Post by Popeye Doyle on Feb 12, 2020 22:56:24 GMT
Canada didn't encourage English film in Canada so it is a head scratcher about what makes a filmmaker a Canadian.
Sydney J Furie and Alan Gibson (Dracula AD 72) went to England.
Daniel Petrie, Norman Jewison, and George McCowan went to the US.
A few like Roger Spottiswoode got a few blips (a Tom Hanks movie and James Bond).
Cameron didn't make any films in Canada except short ones as a teenager. He was interviewed by a Canadian reporter who asked him about a film he was rumored to have made where he put a hamster in a model boat and filmed it approaching Niagara Falls. He said to the reporter: "where are you going with this?"
He moved to the US as a teenager but worked as a truck driver. He did not resume filmmaking until he saw Star Wars.
David Cronenberg and Ivan Reitman were probably the only two filmmakers born in Canada who saw the most benefit from the 1968-1985 tax shelter film boom although Bob Clark, American, was the one with the biggest box office success (Porky's).
After 1985 the government went into full retard mode and only funded films about disease or failure.
Thus Atom Egoyan became Canada's greatest filmmakers according to the media even though he was an Armenian born in Egypt.
The only McCanadians getting lots of funding and distribution were Bruce McDonald or Dan McKellar -- not exactly crowd pleasers.
Reitman was born in Czechoslovakia.