After getting a crash course on the Electronic Era's imperative to GENERATE constant content to feed the ever-growing number of hungry platforms (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blog, text, what's next?) and doing my level best to comply, I now find myself - not surprisingly perhaps - wanting to LISTEN for a while.
This week, I'd really like to hear what YOU think - on the subject of casting our Canadian film. Our English Canadian film, that is. I make this distinction because French Canadian film, better known as Québécois cinema, is simply not subject to the same Expectation vs. Reality paradox as the RoC (Rest of Canada) is.
In Québec, there is a well-established and well-fed star system that guarantees French-language filmmakers reasonable access to, and mass audience interest in, an appreciable pool of actors. When a home-grown film comes out in theatres here, people choose to go to see it over the X-Men's and Inglourious Basterds's for the very reason that it is HOME-GROWN.
This predilection for indigenous fare has not taken hold in the Rest of Canada - in fact, the trend is quite strongly in the opposite direction.
In the RoC, we are a tiny, if barely heard English voice in a very large English-speaking Sea where only the loudest talkers and the biggest fish seem to rise to the surface...
So, dear readers/cinephiles, I'm putting this prickly question to you:
What DO you think, or more importantly, how do you FEEL about our quest to cast a "name" actor (read: "famous", therefore read: "probably non-Canadian") in a lead role - for the purpose of trying to get our "Canadian" voices heard by as many people as possible?
Posts
