It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.
The Canadian Press reports that more than 40 Members of Parliament, Senators, and their staff members have signed up to see a special screening of Young People Fucking in Ottawa on Thursday night:
Among an early list of RSVPs obtained by The Canadian Press are four Conservative MPs. The list included three Liberal MPs and two New Democrat MPs, including Bill Blaikie, an ordained minister. Several Liberal Senators are on the list as are staff from every party on Parliament Hill.
The Globe and Mail adds that Charles McVety, the family-values activist who has been quite critical of the fact that Canadian films such as this one are getting the same federal tax breaks that all other films get, was invited to the screening too — but he won’t be attending, due to time constraints. McVety is president of Canada Christian College in Toronto, and he says he is “up to my eyeballs in processing doctoral theses and masters theses” at this time of year.
The reason the politicians are interested in this film is, of course, the fact that its title — not the content, but the title — has attracted a lot of attention during the recent debates over Bill C-10, the proposed change to the federal tax law that would permit the government to deny tax credits to Canadian films that are deemed to be offensive in some way.
But as commendable as it is that these politicians want to see the film for themselves, they really shouldn’t have to.
If you want to argue about which films should receive government funding up-front, then fine, we can have that debate. But unless I’m mistaken, Bill C-10 is all about denying tax credits to a film after it has been made, which you’d think would be profoundly destabilizing to the film industry as a whole and the financing thereof. Who’s going to want to invest in a film if there’s a chance that they might lose some of their tax credits down the road, based on what the government bureaucracy of the day might happen to think of their movie?
So the content of any particular film is not really the issue here. The issue is whether this is a wise tax policy, and whether it helps or hurts the industry, and the issue is not whether this film or that film happens to run afoul of the policy on any given day or in the eyes of any given civil servant.
Bill C-10 had already been criticized by Sarah Polley, Ang Lee and others the last time I blogged about it here. Since then, other famous — or infamous — filmmakers have voiced their opposition to the bill as well. For example, the Canadian Press covered a presentation that David Cronenberg made two weeks ago to the Senate committee looking into this issue:
Heritage Minister Josee Verner has said that, if the legislation is passed, she’ll spend the next year consulting with industry to find a formula for assessing taxpayer-subsidized productions.
Cronenberg, who has directed a series of critically acclaimed films that cover gory, graphic, sexually depraved and disturbing subjects, said no such formula exists.
“Censorship is always subjective,” Cronenberg told the Senate banking committee. “You can’t pretend that it’s not.”
His film credits include “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers,” “Naked Lunch,” “Crash” and, most recently, the Oscar-nominated “Eastern Promises.”
Amidst an avalanche of criticism, Verner said in March that the proposed tax change would address “only the most extreme and gratuitous material, not mainstream films such as ‘Eastern Promises‘.”
Cronenberg raised Verner’s comment at the committee and laughed that he’s seldom been called “mainstream.” Verner’s observation came after the movie had been widely heralded, he said, when it was “very safe to say this movie is OK.”
He noted the film opens with man’s throat being cut, includes a graphic scene of two naked men fighting to the death with knives and also a scene of a voyeur watching a man having sex with a prostitute.
“I’m not confident at all that the Telefilm money that was invested in ‘Eastern Promises’ – and helped to make it happen – would not have been withdrawn by the minister of heritage, or whatever committee (she delegated to screen the film),” said Cronenberg.
The Globe and Mail also covered his presentation, noting:
Nicknamed the Baron of Blood for his movies that include large doses of violence, sex and horror, Mr. Cronenberg said a Conservative tax proposal would allow a “cumbersome committee” to censor movies that it deems repulsive.
Mr. Cronenberg said he is still shocked by the Ontario Board of Censors’ decision to remove a portion of his 1979 film The Brood, and worries that such subjective decisions could once again be made in the name of “public policy.”
He said the proposed tax change in Bill C-10 would cause an exodus of Canadian filmmakers to other countries, and would shatter Canada’s fragile industry of independent filmmakers.
A few days later, the Canadian Press reported that German shlockmeister Uwe Boll — who has made several films right here in Vancouver — had tossed his hat in the ring as well and said that he, himself, might pack his bags and leave Canada if Bill C-10 gets passed. But, um, considering how awful Boll’s movies are, that could almost be incentive to support Bill C-10.
UPDATE: The Canadian Press says the four Conservative MPs whose names appear on the RSVP list are now denying that they ever made plans to attend the Young People screening — and at least one of those MPs has fired an assistant who RSVP’ed so that she, rather than the MP, could attend the screening.
MAY 29 UPDATE: The Globe and Mail says the Conservative MP in question has said that the staffer was fired for other, “confidential” reasons and not because she RSVP’ed to see the Young People movie. That bit comes at the end of a story that mainly looks at Paul Gross’s testimony before the Senate banking committee.
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