By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Hot Docs Gets $5 Million Gift From Rogers Foundation

This morning Hot Docs announced that it has received a remarkable $5-million gift from the Rogers Foundation to support its mission to showcase and celebrate the art of documentary and to enable production opportunities for documentary filmmakers. As a non-profit cultural organization, Hot Docs relies on such support for its ongoing growth and activity, and this gift from the Rogers Foundation is by far the largest it has received in its 23-year history.

From this gift, $1-million will be used to establish the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Fund to provide much-needed financial support to Canadian documentary filmmakers. Each year for the next ten years, the Fund will disburse up to $35,000 in production grants to three to four projects. With this new fund, Hot Docs now proudly supports Canadian and international filmmakers with a portfolio of production funds valued at $8-million.

The balance of the gift will enable Hot Docs to purchase the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, which it has successfully administered, operated and programmed for the past four years in partnership with the generous Blue Ice Group. Once threatened with redevelopment, this creative partnership saved the much-loved neighbourhood venue, and now Hot Docs’ purchase of the building represents a long-term commitment to its thriving future as a cinema. Under Hot Docs’ ownership, the cinema will continue as the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in recognition of the late philanthropist and visionary CEO of Rogers Communications.

Owning a home is huge step in the growth of any cultural organization, bringing with it challenges but also enormous opportunities. Hot Docs is fortunate to have had four years to build the skills and expertise to confidently enter this new stage, and we do so with great passion, ambition and energy. We are also fortunate to have the best audiences in the city, enthusiastic and engaged with our activities and invested in our success. We look forward to bringing you even more fantastic year-round programming that has made the cinema one of Toronto’s unique and dynamic cultural hubs.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon