The Greatest Canadian Gets Pulled from Distribution

The challenges of writing about real people and real events 

By Philip Moscovitch

Go to the website for Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, click on “Order DVD” and a funny thing happens.

You get directed to the front page of the CBC’s online store. No evidence of the DVD you’ve come to buy. Search the CBC store for Prairie Giant and you’ll wind up with a few choices, including a Mr. Dressup book. What you won’t find is the two-part miniseries written by Bruce Smith.

When Prairie Giant premiered back in March, it pulled an average of over 800,000 viewers per night–according to Playback, the best rating for a CBC miniseries since last year’s lockout. So why has it vanished?

Well, the descendants of late Saskatchewan politician Jimmy Gardiner–a Douglas opponent–objected to the way Gardiner was portrayed. So the CBC hired a historian to review Smith’s script anonymously. Based on his assessment, the network not only cancelled a scheduled rebroadcast, it also pulled the DVDs from distribution and apologized to the family for the way Gardiner was portrayed.

All this without speaking to Smith, who has never been given the opportunity to defend his screenplay.

It gets even worse.

Smith says the CBC never even sent him a copy of the report condemning the film (he got it from producer Kevin DeWalt). When he asked for an opportunity to respond, Smith was eventually offered a meeting with CBC Executive Vice-President of English Television, Richard Stursberg. “I drove to Toronto at the beginning of August,” says Smith, who lives in Montreal, “and as soon as I got there they cancelled the meeting.”

Obviously, Smith’s experience is troubling for screenwriters.

Keith Ross Leckie says he has “probably done about 15” films based in reality, with credits including Milgaard, The Arrow, and the forthcoming Everest 82 (to air in January 2007 on CBC). He calls CBC’s response to the Gardiner family complaint “terribly weak.”

Leckie says, “For CBC not to go to the writer to source the material, not to go to the lawyers who’ve been through the material, not to go to the producer and say we want a rebuttal... yes, it gives me great pause–but not with pursuing these great stories we’re telling. The pause is that CBC did not stand behind their product, and that worries me."

Much ado about a glass of scotch

The historian hired by CBC says in his report that “it is clear that the screenwriter failed to undertake even a basic search of the historical literature for the period covered by the film.” For his part, Smith says he’s never researched a film more thoroughly, and that there “aren’t any errors in the movie.”

The point the Gardiner family seems to have most strongly objected to is the depiction of Gardiner having a glass of scotch in one scene, and, in another, asking reporters if anyone wants to go for a drink. The historian’s report states: “This depiction... is inaccurate and wrong, as Mr. Gardiner did not drink; he was a teetotaller.” But Smith says “we have witnesses who say he did. And when the Globe [Globe and Mail newspaper] got complaints from the Gardiner family, they went out and dug up their own witnesses who say he did.”

Smith has no objection to the CBC investigating the accuracy of his script–after all, their own lawyers thoroughly vetted the production before it went to air. What he wants is to defend his film in public–and he’d welcome the opportunity to go head to head with the academic who wrote the report.

“I have no beef with the Gardiner family. I’m sorry they’re upset, but this stuff should be debated, and if they want to defend Jimmy Gardiner they should be able to defend him in public. The point is this stuff should be defended in public,” Smith says. “If some academic wants to criticize it he should have the simple decency to do so under his own name. That’s all. It’s very simple. My name is on it. The name of everyone who worked on the film is on it. We’re not trying to hide anything–we’re trying to put it on television and let people argue about the history of Canada.”

Risk factors

Entertainment lawyer Diana Cafazzo, a partner in the firm Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond, says there are many risks involved in portraying real people on screen.

But, she also points out, the Prairie Giant case is not a legal one. “It’s not a legal story because nobody has been sued. The family has made a complaint.”

Besides, she says, the odds of a suit being launched are greatly reduced by the fact that Gardiner is deceased (he died in 1962). “With the exception of some jurisdictions, except Quebec, once someone is dead the legal risks are greatly reduced. They don’t completely go away, but the risks are far fewer because in many jurisdictions you cannot defame people who are dead.”

Of course changes have to be made to condense lives and events into a two or four hour movie or miniseries, and producers want to protect themselves from lawsuits–so they purchase errors and omissions insurance (E&O insurance). And since the insurance companies don’t want to be paying out big bucks as a result of lawsuits either, they give scripts a thorough going-over to make sure there is nothing actionable in them.

Smith spent about three days annotating the script for Prairie Giant, adding about 50 pages to his 190-page screenplay. But the document, he points out, was meant for lawyers, and is not an exhaustive accounting of all of his sources–particularly when it comes to Jimmy Gardiner.

“The annotated script is very thorough, but also fairly general,” Smith says. “It was written before anyone expressed any concerns about the portrayal of James G. Gardiner, and it was really not legitimate for the historian to use it as his only source in deciding how we portrayed Gardiner in the film. Gardiner is not the central character (nor even second or third), and so obviously I didn’t spend pages and pages outlining our research on him in a general document.”

Leckie says he has been asked to annotate scripts in the past, though he doesn’t enjoy having to do it. “I did that years ago, but after a while I realized the more proactive way for a lawyer to go was to look for the seven or 11 or 14 scenes that would cause someone to sue you and pinpoint those scenes.”

Ironically, Cafazzo says the CBC tends to be “more daring” than other broadcasters because they insure themselves and don’t have to purchase costly E&O policies.

A metaphor for reality

Leckie says Bruce Curtis, the subject of his film Deadly Betrayal: The Bruce Curtis Story, clearly understood that a TV movie was not going to capture all the truth of his story. He says Curtis told him, “television cannot represent reality. It is a metaphor for reality.”

That’s a point that Smith seems to think has escaped the anonymous historian who savaged his screenplay and his research.

Though Smith is clearly dismayed, he says he hasn’t soured on the CBC. “I don’t want to attack the CBC. I don’t want to criticize the CBC. I am a big fan of the CBC. They should do more movies like Tommy Douglas. They should do John Diefenbaker for Christ’s sakes... If you want to bury the movie, just bury the movie. Just put it on against the Superbowl and don’t publicize it. You don’t have to publicly announce that it’s flawed. You don’t have to hire secret historians to review movies.”

Meanwhile, Smith may yet get the last laugh. Prairie Giant has been nominated for nine Gemini awards, including a nod to Smith for Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries.

“I feel a little vindicated, very pleased. I think it’s a very good film so I hope it picks up an award or two,” Smith says.