Canada's 'tax shelter films' were pretty bad ... or were they?
Rethinking the 1975–1982 production boom that led to an influx of films — some not so good, others kinda great
In honour of National Canadian Film Day, we're looking back at an important moment in Canadian film history. Check out more CBC coverage of Canadian cinema's big day here.
Canadian cinephiles have traditionally viewed the tax shelter era of Canadian film with disdain. If you don't know what the "tax shelter era" is, don't worry. It ended over 40 years ago. In 1975, in the name of developing a domestic film industry, the Canadian government announced that investors would be able to deduct 100 per cent of their investment in a Canadian feature film from their taxable income, provided it met certain criteria.
"So you're a dentist in Toronto," says Peter Urquhart, an associate professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University who has written extensively about this era of Canadian cinema. "It's 1978. You made too much money this year and you want to reduce your tax burdens. Well, [if you] can write off 100 per cent of [your] investment in this slasher horror film, [you're] going to do that."
"So capital flooded into the industry and tons and tons of films were made. Most of them were genre films. Most had American TV actors as the lead — Lee Majors from the Six Million Dollar Man or someone like that."
Listen to a CBC Radio segment from 1980 about the tax shelter boom:
In a way, the plan worked. There was a boom in Canadian film. In 1974, there were three feature films produced in Canada; in 1979, there were 77. But rather than be heralded as a success, the tax shelter films were widely seen as a kind of national embarrassment.
According to Paul Corupe, an author and film critic who runs the website Canuxploitation — a site dedicated to Canadian genre movies — they were often "written off as schlock American copycats" and not an "authentic national cinema that really aspired to do something more than just have people getting killed and shoot-outs."
In 1975, pundit Robert Fulford wrote a review of David Cronenberg's film Shivers for Saturday Night magazine that summed up a lot of people's opinion of these films. The headline read "You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All, You Paid For It."
But Urquhart says that we've been looking at this era of Canadian film history all wrong. To him, a lot of the criticism came from a place of snobbery.
"[There was] a bias against the popular in Canadian film culture," he says. "We have an arty cinema, we have a documentary cinema, we have a serious good-for-you cinema. We have broccoli and not Coco Pops. Right? And so a bunch of Coco Pops were made, and they were delicious."
Corupe echoes that sentiment and adds that to him, the real shame is that it didn't have to be that way. Many countries celebrate their genre movies.
"Every other country claims their [genre films]," he says. "Whether it's Japanese horror or Mexican monster movies or Italian horror, these countries embrace their [film] heritage."
Urquhart points out that there were some real gems to come out of that era. David Cronenberg, the subject of Fulford's article, is now recognized as one of Canada's greatest directors. Many of his films, like Scanners and Videodrome, are now considered classics. Urquhart also points to Ivan Reitman's Meatballs — a comedy about a bunch of horny teenagers at a cut-rate summer camp, under the guidance of a slacker head counselor played by Bill Murray — as another movie worthy of reconsideration.
"They basically invented a whole new genre of comedy, as far as I'm concerned," he says. "That, as well as a few other films that came out at that time, lead to American Pie and those types of movies."
While it may not be a work of art, Meatballs showed how these movies could be commercially successful, and how they could help launch a career. Reitman went on to direct hits like the Ghostbusters movies and Twins.
"[Meatballs director] Ivan Reitman just died last year and he is the biggest grossing director of film comedy of all time," he says. "Meatballs made $70 million … and they had a really small budget. Like a million bucks."
We have an arty cinema, we have a documentary cinema, we have a serious good-for-you cinema. We have broccoli and not Coco Pops. Right? And so a bunch of Coco Pops were made, and they were delicious.- Peter Urquhart
That's not to say all of the tax shelter movies were unrecognized works of genius. A lot of them were every bit as bad as their reputation. But, as Urquhart points out, that is largely because nobody knew what they were doing. The whole goal of the tax shelters was to build an industry.
"Producers who have never made films before are gonna make some shitty films," he says.
Corupe adds that "by the 1980s, you see a big jump in quality. People had been doing this for 10 years. They knew what they were doing."
The tax shelter era ended in 1982, with another change to the tax code that got rid of the 100 per cent write-off. But Urquhart says that in many ways, the positive effects of this era are still with us.
Both Canada's domestic film industry and our thriving service production industry — that's industry speak for made-in-Canada American film and TV — are a result of the groundwork that was laid by tax shelter movies.
"We have a super huge service sector that employs a lot of people and generates billions of dollars," he says. "We have the infrastructure to make proper Canadian films. None of this, I don't think, would have happened had the tax shelter not happened."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
