Monday, September 11, 2017










Lainey

I know you’ve seen it before but I just want to start here by describing for you what it’s like on a red carpet, because it’s important to understand the contrast. When major name stars arrive on a red carpet, it’s LOUD. The fans are yelling to get the star’s attention, the media need her attention so that the star will stop for an interview. The publicists and wranglers are hustling the non-stars through the bottleneck, it’s a frenetic situation. Nobody’s meditating on a red carpet is what I’m saying.

Yesterday, however, on the Angelina Jolie red carpet, it was like prayer circle. This was at The Breadwinner premiere, a Canadian co-pro she produced that would never get the attention it received were she not involved, obviously. Sasha was there producing Traci Melchor, the reporter representing etalk at the event. Both Sasha and Traci have been doing this for years. They know what a situation like this *should* look like. And both of them told me afterwards that it was the weirdest thing. When Angelina arrived, with all of her children but Maddox (I know Pax isn’t in these photos but I saw him in the television coverage), the whole place went silent. If it had been just the fans going quiet, in awe, that would be understandable. What’s crazy is that it was also the press. Remember, these are people who’ve seen some sh-t. Many are jaded, cynical, over it. No entertainment outlet is sending an amateur first-timer onto an Angelina Jolie red carpet. You need experience out there to bring back what you need. And THESE were the people who heard the angels sing, or felt the warmth of the sun, or something – because it was like church. Here’s how Sasha put it:
“It was so f-cking weird and, like, journalists were so stunned that no one knew how to form sentences. It was the weirdest, quietest carpet. I think stunned by all her kids being there or something. I still don’t understand it. Unless it’s just the power of her presence…?”

I’m telling you. Reporters on red carpets are SHOUTERS. Watch this. There is no shouting. I have never heard a red carpet this calm. You may hear some voices but if this was normal? The volume on this sh-t would have been 100 times worse:

That’s what you forget though. That Angelina Jolie is one of the few Ultimate Movie Stars, in a time when we’ve stopped producing Ultimate Movie Stars. Other people told me later on that they’d forgotten what it was like to look at her. It’s that face, that spectacular face. They used to say this about Elizabeth Taylor’s face. That it could stop people from talking, sometimes breathing. A few colleagues who were there yesterday made the same observations. She was wearing very little makeup. Which all of them mentioned and as a qualifier, like, “She was wearing minimal makeup…and she STILL was more beautiful than anyone ever”. And then of course the reaction to all the children being there which kinda amplified the vibe because, of course, we’ve been looking at pictures of the children since, practically, the day they were born. Since the beginning of Brange, the most significant celebrity relationship of the last two decades. In combination then, her face, her fame, her charisma, and the children, this is the Angelina Effect, as potent on her own as it ever was when she was with Brad.
More on Angelina tomorrow or later as she has another premiere and she’s speaking at the Tina Brown Women In The World event.




When Angelina Jolie turned up at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, your tax dollar was at work.
Jolie is executive producer on an animated movie called The Breadwinner, a beautiful film about an adolescent girl in Afghanistan living under Taliban rule. After her father is arrested, 11-year-old Parvana disguises herself as a boy so she can work and become the family breadwinner.
The movie began life as a novel. An international bestseller by Ontario writer Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner has been a staple of middle-school reading lists since it was published in 2000.
How The Breadwinner became a movie — and one involving Angelina Jolie, no less — is just one of many success stories from the Ontario Media Development Corp.
The OMDC is a government agency that supports economic development in the creative industries — which are film, television and interactive digital media production, book and magazine publishing, and music.
“Creative industries” may sound like mutually exclusive terms, but this is big business, driving $17 billion to the economy annually and responsible for 215,000 jobs.
Bigger than agriculture, forestry and mining combined — who knew? — the province’s creative sector is also bigger than Ontario’s energy industry.
Kristine Murphy, OMDC’s Director of Industry Development, explains the route that brought The Breadwinner to Angelina Jolie, and how the OMDC was involved nearly ever step of the way.
“One of the things that makes the OMDC special is that we know all these industries, so we can connect them,” says Murphy. “Page to Screen is an opportunity for the OMDC to connect our incredibly awesome book publishing talent with our equally awesome, but different, film and television producers.”
Page to Screen is an annual industry development event that gets the people who have stories to sell in the same room as the people who need stories to film.
Publishers meet with film and TV producers over a whole day organized almost like speed dating — between 300 and 400 mini-meetings take place. Page to Screen is in its 10th year, and it’s been wildly successful.
Groundwood Publishing and Aircraft Pictures met up at Page to Screen in 2009 and struck a deal, originally for a live action version of The Breadwinner.
Later, some of the Aircraft crew were at Cannes — with a little help from the OMDC — where they met with well-known Irish animation company, Cartoon Saloon. The Breadwinner was re-imagined as an animated movie and became an international Canadian — Irish co-production; they welcomed a third partner in Luxembourg’s Melusine Productions.
OMDC was involved again at the beginning of 2014 when it came time to help finance the movie.
“It was an incredible package,” says Murphy. “And they had brought Deborah Ellis aboard as one of the screenwriters, so you knew this one would have a happy ending — a happy creative ending.”
Someone at Aircraft, meanwhile, was thinking about The Breadwinner in relation to Angelina Jolie, what with her interest in Afghanistan, her role as a UN ambassador and her contributions to girls’ education. The script was sent to her team; she read it and loved it.
“They had just wanted her to know about it,” explains Murphy, “but she said, ‘No, I want to be a part of this. I want to help you with it.’ She already felt quite passionately about the subject matter. And she really liked what the director, Nora Twomey, was doing with the treatment. So she came on board.”
That was in 2015. At the time, Jolie said, “Millions of young girls like Parvana are growing up today under oppression or conflict, and helping their families to survive in those condition. This story is a reminder of the immense value of their contribution.”
After that, the project grew again, and it was decided to bring on help from another animation company: Guru studios in Toronto, which just happens to be yet another OMDC success story.
“You know, sitting here, being the government funder and wanting to ensure wide use of investment, this is a perfect story,” says Murphy.
“It’s such a Canadian story — everyone co-operating.”
But wait: It gets better.
With The Breadwinner back in the headlines through this new movie, Groundwood publishing is doing two new books: a movie tie-in book for when the movie is in theatres this November, and a graphic novel, with animation from the movie, for 2018. That’s another part of the creative sector bringing money into Ontario.
“I think it all speaks to Ontario punching above its weight, in terms of great content we’re taking out to the world,” says Murphy. “This is all inward investment for the province ... And yes, government incentives [for film] may be important, but it’s the quality of our infrastructure and our crews and our talent that are continuing to bring them back again.
“People will come once for money, but they come back again and again for talent,” she says.
“And that’s a great return on investment.”



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