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The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 74

Location:
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Issue Date:
Page:
74
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

04 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1lJ90 ArtsEntertainment art lending Lm fMdL. RENT OR BUY FINE ART Imaginary Tale director loves to laugh low Quebec film-maker Yves Si- film got to de-hypnotize. And there are By Noel Taylor Citizen movie writer His new film sprung from Ottawa PuMc Library, 120 moneau opened the festival with his first English-language film, Perfectly Normal, and was roundly criticized by Quebec journalists there as a traitor to his language. Forcier does all his writing with his friend from school days, Jacques Marcotte. "We have a continuity.

It's like shooting a conversation they had about a common friend who was a great, trumpeter in Montreal. "We were joking about this guy and what would happen if he smashed his teeth on the trumpet. Then we thought about a mysterious woman And thereby hangs the Tale. For supervised Private in Home Day Care service and resources, contact Canadian Mothercraft of 839. five millionaire nuns in it, too, three of them senile.

Forcier sits back from the lunch table and erupts, "I love to laugh. All my films will be comedies." And this from a film-maker who broke onto the Quebec movie scene nearly 20 years ago with a very sober comedy about a group of social misfits in Bar Salon. There have been four other films since then, the last, Kalamazoo, acclaimed in Quebec but barely seen in English Canada. Which makes An Imaginary Tale Forcier's breakthrough. An Imaginary Tale was voted the most popular film at the Montreal World Film Festival this year, has since gone onto the Chicago festival, with Forcier on hand recently, and has been invited to the prestigious Directors' Fortnight at Cannes next year.

As for Canada, outside Quebec, it's all in the marketing. It has already opened in Toronto carefully, according to Astral representative Jacqueline Morin. "They're real gamblers," quips Forcier. By Christmas it will be in all major Canadian centres. If Montreal, where it has stayed number one for two months, is any indication, Canadian audiences are ready for more Forcier.

Forcier says he doesn't want to make films just for Quebec audiences. He wants to make them for the whole of Canada. In Toronto, he is reminded, fel- Watching Andr Forcier talking about his new film is like waiting for a natural geyser to blow its (op. Only it wouldn't be steam coming out, it would be words a real gusher. Forcier feeds on film, and feeds it too, with ideas.

Take Une Histoire Invente'e (An Imaginary Tale), his latest film. Its centrepiece is Florence, who is accompanied everywhere she goes by a retinue of 40 ex-lovers who twitter along in her wake like sparrows. And then there's Soledad, a young actress who is Florence's daughter, playing Des-demona in a rep theatre production of Othello, -which rounds up its audience from nearby old folks homes and rewards them with snacks in their seats. As well, there's Gaston, a Don Juan of the trumpet, and Tibo, Soledad 's lover, and a scene in Othello where they both get shot, and a funeral in a graveyard that turns into a shootout. And yes, it is a comedy, even if people do get killed.

"That's Forcier muses with a sad smile. 1 But even this palls in the imagination, listening to Forcier talk about his next, Motel Eldorado. He says it takes place in a motel near the American border, run a Hindu, where Le Grand Albert, a profesional hypnotizer, is being besieged by three former he hypnotized to be in love him years ago, and then for presents CAKAiAN and the YAtllSiC ISEAIKLI? "Mr. Moore has a lot of music In his and In his multi-media extravaganzas he finds some distinctly odd and wonderful places for it." I James Oestrelch, New York Times Tuesday, November 20, 1990, 7:30 p.m. Canadian Museum of Nature $10 SeniorsStudents: $8 under 16: free -567-0397 728-4406 Gillis Plaices Buy iitg Youi Mw Homef Witlfo A NEW ERA 5 Gat Sites njHf jl(fjp MORTGAGES -ttEBn9bSr 1JJ 4 (1 YEAR TERM $100,000 MAX.) 'MfrT GST PROTECTION PACKAGES Thp Rpct Prirp Tn 4 See our sales representatives for more information on these a ji rv eJ i SI 1 MERKLEY 1 INNES AD.

"i and other cost savings packages which are available that all adds up to a great time to buy. Ottawa On Homes Of This Size! 3 New Decorated Models To Visit. 837-3378 STQNEBROQKE iffiir ISSfll i lo a a al II 1 ill mm im -xskM imtmt --r 0,1 if tt M' ill -nP From page G1 story: The inspiration behind Ottawa's own Nutcracker Prince lion, not remarkable on a full-length animated feature, many of the principals in Lacewood agreed to defer their payments for the film. For a project this size, Lace-Iwood needed more than Hinton's resident 100 animators almost twice as many, says Gillis. They Ivyeren't hard to find.

Animators to go where the work is, and many Canadians had drifted south to New York arid West to California. Some had gone east to Europe and the Orient. i Anyway, they came back. Flexible hours helped. Some took it home and did it there.

The voices are another matter. Lacewood went for the stars. Someone like Peter O'Toole 6ok a lot of persuading. He turned Gillis down three times before succumbing to his persistence and set aside one afternoon, in Nice, close to where he was filling, for the taping. V4 Like the others Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald and one of Hollywood's busiest young actors), Phyllis Diller as the Mouse Queen, Megan Follows as Clare, O'Toole was sent a picture of Pantaloon, a crusty old cavalry officer whom he makes his own.

I Gillis got O'Toole's agreement the Monday, flew to Nice, spent two days finding a studio to "record in, and then discovered O'Toole wouldn't fit it. It was in a basement with a six-foot ceiling. O'Toole is at least six feet three inches. "He kept banging his head. Everyone around him was so nervous, but when there was a gap he'd get up and play some jazz drums." I The voices are done well before the animation in O'Toole's nearly a year.

When the tape came back, an animator broke down the mouth move-inents, frame by frame, to synchronize with the words. The voice itself triggers the animators. "They are like actors with a pencil," Gillis explains. I Canadian conductor Boris Brott produced the music in 2 Vt days, with 68 musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra, in London. Mainly it's a Tchaikovsky score, but as well there's a song by Gillis himself, Always Come Back To You, which Atlantic Records chairman Ahmet Ertegun is so convinced is an Oscar nominee he picked it up from the album (set for Christmas release).

It will be out as a single this month. For the film's director Paul Schibli, there was the matter of violence to be resolved and the degree of fright. "I want to treat violence in a comic manner" not like such animators as Ralph Bakshi or even Don Bluth. As for the Mouse King, a lot of the scare factor is in the voice of Mike MacDonald, and the ferocious expression. "A lot of children, we found, got quite scared at first but it was always under control." Shibli, the father of three daughters aged 8 to 12 who have seen the film, explains that as director he had to determine the kind of film it was to be the look of it and the sound, the script and "the He also had to decide on the characters themselves like the Prince a Prince and the Mouse King street tyilly with a lot of Classic Single Family Homes Your 1 rsmtm Family Can Atrorct.

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About The Ottawa Citizen Archive

Pages Available:
2,112,752
Years Available:
1898-2024