Canadian film title causes stir

'Young People F____' inspires tax revocation

By BRENDAN KELLY

MONTREAL -- Could "Young People Fucking" bring down the Canadian film industry?

Canada's Conservative government has shepherded through legislation, already approved by the House of Commons, that will create a panel of bureaucrats with the power to revoke tax credits -- after a film or TV show has been produced. The panel will be allowed to take back the credits, a cornerstone of film financing in Canada, if they decide the project is not in the public interest because it has gratuitous sex and/or violence.

Some believe the highly controversial initiative was inspired, in part, by some Conservative MPs going ballistic when they learned that money from federal film funder Telefilm Canada helped finance a film with a title that included the F word.

"It may indeed have been the straw that broke the camel's back," says "Young People Fucking" producer Steven Hoban. "But obviously people have been gunning to do this for a while."

The irony is that the film with the attention-grabbing title is actually a romantic comedy with no explicit sex, and Hoban is touting the film's first-time director Martin Gero as maybe the next Woody Allen. But it apparently rubbed more than a few politicians the wrong way, particularly when it had its launch on the opening night of the Toronto Film Festival last September, with an apres-film bash at a local swingers club.

Hoban figures the controversy is probably good for the film, which launches across Canada April 18, but he thinks the government's legislation is a disaster waiting to happen.

"What it will do is destroy the entire film and television industry. That 10% to 15% provided by the tax credit, that's why we're able to make movies here."

What Hoban and others fear is that the legislation will lead to banks refusing to loan producers cash because lenders will be afraid the tax credits could be revoked after filming. Right now, producers borrow money based on the notion they'll repay the loans once they receive their tax credits.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre insisted, in an interview on CBC Radio, that the bill has nothing to do with censorship.

"If (filmmakers) want to make porn or they want to make gratuitous violence, they can pay for it themselves," Poilievre says. "It's just not going to be paid for by Canadian taxpayers. We don't see why Canadian taxpayers should pay for pornography."

Many have noted that two of Canada's best-known helmers -- David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan -- specialize in challenging films that might well run afoul of this new morality panel, which could interpret dark, often disturbing films that include explicit sex and violence as "pornographic." Would Cronenberg's Canada-U.K. co-production "Eastern Promises," with its infamous sauna knife fight, be approved by the panel?

Many in the industry here, led by the Canadian Film and Television Production Assn., are desperately fighting to stop the legislation from being approved.

"I don't think this is over," association chair Sandra Cunningham says. "It's important that the bill hasn't passed through the Senate."

But it has already been unanimously approved by all three parties in the House of Commons and, under the Canadian Parliamentary system, it's rare that the Senate rejects a piece of legislation that has already been passed by members of Parliament.