted out as a shameful Telefilm-funded film by the critics.

I put on the brakes there and backed up, as should anybody reading this. Wait a minute. Telefilm exists to fund Canadian stories and culture, right? That’s their mandate. Telefilm exists to assist Canadian filmmakers to tell Canadian stories, Canadian writers, Canadian directors. What in hell is going on here? Why did Telefilm fund Tideland?

I looked up the film on Telefilm’s website and was astonished to find, in their investment report, that they had spent some (or rather WE had spent ) something like -- what the hell? -- $7,681,913 on this film? Please, somebody check my figures here from the Investment Reports section of Telefilm’s website and typing in the title Tideland in the production title space at the bottom.

http://www.telefilm.gc.ca/01/18.asp

This is completely ridiculous. One can only guess this is a result of Telefilm's Envelope system, but aren't there any restrictions at all on that requiring it be spent on a Canadian film? It’s a disastrous situation when one can imagine that likely the funding for perhaps three or more features created by, written by, and directed by English Canadians, could have been made instead of this? Keeping in mind that $2-million from Telefilm usually triggers equal amounts or more from other sources. Speaking of which, it will be horrifying to see how much money came out of Provincial Ontario and Saskatchewan’s money towards financing.

I have yet to see it, and doubt I will bother as I find Gilliam’s love affair with the fish-eye lens extremely annoying and believe he’s the most over-rated director in the history of cinema. Though the Monty sketch comedy style stuff is certainly funny. But the only joke is on us here.

People need to be held accountable for this. It is reprehensible enough to have Canadian producers like Robert Lantos hanging out on yachts in the Greek islands filming his latest non-Canadian Telefilm-funded disaster like he did this summer, but this is beyond even that, incredibly enough.

The real potential tragedy here is that people with the power to do something will interpret this wrong. They may just see it as gruesome “horror movie” with no redeeming features and that Telefilm shouldn’t be funding genre films. That’s where this film has the potential to become a double edge sword. OF COURSE Telefilm should be funding genre films. Canadians love genre films. The big successes in English Canadian film’s history that English Canadian audiences embraced were genre films. But now we’ve got an English director who is on a terrible string of disasters, making another pointless film, based on an American’s novel, and this could be more damaging for English Canadian film than just the misguided initial investment. It is bizarre.