Hobo With a Shotgun - Embarrassing ?

Dear Friends as I write this something amazing is happening in this country.

Hi, I'm Stuart Sutcliffe the 4th, the 18th Beatle. (ed. Not!. Hi I'm Bev Oda) Not.

Anyway, helping me blog tonight is the always breathing Lunchmeat Harold. (ed. Howdy)

The amazing thing that's happening in this great land of ours is that a Canadian movie is opening nationwide and people are actually either going to see it or looking forward to seeing it. (ed. Going Down the Road? Whirleygig?)

Hobo With a Shotgun is a small budget, Canadian (ed. redundant) movie (ed. Excuse me, we don't make movies, we make "films")

There are actual advertisements in the newspaper and the internet is all abuzz with chat on this movie. Is it any good?

No idea. Haven't seen it and since I can't leave the apartment, I probably won't see it until it's released on DVD.

Apparently this film is not for everyone, it's definitely a niche film with a lot of killing, bloodletting and senseless mayhem and fun.

People seem to like it and the reviews have been glowing. And there dear friends, is the problem.

Telefilm has invested in this project. But not because they wanted to.

There's no gay angels, no desperate failed dreams, no meandering, pointless plots; in short, nothing for Canada to tout at tents (ed. say that 5 times fast) at FilmFestivals as important "message" films that we do so much better than the Yanks (ed. and that no one will see).

This movie started as a trailer that won a Quentin Tarentino contest which meant it got exposed in the U.S. And on YouTube. So a lot of people saw it, and liked it and a buzz grew. And thus (ed. a little Biblical, aren't you) when asked, Telefilm was able to say, "nay, this is not for us. Too common and there's no Eqoyan's attached to this. It does not scream 'Canada' in a 'put it in a box and forget about it way'. We can't finance this." Then they went and had shrimp cocktails and held another meeting/party/red carpet.

But they forgot something. Years ago they had a review/plan/meeting/conference/report where they got all "that" and hissy and asked Producers across this great land, "Oh yeah? Well, since we suck so much at deciding what works, you tell us, smartypants, how shall we divide the pool of money that we have to spend this year."

And the wise producers went away and talked and conveneed and spent telefilm's money making reports with graphs and said "for the benefit of the marketplace and to encourage creativity, to foster growth within the industry and help Canada emerge as a powerplayer (ed. they talked like that?) we have decided the best way of spending the taxpayers money is for you to give it to us."

And the Telefilm leaders, all on salary, with bonuses not attached to performance said "what the hell. This will give us Fridays off"

And thus ENVELOPES were born. So when Telefilm said no to Hobo and went off to have more shrimp cocktails, a producer, nay ProducerS stepped up and said "Wait! we've made a lot of films at taxpayers expense and we've got a pocket of money we have to spend. Let's give it to these kids to make their little Hobo film."

More tomorrow on this.