ver the past two months, a long-simmering and bitter international conflict has grown from a subterranean dispute to something approaching open war. No, I'm not speaking about India and Pakistan, but about the U.S. and Canada.
Specifically, I'm referring to a trade war between the U.S. film industry in California and its counterpart in the Great North. In early December, the Screen Actors Guild and a group called the Grassroots Film and Television Action Committee filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Commerce calling for "countervailing tariffs" to be levied on films that benefit from tax credit subsidies offered to producers by Canada's national and provincial governments.
In 2000, for example, over one-third of all domestically released American feature films (those with budgets over $5 million) were filmed north of the border, a percentage twice as high as 1999. Why would this activity—known here as "runaway production"—motivate legal action? Money and jobs. Specifically, the flow of money and jobs from the film and television industry in California to British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.
The idea of basing a weekly network series in Canada seems to have originated with the canny Stephen J. Cannell, co-creator of Rockford Files and The A-Team, among many, many others. As an independent television producer in the late 1980s, he found himself squeezed by network license fees which did not actually pay for the costs of producing an hour of prime-time television. (They still don't: studios rely on domestic syndication and foreign sales to make a profit. Well, a "profit.")
Cannell did some math, and discovered that lower labor costs in Canada, plus the exchange rate between the Canadian and U.S. dollars, plus subsidies or tax credits more than made up for the expense of flying three to four cast members and the odd writer-producer to B.C. and putting them up in the Sutton Place for each episode.
Much more.
Location, location, location
Over the past decade, then, Vancouver (the location I know best) has gone from having perhaps five experienced film crews to five times that many. The number of soundstages has seen a similar growth. Post-production and effects houses have sprung up. Actors and directors have built nice careers without leaving British Columbia.
What shows are filmed in Canada under these rules? Everything from Smallville to Andromeda, from Dark Angel to Stargate SG-1, from Earth: Final Conflict to Mutant X. (Past programs included Showtime's Outer Limits, X-Files and TekWar.) Throw in most TV movies with sci-fi themes.
Some series have used Canadian locations to great benefit. The dreary skies and winter darkness added menace to most exterior scenes of X-Files. Exotic locations in British Columbia have served as otherworldly exteriors for Stargate SG-1.
Other series have suffered. The urban locations in Vancouver and Toronto are more limited than those in Los Angeles. Having worked on two productions in Vancouver for a period of about six months, and taken perhaps half a dozen scouting trips, I can still identify a great percentage of locations. ("Honey, here's that convenience store around the corner from my hotel. And there's that coffee place on Granville—")
The casting options are also limited: you wind up seeing the same faces as day players, for example. Of course, these drawbacks apply to stateside competitors for the TV and film dollar, too, such as Utah or North Carolina.
For some series—like WB's Smallville—shooting in Canada is a wash. A small town there looks a lot like a small town in the States.
These are all creative or aesthetic questions. The petitions and political arguments, of course, are about money and jobs flowing northward.
Writers typically try to stay above disputes like this. It's especially easy because, by and large, writers are exempt from these rules. The shows might be filmed in Vancouver or Toronto, but the writing team has an office in Burbank. (We don't always escape untouched: at least once a year I get a call from a Canada-based producer about working on a project, because I am a member of the Writers Guild of Canada as well as the Writers Guild of America. I have learned that revealing my U.S. citizenship fairly early in the conversation saves everyone a lot of time.)
Joining the Canadian club
I should note that I don't believe that every film or television series needs to be shot in Los Angeles and that Canada has every right to make it attractive for productions to film there. I've thoroughly enjoyed working in Vancouver.
Nevertheless, I see the tension all around me. I know grips and assistant directors and editors and actors who don't seem to work as much as they used to. I see their resentment and even their attempts to fight back.
For years, one acclaimed director refused to even consider shooting in Canada because of his loyalty to his L.A.-based crew. He has since done a project in Canada—why? It's not just a matter of giving up a principled stance: it's because a lot of the projects filmed up north would not exist if they weren't made there.
Many of the all-time highest-grossing feature films are sci-fi, but very few of the highest-rated television series. We are a niche market, which means less likely to turn a profit.
If a studio and network can't afford to do a sci-fi series, it doesn't get made. Filming in Canada is one of the major reasons some of our favorite shows exist at all.
Money problems don't often get reported by sci-fi fan publications, but they are very real—or Showtime's Joe Dante project, Jeremiah (script by J. Michael Straczynski), would have been on the air a long time ago. And we're still waiting for Dead Zone, announced as a UPN series pickup last summer.
The original December petition to the Department of Commerce was withdrawn on Jan. 11, but a day later, Gov. Gray Davis of California proposed a statewide tax credit for studios and producers, to fight runaway productions that way. According to Thomas Short, president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (50,000 strong), the bill's chances of passing are about "50-50."
Meanwhile, I'm going back to worrying about characters and plotlines. Thinking about runaway productions only gets you into trouble. I know one writer who designed his series to be shot in Vancouver. The location was an international port city with a polyglot population, dreary fall and winter weather, with nearby mountains and forests.
He wound up shooting in sunny Mexico.
Michael Cassutt is currently writing scripts for Nickelodeon, MTV and 20th Television in addition to columns and fiction (Red Moon, Tor Books this month). Even though he lives in Los Angeles, he likes Canada a lot.
