The Party's Over: Rollercoaster

Prelude: 'Efforts' and 'small films' Recently, in Toronto, a rare event: a filmmaker actually had the nerve to attack the reviewers for not liking his film. The filmmaker was David Weaver (who once long ago wrote for CineAction); the film was his first feature, Century Hotel. Weaver's shocking, unprecedented and of course totally unjustifiable behaviour produced a response that was surprising only in its length and obsessiveness (had, perhaps, a nerve been touched somewhere?): Geoff Pevere (who also once long ago wrote for CineAction) managed to take up almost a full page of the Toronto Star in his determination to put this young upstart in his place. (Was I alone in finding his response insufferably smug in its lofty scorn and condescension, its transparent desire to push a young and ambitious Canadian filmmaker back into the dark and lowly place he should never have dared peek out of? But then, I like Century Hotel...). One of Weaver's misdemeanours was to suggest that the reviews would have been different if the film had been French. This elicited further witticisms from Pevere, but I agree with Weaver: if Century Hotel had been made in France and had subtitles, the critical verdict might have been roughly the same, but the tone would have been quite different and far more respectful. I have noticed on several occasions a tendency in the reviews or the 'new releases' listings to describe Canadian movies as 'efforts' ('the latest Canadian effort'; Century Hotel, made in Toronto, was announced as a 'local effort'). I cannot recall ever seeing this term applied to films from elsewhere (The Wind Shall Carry Us as 'the latest Iranian effort'? Harry Potter as 'the new Hollywood effort'?). Canadian films (unless directed by David Cronenberg, or perhaps Atom Egoyan in his later works) are also categorized instantly as 'small', and I think we should ask ourselves exactly what this conveys, and by what criterion smallness or bigness can be gauged. The answer is clear: 'small' here has nothing whatever to do with subject matter, quality or ambition; it has to do exclusively with money, and is yet another proof of our insidious and all-pervasive corruption by capitalist values. Pevere was very positive about Bruce Sweeney's Last Wedding, yet he referred to it repeatedly as 'small'. The film is a devastating attack on the institution of marriage, its title to be taken literally: 'I say there shall be no more marriages...' (Bruce Sweeney as Hamlet). Is this a 'small' subject? It is offered as a bomb placed and exploded under the very heart of our culture. But of course it did not cost very much (relatively speaking) to make, and lacks stars, spectacle and 'special effects'. For me, Last Wedding is a very big film indeed; Harry Patter is a small film. I wonder how many people reading this article have even heard of Rollercoaster (or, perhaps, are expecting a critical exploration of the 1977 Sensurround 'effort', a disaster film in every sense, in which case I shall disappoint them). Scott Smith's film is also 'small': its budget was not exactly enormous, and I assume its cast of six (uniformly marvellous) actors were each paid somewhat less than the ten million nowadays taken for granted by major Hollywood stars, though they give performances as good, if not better. And the film is 'merely' about teenagers, our culture's disenfranchised, disenchanted and desperate members, and (more specifically) about teen suicide: a 'small' subject? I have to suppose it is, for most people. We read brief references to it in the newspapers but nothing is ever done so presumably no one cares, it not occurring to them that these same teenagers (the ones who survive) represent the future of our culture. But then, does anyone care about that either? Those who believe in the reality of global warming (notice, Torontonians, that it is, at time of writing, the beginning of December and the temperature is still well above zero) and the devastation of the environment appear to be in such a minority that they feel helpless, while the rest have long ago succombed to the capitalist lure of 'nowness' (you'll be soooo happy if you get that new car, the latest pop CD, the very newest shampoo, deodorant or perfume, the very latest in clothing, and have sex, sex, sex at every opportunity--how can you spare even a moment to think about 'the future of the culture' or some such troubling and difficult sort of thing, best left to impotent academics). …

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