Thursday 10 April 2008

Slings & Arrows finds new beginning in Brazil

Renowned director Fernando Meirelles has purchased the rights to adapt and broadcast the cult Canadian series Slings & Arrows in his home country of Brazil.

In an interview yesterday at Toronto's Soho Hotel, the Sao Paulo-based Meirelles explained that he fell in love with the quirky ensemble drama after Rhombus Media's Niv Fichman sent him the first season.

"Niv had sent me some examples of his previous work to convince me to be involved in Blindness [an upcoming feature film starring Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore]," said Meirelles, who was Oscar-nominated for his 2002 film City of God. "I watched the first one, and then I watched the remaining five [episodes], one after the other. I called him back and said, 'Niv, it's fantastic.' He sent me the second and third seasons, and I loved them even more than the first one."

The 52-year-old Meirelles has started casting Slings & Arrows in his country. The show, which he anticipates will be run as a 12-part miniseries over the same number of nights, will air on TV Globo, Brazil's No. 1 network watched by roughly 80 million people daily. Yesterday, Fichman said he found Meirelles's interest in the Brazilian rights, both "flattering and funny.

"When he called, he asked me if I thought [this deal] would be possible? If it would be very expensive [for him to buy the rights]?" says Fichman, laughing, whose Toronto company has produced features films such as The Red Violin and the Emmy-winning Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach. "I said, 'Fernando, I can tell you one thing. Money is not going to be the issue here.' "

Fichman's Canadian cast - including big names such as William Hutt, Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Rachel McAdams, Don McKellar, Susan Coyne and Bob Martin - all worked for scale on the production. "I'm not going to make any money in Brazil doing this," concurs Meirelles, an observation that prompts Fichman to quip: "You can say that none of us are getting rich off this. But it's such a wonderful thing, and such a natural way, for us to continue our collaboration."

Blindness is expected to hit theatres in Brazil in mid-September and in North America Oct. 13. The Brazilian version of Slings & Arrows will start shooting in early July, and Meirelles expects TV Globo to air the miniseries in November.

When Slings & Arrows was conceived, even its creators and writers - actor-playwright Coyne, Kids in the Hall alumnus Mark McKinney and Martin, co-author of the current Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone - did not expect it would have a very broad audience. After all, it got off to a rocky start - green-lit by the CBC and then dropped before ever being produced, the drama finally found a home with TMN and Movie Central. Showcase also later found a berth for the fledgling show, which eventually was picked up in the United States on the Sundance Channel, where it earned Entertainment Weekly's vote as the year's best TV import.

In Canada, it picked up numerous Gemini awards during its three seasons. In the U.S., it was favourably received by television critics at The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and The New York Times, which dubbed it "absolutely addictive."

Slings & Arrows is focused on the wacky folk who work at the beleaguered New Burbage Theatre Festival (modelled on the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ont.). Meirelles translated the script into Portuguese. He has had to cut about 10 minutes from each episode "because our [broadcast] time slots are shorter." He also tinkered a bit with some characters, taking into account obvious cultural differences.

He said he hopes Slings & Arrows will "bring some fresh air to Brazilian television. "While our television is very good, technically, the quality of the programs is going down and down," said Meirelles, whose film The Constant Gardener netted Rachel Weisz an Academy Award for best supporting actress. "We only see very popular programmes, like soap operas, which are well done, but terrible - really unwatchable for me. This is intelligent and funny. News of the series just broke in Sao Paulo and I'm already getting e-mail from quality actors in my country who are very interested."

Fichman says it has been bizarre how, in Canada, the series developed several life-imitates-art twists. He points out that McAdams in the first season played an ingénue who went on to become a movie star. Hutt was the actor playing the doomed King Lear in the series and, sadly, passed away shortly after Slings & Arrows' final season. Most recently, he notes the management troubles at Stratford (last month, two of the festival's senior co-directors abruptly quit, leaving general director Antoni Cimolino to do damage control), eerily mirrored the upheaval that was commonplace at the New Burbage company.

Meirelles cast three Canadian Slings & Arrows alumni - Burns, Coyne and McKellar - in Blindness, a film based on the harrowing book of the same name by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago. The film - a fierce and fantastical story of a blindness pandemic that eviscerates society - has an international cast that also includes Canadians Maury Chaykin and Sandra Oh, American Danny Glover, Japanese heartthrob Yusuke Iseya and Mexico's Gael Garcia Bernal.

The history of Slings & Arrows:

Timeline

Late 1998: Producer Tecca

Crosby and writer Susan Coyne bring the concept for the show

to Rhombus in late 1998.

1999-2000: Mark McKinney

and Bob Martin join the

writing team.

February, 2002: Showcase, Movie Central and TMN

green-light Season 1.

Late 2003: Season 1

premieres on Movie Central and TMN, and continues for another two seasons, through to 2006.

Mid-2005: Season 1

premieres on Showcase and Sundance Channel (USA).

Awards 13 Gemini Awards, including best dramatic series, best direction, best writing, and wins for actors Paul Gross, Rachel McAdams, Mark McKinney and Martha Burns.

Also the recipient of Director's Guild of Canada Awards, Canadian Screenwriting Awards and ACTRA Awards (2004-2007).

Accolades outside Canada

"Consistently engaging and it's often painful and gorgeous." - Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times

"Thank the Canadians, whose second-class status in North America seems to have led them to endure the (sorry, can't resist) slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a bracing sense of good humour."- Newsday's Diane Werts
 

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