PROFILE: ROBERT LANTOS

ROBERT LANTOS

Born 1949, Hungary

It is interesting to note that throughout Garth Drabinsky’s rein as the leading Canadian entertainment figure in the Trump-ed up days of the early ‘80s, there is only one footnote to Robert Lantos — the man who co-founded and nurtured the largest production and distribution in the history of Canada.

The footnote appeared in April, 1988, when it was announced that Cineplex, already in deep financial straits, had signed a deal with Alliance that was supposed to give Alliance the much-needed production cash while giving Cineplex a product pipeline to fill its screens.

No one paid too much attention to the deal save a few producers who predictably sounded the doomsday alarm about consolidation of the independent scene, and worried that the independents would no longer be “independent” if publically-traded companies like Cineplex continued to dominate the fragile market.

For all the huffing and puffing, no one’s house blew down, and at this point, few looked to Lantos as the likely lumberjack saviour of Canadian film.

Sure, people had certainly heard of him. He was the long-haired producer behind one of Canada’s most scandalous outings in the ‘70s, In Praise of Older Women (1978), a film the Ontario Censor Board deemed too hot for mild-mannered Torontonians and demanded that two entire minutes be removed from the film before its world premiere at the Toronto Festival of Festivals.

The ensuing scandal pushed Lantos into the public eye, and he knew exactly what to do with the attention: Create himself as a larger-than-life persona in the peanut-sized Canadian film industry.

The son of a Jewish family that attempted to assimilate into the anti-Semitic Austro-Hungarian state, Lantos and his family left Hungary in 1958 after the 1956 uprising, then migrated North to Canada in 1963. After earning a B.A. from McGill, he spent two years pursuing post-graduate studies in communications and briefly flirted with the idea of becoming an academic. His life course changed after a trip to New York, where, out of innocent curiosity, the young Continental took in some screenings at the New York Erotic Film Festival. When he returned to Montreal a fortnight later, Lantos was in the film business: he’d purchased the Canadian rights to the festival and was already thinking about his next move. He was 22.

The next year, in 1972, he launched a modest, Montreal-based distribution company called Vivafilm with Victor Loewy to deal with the business of distributing the festival wares, and before long, the two men were heading into the unknown of Canadian private enterprise.

Knowing little about the business, but full of confidence, the duo picked up the lease on the small, art-house cinema in Vancouver called The Rembrandt. Loewy later said the move was “naive,” but they made it work by booking John Waters’ Pink Flamingoes for months, raking in enough money to pay the rent and create seed money for their real dream: making movies.

With that end in mind, in 1975, Lantos and Loewy also started (in partnership with Stephen  Roth) RSL, a movie production company set up in tandem with Vivafilm. The next year, Lantos produced his first feature, L’Ange et la femme, the spiritual and simultaneously sex-laden story about the archangel Gabriel who saves a young woman after she is gunned down by terrorist thugs. The film starred Carole Laure, and was directed by her famous husband Gilles Carle (Un air de famille, La mort d’un bûcheron, Maria Chapdelaine, Le crime d’Ovide Plouffe), but attracted little attention. What attention it did get was the sole result of the sex scenes between Laure and co-star Lewis Furey, where Furey revives the dead woman with his magic touch. Ooohlahlah.

Quick to learn from his experience — a trait that never seemed to define Drabinsky — Lantos’ second feature would capitalize on sex, the one sure thing that could bring people into the theatres in droves.

For Lantos, In Praise of Older Women was about a lot more than just sex and making a reputation for himself: he says he cared a lot about the film because it mirrored some of his own, personal experience.

Based on Hungarian-born author Stephen Vizinczey’s (note: Vizinczey would later play step-father to another film-maker with Canadian roots named Mary Harron who made American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol) novel about a young man who services the sexual needs of several mature females, In Praise of Older Women easily became the most notorious — if not the most critically lauded — film to ever emerge from the lily-white, and sexually lily-livered, Canadian landscape.

People were so desperate to catch the movie, that in Brian D. Johnson’s book celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Toronto festival,  Brave Films Wild Nights, he dedicates most of the chapter for 1978 on the ill-behaved crowds pressing to get in to The Elgin Theatre while conspiring festival staff pulled off the old switcheroo, changing the censored reel for the uncut one — all beneath the censor’s watchful eye.

It’s a good story, and one made even better when you insert Lantos into the equation. Lantos, whom Johnson refers to as the “ebullient arriviste from Montreal,” requested that he, director George Kaczender, and stars Karen Black and Kit Carson be delivered to the Elgin in horse-drawn carriages.

Remember, it was Lantos’ first premiere. He had soaked up the atmosphere and star-appeal of Cannes from a distance. This was his chance to take a lap around the glam pool and he wasn’t going to sit back and let it slip by without people taking notice.

“When you get attention from the media, you have to run with it,” says Lantos. “I had no marketing money for In Praise of Older Women but I had stories in every paper the next day after the premiere.”

With one film under his belt and a better understanding about how the distribution system worked, Lantos was given the chance to work in the U.S., but he declined — knowing that he’d have to make too many compromises just to get a film off the ground.

“I wanted to be a master of my own destiny. I began my adult life wanting to be a film-maker and as soon as I figured it out, that’s what I did. I started making movies. Good, bad, indifferent — I made them because that’s what I wanted to do. Whether they worked or not didn’t matter so much because it was all our own labour.” When Lantos started, it was also a relatively low-risk enterprise thanks to the famed tax-shelter funding formula — or the “Capital Cost Allowance” — that granted complete tax write-offs for movies that met Canadian content regulations. Buckets of cash poured into the Canadian film industry and annual production surged from three to 37 features in the space of four years (1974-78), but without a critical mass of experienced talent to bring these stories to the screen with any integrity or passion, the tax-shelter experiment proved to be a pathetic waste of time and money that deflated the image of Canadian film domestically and abroad.

“We’ve come such a long way since the tax-shelter years. Back then, there was no worldwide infrastructure for marketing films. Yes, I made Agency and a bunch of other movies with American stars in various states of stupor [check out the somnabulent Robert Mitchum]. I didn’t know enough about worldwide marketing, there wasn’t any. Not in Canada,” says Lantos. “After In Praise of Older Women, I realized how hard it was to make a movie — and how hard it was to bring it to audiences. We needed a better way to bring the movies to the market, so we pulled some partners together, pooled our assets and formed Alliance.”

The 1985 merger of RSL, Vivafilm and ICC (International Cinema Corp.) to create Canada’s first major distribution company was a ballsy move, but Lantos had partners (Stephen Roth, Denis Heroux and John Kemeny — the producer of The Apprenticeship fo Duddy Kravitz, Atlantic City and Quest for Fire). He also knew it was the only way to kickstart the Canadian film scene: “We needed to create a library that was attractive enough to financial backers and a corporate entity that would not be exposed to the vagueries of film financing. With a large enough profile, we could raise our own capital and make the movies we wanted, which is what Alliance finally did,” says Lantos. “When we formed the company, we were four driven, pretty smart people sitting at the same table. We had four heads and we needed one voice that would prevail, and it turned out to be mine. Right or wrong, it was the only way it was going to work. So I bought them out, put a team together and surrounded myself with people who wanted to succeed. It sounds arrogant, but I don’t mean it to be — but as the leader I had to take control. I saw an opportunity in the emerging cable markets and took advantage of the subsidies the Canadian government was introducing at the time and harnessed it onto a workable plan to build a worldwide distribution company. I had to defer the pleasure of making movies, but I figured it wouldn’t be for too long. The whole idea was to build a library, build value and then trade it all in to make the movies I wanted to make…  It took longer than I thought, but I did it.”

In 1998, after 13 years of building Alliance Communications into the largest distribution company in Canada, Lantos made a deal with his new partners — the film and TV production house Atlantis, run by the former projectionist and Queen’s film studies grad, Michael MacMillan. According to the exit deal, Lantos would hand over the reins of the company to MacMillan and sell his stock in exchange for an output deal whereby the newly formed Alliance-Atlantis would distribute the movies that Lantos made through his new company, Serendipity Point.

“I was honest about my gameplan. I couldn’t broadcast that I wanted to leave, I had to be sneaky about it because who would back a company with a leader who was looking for an exit plan? People at Alliance doubled their money on the stock, so I felt no moral debt to anybody. I was free to take care of my own dreams. Now I can focus on the creative arena. If I look back at it, Alliance as a long detour to get to this point,” Lantos said in 1999, shortly after his Serendipity Point project, Sunshine, hit the festival circuit.

“While I was at Alliance, I tried to make at least one project a year that I really cared about — a real quality film like The Adjuster or When Night is Falling or Crash. I felt we had to have at least one profile release a year, not for cachet as much as for the shareholders. People think film is a very corporate world, and it is, but nothing cranks up the stock price like an award-winner at Cannes. So I don’t think it’s any accident that in the last 15 years, every single film selected for competition at Cannes — with the exception of Jesus of Montreal — as financed by Alliance. It was no coincidence, we were dedicated to being a powerhouse distributor and we succeeded because we knew where there was room to grow,” he says.

“When Victor and I started, we had no power with theatres. Every year, we wondered if we’d survive. It was very difficult. I couldn’t get a Famous Players threatre for In Praise of Older Women. The best I got was a rep house on Younge Street without a fixed start date. I remember talking to a distributor about it and he said Canadians have to be in the business of dodging raindrops — you take your opportunities when you can, and hope you don’t get soaked.”

The analogy wasn’t all that pretty, but it was honest, and it was a far cry more encouraging than a discussion Lantos had with the booker for Famous Players, who told him he didn’t need to see In Praise of Older Women because “It’s Canadian — that’s all I need to know.”

“I didn’t need to hear this from some 27-year-old booker who thought he knew everything. I was outraged and frustrated,” says Lantos. “Fortunately, the Ontario censor board came to my rescue when they demanded the film be cut. Controversy can be your best ally. Don’t forget that. You also don’t need a lot of money if you have something to say. In a matter of a few days, you can create a stir of ink. Serious critics can get your message out there,” says Lantos.

“You would never hear a booker say he wouldn’t book a Canadian film today. Now, theatres bend over backwards to accommodate Canadian films that have distribution. The consequence of that is that every year, people look at the Canadian releases and lament that they didn’t do better by comparison t the U.S. But so what? At least one a year breaks the million-dollar mark at the box-office — which is excellent for any independent movie in this country. High profile films like Run Lola Run or any Woody Allen movie wouldn’t even do half that business. But people don’t know that, they just see Titanic making a billion dollars and think that’s normal. We have a completely back-assward frame of reference. Personally, I’m completely optimistic about the future, all we need is money,” he says.

“Film is a high-risk investment and Canadians are financial conservatives. That’s why the government subsidies helped Alliance become a Canadian success. Without government help, it would be a very different company. I think it would have been successful, but we would have focused our energies on different types of movies that were easy to market.”

Not that Alliance didn’t make its fair share of stinkers over the years. Even Lantos admits to making more compromises in the name of profit than he would have liked.

“I made a lot of degrading compromises. I had to. I was the leader of a company that was expected to make money. I didn’t feel I was losing myself in the process, I just felt that I was losing time to a financial report card. It was all about earnings per share, not great movies. I got a kick out of the exercise, but no sense of real reward. It was long hours and I, sure you’ve heard stories of what an asshole I am to work for. I can be a real prick — but I was working long hours seven days a week. Two to three times a month, I was travelling to different parts of the world. It’s exhausting. You don’t get to see your kids, personal relationships fall apart. I didn’t have time to work out or read a book and if I was doing that much, I expected other people on my team to show the same dedication. Yes, I asked people to work long hours, but I was there too. We were all in it together.”

Lantos says that since he’s left Alliance, now called Alliance-Atlantis, he’s changed for the better. “I’m a lot mellower now. I’m in my 50s. I don’t resent the work anymore. I don’t have to call 200 people and take the next plane to Paris, or wherever. Now I can do what I want. They can do what they want. I don’t second-guess Michael MacMillan. I feel like the writer who wrote a book and sold it, it’s not mine anymore. I’ve let it go. We still have a relationship and I feel it will serve everyone’s best interests.”

Now focused on Serendipity Point, Lantos is looking to make — are you ready? — marketable Canadian movies. And so far, so good. Sunshine’s box-office fortunes set in the black and now, Lantos is putting together projects like Men with Brooms, a Paul Gross comedy about curling starring Leslie Nielsen and Molly Parker, and Claire’s Hat, the new Bruce McDonald movie starring Gina Gershon and Juliette Lewis. These movies may feature American stars, says Lantos, but he insists he’s not interested in following Hollywood genre back to days of the tax-shelter bombs. He wants to make stories that reflect the Canadian experience.

“Canada has a great tradition of storytelling. We have an array of films that play all over the world… films that can be sold all over the world. We are sought after by the world’s festivals. Just look at the achievements of the last five years at Cannes. We’re doing better than Australia. I know we hate to say it, or even acknowledge it, but we are the envy of the world. For some reason, we compare ourselves to the U.S. and we always look like a loser. They dominate the market around the world, so to compare our industry to theirs is completely pointless. We are part of a parallel economy — which puts us in the same boat as the rest of the world. Fortunately, we now have a group of filmmakers who have decided to stay in this country and who can attract investment. People like Egoyan and Cronenberg have built the foundation for us. They are respected names the world over at this point, and if you look at Australia, and what Bruce Beresford and others did for them — it’s huge.”

Lantos says the future of Canadian film has never looked brighter, but there’s no room to get cocky when you’re in the shadow of Hollywood. “You have to be smarter, that’s all. No one does you any favours in this business. Not really. And still, there is no legislative protection of the industry in Canada. People like Jack Valenti (former chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America) like to call it a level playing field… but I call it something else, which I will keep under my hat. But despite all this competition, we’ve come a long way and we’ve demonstrated an incredible resourcefulness. If we are David, they are Goliath.”

Lantos says the American control of the entertainment industry is no conspiracy, it’s just economics of scale. ”All American studios want to make a movie that makes a billion‚ dollars. They need the whole globe to make the economic model work. The stakes get higher and higher, which is why they’ve removed themselves from storytelling. Their mandate is to make formula films that make money. Simple amusement to fill up these sprawling boxes. They search for the demographic bulge and appeal to them. In that model, there is no place for art. Decisions are made by committee, not by the producers. Marketing people make projections and that’s all there is to it. That’s how the green light is triggered,” he says.

“For me, I have to like the script and I keep the budgets moderate. In the American system, you make a movie for $80 to $100 million and you need to make nearly twice that at the box-office just to break even. Do the math — of course, they have to appeal to the broadest possible audience. So they make movies for teenagers and market the hell out of them and the rest of us lament the loss of good stories. But there is an upside to the popcorn model: It helps us because we can make films from the heart. Films that A-list actors want to be in that don’t regurgitate the same formula and give them a chance to try something new. There’s no such thing as typecasting in Canada. We don’t demand that actors have a frontal lobotomy to ply their trade. So if you have a film with warmth and a good story, you’ll get the actors you want… And you’ll probably make money, too.”

FILMOGRAPHY AS PRODUCER: L’Ange et la femme (1977), In Praise of Older Women (1978), Agency (1980), Suzanne (1980), Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid (1981), Scandale (1982), Paradise (1982), Bedroom Eyes (1984), Heavenly Bodies (1984), Night Heat (1985, TV Series), Night Magic (1985), Joshua Then and
dNow (1985), The Execution of Raymond Graham (1985, TV), Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1985,TV), One Night Only (1986,TV), Perfect Timing (1986,TV), Separate Vacations (1986), Sword of Gideon (1986, TV), The Guardian System (1986,TV), Diamonds (1987, TV), The Gate (1987), Mount Royal (1987, TV), Bordertown (1989, TV), Counterstrike (1990, TV), E.N.G. (1989, TV), The Adjuster (1991), Black Robe (1991), North of 60 (1992, TV), Buried on Sunday (1992), On My Own (1992), Léolo (1992), Being at Home with Claude (1992), Ordeal in the Arctic (1993, TV), Family of Strangers (1993, TV), Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story (1993,TV), I Love a Man in Uniform (1993), Calendar (1993), Paris, France (1993), La Florida (1993), The Awakening (1993,TV), The Mighty Jungle (1994, TV), Whale Music (1994), Exotica (1994), ReBoot (1994, TV), Due South (1994,TV), Treac[1]”herous Beauties (1994,TV), Another Woman (1994,TV), A Change of Place (1994,TV), Broken Lullaby (1994,TV), Frostfire (1994,TV), Eldorado (1995), Johnny Mnemonic (1995), When Night Is Falling (1995), Never Talk to Strangers (1995), Family of Cops (1995), At the Midnight Hour (1995, TV), Taking the Falls (1995, TV), Crash (1996), Beast Wars: Transformers (1996, TV), The Cold Equations (1996, TV), Turning April (1996), Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story (1996,TV), The Morrison Murders (1996, TV), Gridlock (1996,TV), Breach of Faith: Family of Cops II (1997,TV), The Hunchback (1997, TV), Inheritance (1997,TV),  The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Fast Track (1997, TV), Northern Lights (1997,TV), Twilight of the Ice Nymphîs (1997), This Matter of Marriage (1998,TV), Nô (1998), Shot Through the Heart (1998, TV), Da Vinci’s Inquest (1998, TV), Power Play” (1998, TV), Recipe for Revenge (1998, TV), The Waiting Game (1998, TV), Strike! (1998), Loving Evangeline (1998), Hard To Forget (1998,TV), At the End of the Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story (1998, TV), Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (1998, TV), Family of Cops III (1999, TV)”, eXistenZ (1999), Total Recall 2070 (1999, TV), Milgaard (1999,TV), Felicia’s Journey (1999), Sunshine (1999), Cover Me (1999, TV), Stardom (2000), Men with Brooms (2001), Claire’s Hat (2001), Ararat (2002), The Statement (2003), The Making of ‘Ararat’ (2003), Being Julia (2004), Where the Truth Lies (2005), G-Spot (TV Series 2005), Fugitive Pieces (2007), Eastern Promises (2007), Real Time (2008), Adoration (2008), Barney’s Version (2010), The Right Kind of Wrong (2013), Remember (2015).

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