Starving Artists - Part Eight
You often meet very interesting people at a Starbucks restaurant.
In the summer of 2015 I started to chat with Ross Munro, a 52 year-old teacher at a west side Vancouver high school. He was having his morning coffee at a Starbucks restaurant before going off to work.
Munro not only helps young people learn to cope with everyday challenges, he's also directed and scripted two feature films and two documentaries. "my first feature film cost me about $50,000 in 2000," this energetic native of Winnipeg says. "My second film will cost me about $75,000."
I saw Munro's first film called 'Brewster McGee' on my DVD machine.. It's shot in black and white and takes place in a parked car and a nearby fast food restaurant. I liked parts of it but it seemed to me to be incomplete. When I gently suggested to Munro that the film needed maybe more background or introductory material, Munro smiled.
"I could have done a lot more," he said if I'd had even more money."
In this story on underpaid if not starving artists, I've left out film directors and specifically Canadian film directors. This short piece is an attempt to fill that gap. "The film is the art " or most important art, "of the first half of the twentieth century," wrote John Berger way back in 1964. Even to-day with the rise of the Internet, a movie or at least a well-made one is still the most important work of art to-day in 2015.
Films are incredibly expensive to make and take a long time to complete. I can paint a small watercolour picture in less than three hours. my painting materials cost me less than twenty dollars. I may never sell my work but I always get a great kick from doing a watercolour.
Contrast this with a director like Munro. Munro writes a movie script in maybe two or three months. He directs the film too. Yet before the film gets shot, he has to find backers to finance his film. He has to line up actors and seek loacations where he's going to shoot his film. Then he and his wife, Maria who is his producer and comes from Venezuala, have to attend to a myriad of other details.
Once the film is complete where will it play? Only the big and well-publicized American films usually get shown at your local cineplex or mega- theatres .As one Canadian film director once said in effect, "I'll believe that I've made it as a director when a film of mine plays in Penticton, B.C. and all across Canada in towns like Penticton." Only a handful of Canadian directors have reached this stage of their careers.
Only once has Munro been able to get one of his films shown at the Vancouver Film Festival. His movies so far as I know, have never played for any length of time in a movie house or a cineplex. And the total amount of money he ever got back was a measly eight American dollars.
"I got that from one movie house in Seattle that showed ones of my films," Munro says.
Yet this middle-aged man keeps on pursuing his dream. He's already planning two more feature films, one about a novelist the other about a visual artist. Both will be taking place in the period from the 1930's to the 1950's.
Like me Munro is an insatiable reader who's always finding new novels to devour. He can discuss in detail many of the novels he's read, including many from Latin America. Of course he's got a family connection here since his wife is Venezulan-born.
I'm hoping one day that a Ross Munro film will break into the big time. Until then, I must remember the Canadian film directors who struggle on to get their films shown to a wide audience. "Socially," writes John Berger, "the film depends on large urban audiences."
Ross Munro hasn't found those audiences yet. I hope he will one day. And I wish the same for many other underfinanced and underpaid Canadian directors.
No comments:
Post a Comment