Tyler Gibb - Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

Yeah. I know. What happened? I know. I took a little hiatus there didn’t I? Or, more precisely, I’m taking a little hiatus from the ol’ weblog.

It’s nothing personal– It’s not you! It’s me.

When I started posting, lo those many years ago, it was mostly to answer publicly all the questions about my work that I would get in private emails from other animators and filmmakers. Sort of an FAQ to cut down on the redundancy. That was mostly during the Minushi days and on through Refrain. And since my focus of late has become much more about writing, it’s a little less interesting to yack on about stuff that’s so behind the scenes.

So that’s where we’re at my fine, fellow internodes. Hiatus. From the blog. Until further notice.

When you think of me - and you will think of me - picture a duck calmly crossing a serene lake. It won’t look like much is happening on the surface. But underneath… Oh, underneath…

I used to draw constantly as a kid. During high school and beyond I would whittle away night after night illustrating imaginative nonsense. Barring a few exceptions, those drawings are now stacked in a basement somewhere. They may never be gazed upon again. I never give it much thought.

At the time, and to this day, I understood that finishing the drawing was merely an end point. Not even a goal. Just a place where I had to stop and pull out a new sheet of paper. The fact is, it was the act of drawing that was so appealing. The ultimate distraction. The quelling of the incessant popcorn-maker that is my brain.

These days I’ve been writing as much as I used to draw. The schedule has changed - I like to write in the breaking hours of the morning rather than those wee ones - but the ritual seems to be quite similar. The pieces of paper are starting to pile up again.

Maybe there is something to be said for quantity. Maybe devaluing our own laborious strokes, be they pencil or key, and our own beloved ideas helps to wash away the arrogance and fear that can sometimes come with toiling relentlessly on what we make up in our minds as precious. Maybe all the magic we need is in that enormous pile, however watered down it may be in its raw form. Just waiting to be picked up and parlayed into something else.

All I know is it is a good ritual. If nothing else. It’s good at the moment. Existentially. What business do I have cooping up all these awesome stories in my little head anyway?

I finish things that I start. Always have. It’s not at all a principle thing. I just don’t know any other way.

Sometimes, in the interest of keeping the focus on one thing, this has meant putting off things like chores, or other projects, or having a social life… Or a career…

Anyway the point is, I like to finish things.

At this time, for probably a whole whack of reasons that I’m not going get long-winded about right now, I  happen to have a lot of little yet time consuming projects going on simultaneously. And I want to finish some of them. I want conclusions. Not because I’m having trouble multi-focusing - I’m actually quite adept at that; it comes from a lifetime of driving with my knees while eating take out and changing the cassette in the tape deck*. No, I’m looking to smack a period on some things right now because there’s more I’d like to do.

*You heard me.

I don’t usually have so many lengthy projects on the go at once. It’s not even a boredom thing; I just want to see some of these things tied off.

So yeah. Apparently, I just blog my inane thoughts now with no redeeming lesson whatsoever.

There are two kinds of currency in the entertainment business. Credit and, well, currency. You can have all the talent and a bucket load more but sadly, it will mean nothing to the business end of the business without either of these.

This is because people with money for investing in something as precarious as the film business tend to not want to make such an investment without the (perception) of security. As such, it seems very rare that any effort is ever made to move forward with something as unbolstered as an unrepresented spec script. The most lowly respected yet fundamental of all entertainment commodities.

Lowly respected, that is, to people with no balls. And that’s because, it takes balls to pick up a simple story - with no celebrity attachments, no development financing, no endorsements of any kind, and see its potential. The balls to be unencumbered by the concerns of others. The confidence in one’s own achievements to trust one’s gut. The balls to be a champion for the script and trust that sometimes greatness is found where you least expect it. The self-assurance in saying yes to something rather than passing on it out of fear of damaging the status quo of one’s own career. The balls to be able to boldly seek out material rather than dwell in complacent wait of the recommendations of others or to follow the whims of the herd.

Balls aren’t a measure of how much risk someone’s willing to take, their a measure of how confident they are in themselves.

I love balls.

So the big award show happened last night. And no, I’m not going to take the all too easy pot shots. Every year everybody chimes in about how much they hate the Oscars yet every year, there we are, back for more.

What’s being said about the Academy Awards north of the border is… Very little. And if it weren’t for Christopher Plummer that chitchat would probably drop to zero. I am, of course, only referring to the chitchat coming from the mouths of Canadian filmmakers about Canadian film. The Canadian masses were pleased as punch, I’m sure, to revel in the glimmer of the American glitterati. And why shouldn’t they? Without American film we wouldn’t even need to build cinemas up here.

I think most Canadian filmmakers blame the public for this. I may have been guilty of this too, once upon a time: Why can’t you all just support your homegrown films? Why does our talent have to go south of the border to make a name for itself before anybody will give them the time of day here at home?

Maybe - and I’m just spitballing here - maybe, it’s because we don’t have anything to offer?

WhaaaAAAT?

I’m not saying the talent isn’t here. It is. Until it’s not; because it’s gone south. So why can’t we take that talent and turn it into films everyday Canadians want to watch? Could it be that, as filmmakers, we have a bit of a skewed way of thinking about an audience’s relationship to the medium? Allow me to illustrate my point:

I recently received a mass email from a Canadian producer promoting their latest film. Nothing wrong with that. Get the word out there. Sure. Except– At the end of the very enthusiastic letter about how happy we are with the movie yadda yadda, comes the line: “Please buy a ticket, even if you don’t go to see the movie. It would really help me out.”

It’s important to understand that the producer wasn’t literally panhandling for change here - though that’s not unheard of up here. What they were after was a theatrical run. See, getting your movie into a theater for anything longer than a weekend is the mother of all Canadian film achievements. It also means you acquire bona fide producer credits as determined by our nation’s film financing agency. Producer credits mean you’ve arrived. You can just sit there and massage the federal teat for as long as it takes to squirt.

What’s more is, I was told by this producer in person, a month earlier, that the movie in question was terrible. Yes, he said this about his own movie.

Going to our movies - or worse, buying a ticket to a movie we’re not going to watch - shouldn’t be a favour we ask of the public. It’s embarrassing. For everybody. Including, and perhaps foremost, the financiers of these make-work projects. The public has to want - desperately - to see what we’ve created. Before you laugh, think about the Star Wars geeks standing in line to see The Phantom Menace for the first time with their Darth Maul tattoos already inked on their chests. That was just a movie too. Just like what we can do here.

I don’t despair however. Ever slowly things do change. Risks do get taken and are rewarded. That’s Canadian “risk” by the way - not real risk. But it’s certainly not the fault of the public. They - we - just want to be entertained. Don’t ask us to do stuff. Or to care about your career. Just make something good for us to watch. Then maybe, just maybe, someone will give a shit when the Genies roll around.

They’re March 8th, incidentally.

I had to look it up.