In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is a very unusual sector and the one thing I would ask of them is to understand that for most of them one-third of their films are being financed by the taxpayer and that carries huge accountability and responsibility.
I think the situation in Toronto is such that there are funding organizations which make it easy for a film to raise more money than it needs and very often that works against a film.
I lost a year or two in there, trying to get films financed that I didn't know would never get financing.
The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.
There were a lot of people dreaming about making films, and they would finance maybe 6 films a year. Because they were funded by the government, the films sort-of had to deal with serious social issues - and, as a result, nobody went to see those films.
In the first years after 1989, films were partly financed from the state's budget as well as by public television. Still, except for a few special cases, most films are made this way.
Across the board, Australian films need to have a lot more money spent on selling them.
The corporation and the hedge funds have a hold on Hollywood, and they all want to make money on anything that signifies cinema.
The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment.
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.