From the editor.

Forget Foolproof. William Phillips's heist flick failed to find an audience despite the copious amounts of money Odeon Films spent on promoting it. Already it is being jumped on by critics and commentators as a prime example of what they "knew" all along--Canadian films (especially English-Canadian films) don't make money at the box office. In their minds, it also brings into question the new policy at Telefilm Canada, which is emphasizing commercially popular films in an attempt to improve overall domestic box-office figures. (Currently, Canadian films command less than two per cent of box offic outside of Quebec, while the figure is closer to 10 per cent in la belle province.)

However, apart from providing the chattering class with a convenient talking point, the failure of Foolproof means very little except that Phillips has suffered a career setback after his promising debut feature, Treed Murray. The fact is 2003 has been an exceptional year in the brief 40-year history of Canadian feature filmmaking. Charles Biname's Seraphin topped $8 million during its 2002/03 release; both Emile Gaudreault's Mambo Italiano ($6 million and still growing) and Jean-Francois Pouliot's Seducing Doctor Lewis ($7.7 million in Quebec even before its release in the rest of Canada) are red hot; Denys Arcand's Les Invasions barbares has already made more than $5 million and is set for its English-Canadian/American release as this editorial is being written; Eric Tessier's Sur le seuil approaches $2 million; and Louis Belanger's Gaz Bar Blues has done a decent $1-million plus.

Variety's Top 60 listing for October 20, 2003 included seven Canadian features or co-productions--Sur le seuil, Mambo Italiano, The Gospel of John, Foolproof, My Life without Me, Pere et fils, and Seducing Doctor Lewis--an all-time record. So forget about Foolproof. It was an ambitious failure in a year of sparkling successes. It's too bad the mainstream critics are focusing on the losers instead of the winners. How Canadian! Isn't it about time we got beyond the tired and outdated notion that our films don't have an audience?

On a sad note, this past September a key figure in Canadian film history passed away with hardly a notice except for a heartfelt piece by Geoff Pevere in the Toronto Star. Paul Bradley, who played the sweet-tempered Joey in Don Shebib's seminal road movie Goin' down the Road, died of heart failure in Victoria, British Columbia. He was said to be in his early 60s. Bradley was never much of an actor, and Joey was pretty much him, with no artifice, but ever since his starring role in the 1970 classic, Bradley's Joey has come to represent the archetypical English-Canadian loser in such formative essays as "Bully, Coward or Clown" by Robert Fothergill and is something of a pop-cultural legend. Pete and Joey were indelibly impersonated by Joe Flaherty and John Candy in an unforgettable SCTV parody. When Joey first drives into Toronto with his buddy (Doug McGrath), he stands up and yells exuberantly: "Lock up your daughters!" It's a hilarious moment and testament to the indomitable spirit of a man who can face anything life has to throw at him as long as there's a cold one in the fridge. Now, that's Canadian.

Wyndham Wise, Editor-in-Chief