Juno not Canadian enough

It's Roger Ebert's pick for movie of the year. It was nominated for three Golden Globes and four Academy Awards. It stars an actress from Halifax, an actor from Brampton, Ont., was made by a Montreal-born director with a largely Canadian crew, was shot in Vancouver and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. So why isn't Juno nominated for a single Genie Award, which recognize the best in Canadian film?

Juno director Jason Reitman, son of Toronto's Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Old School) thanked Juno's Canadian cast and crew on CTV's eTalk at the Oscars last Sunday, but wondered why his film was overlooked by Canada's film awards show. "We made a Canadian film, and it's time for Canada to recognize that," Reitman told a Canadian national audience on the Oscar red carpet.

He had been more pressing at the Canadian Consulate earlier that weekend, speaking to a scrum of journalists who were showering praise on Juno's four Oscar nominations.

"I still wish we had been eligible for the Genies," he said. "I still don't understand why not. Why aren't we eligible for a Genie when David Cronenberg's film (Eastern Promises), which was about Russians living in London and shot in England with a British crew and British cast, is eligible?"

The answer, according to Sara Morton, CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, which hands out the Genie Awards Monday night in Toronto, is simple. It's because Fox Searchlight, the U.S. studio that released Juno, didn't submit it as an official entry to the Genie Awards.

"Juno is a tremendous film," she says. "It's excellent, it's entertaining, and we salute them for their success, which I might note, is the result of several Canadians working behind the camera as well as in front of it.

"But the reality is, Juno did not apply itself into the Genies."

But even if Fox Searchlight had submitted Juno to the Genies, it wouldn't have been eligible. Despite all its Canadian talent, Juno was made with American funding, and it's the bankroll, not the talent, that determines the nationality of a film.

"For a film to be eligible for a Genie, it must be Canadian," Morton says. "And we don't decide what 'Canadian' is. We rely on the decision of CAVCO, the Canadian Audio Visual Certification Office, which certifies Canadian films. The CRTC has another certification process. And we rely on those independent third-party processes, because those are the ones accepted in the industry."

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises is being considered a joint venture between Canada and Britain, even though it's Canadian producer, Toronto-based Serendipity Point Films, only fronted 20 per cent of the film's production budget.

That enabled it to be nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, and 12 Genie Awards, including one for its leading actor, American Viggo Mortensen.

Halifax's Ellen Page, the Oscar-nominated star of Juno, is up for a Genie Award for Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, but it's for a different role -- Bruce McDonald's drama The Tracey Fragments, not Juno. And Brampton, Ont.'s Michael Cera was shut out of consideration for his sweet and innocent role of a teenage father in Juno. While many Canadians might be left wondering why Juno was left off the list, Charles Tepperman, a film professor at the University of Calgary with a Ph.D in cinema studies, says popularity shouldn't be a standard by which the Genies are measured.

"Though Juno might feature some fine Canadian talent, what is at stake in the Canadian film industry -- and rewarded at the Genies -- is our ability to release high-quality and homegrown films," he says.

"So even though Juno's funding might seem sort of inconsequential to moviegoers, the Genies are there to reward films that are developed, produced, and completed in Canada. The reason those rules are in place are to prevent productions in Vancouver from essentially becoming a branch plant of Hollywood. So even though we don't think, 'Oh, is that Canadian?', it does have a large effect on the industry to identify which films have been made with Canadian funds."

But is it fair that our country's award system honours funding rather than talent? If we were to honour talent, how different would the nominations for this years' Genie Awards be?

Would we see London, Ont.'s Ryan Gosling nominated for Lars and the Real Girl, a role that secured him a Golden Globe nomination? Or Paul Haggis (also from London, Ont.), who wrote and directed the critically acclaimed In The Valley Of Elah?

Or B.C. sound mixer Craig Berkey who had an Oscar nomination for No Country For Old Men, and Paul Massey of Toronto and David Giammarco of Welland, Ont. , who shared an Oscar nomination for 3:10 to Yuma?

More than 4.4 million Canadians watched last weekend's Canadian-heavy Oscar telecast on CTV. That number is down slightly in Canada, but much higher than in the U.S., which posted the lowest ratings of any Academy Awards telecast in history. In contrast, the 2007 Genie Awards drew only 34,000 viewers in the Ontario, Vancouver and Calgary markets combined.

Would more Canadians watch the Genie Awards if Canada's Hollywood stars were nominated?

"We do have the ability to give out a prize to a Canadian working internationally," says Morton.

"We are not awarding that prize this year, but that is certainly a possibility for the future. And we know Canadian viewers want to see Canadian celebrities who have gone on to success in other countries."

Canadians have long been having these "How Canadian does one need to be?" discussions.

Bryan Adams' 1991 triple-platinum album Waking Up The Neighbours was deemed to be not Canadian enough to qualify for a Juno Award that year, seeing as he had collaborated with British record producer Robert (Mutt) Lange for most of it. Yet he was the most popular Canadian artist that year, in our country and outside it.

Under the weight of embarrassment, the CRTC changed its Canadian Content rules to allow for such joint collaborations in the future.

Morton says there is a chance Juno could have the same weight in changing Can-Con rules as they apply to film, but it is slim.

"It would be up to CAVCO or the CRTC to determine if they wanted to change those rules," she said. "There's no question it would be possible for the Genies to look at our eligibility requirements, and I'm certainly open to doing that. But it doesn't make sense to me to deviate from the industry standards that exist."

While we can agree that these standards exist for good measure, it remains hard to change the public perception that American movies are something you watch, while Canadian movies are something you support.

"That might have been the perception at one point, but I don't think that's the case anymore," Tepperman says.

"If Canadians have an idea that watching Canadian movies is a civic duty, then they have an out-of-date idea of what Canadian film is."

Nick