Posted on 04/27/2003 9:50:55 PM PDT by Timesink
TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Trying to shake off their pariah status, Toronto film and TV industry officials are fielding calls from Los Angeles and overseas colleagues questioning whether they should cancel visits or location shoots in this embattled city.
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Toronto, which last week was blind-sided by the World Health Organization (news - web sites) advising against unnecessary travel here owing to SARS (news - web sites)-related risks, has since been cold-shouldered by a growing list of entertainers.
"American Idol" champion Kelly Clarkson (news), and the tandem of Elton John (news) and Billy Joel (news) were among the first to cancel tour stops in Toronto on health concerns.
The WHO put Toronto on a travel blacklist owing to a local outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Toronto health officials announced the city's 21st SARS death on Sunday. CBC Radio One said four more SARS sufferers were critically ill in Toronto and could die soon.
"Elton John and Billy Joel are both deeply disappointed that the show cannot proceed on Monday and plans are under way to attempt to reschedule the Face to Face Toronto engagement," read a statement on Elton John's official Web site that cited SARS-related risks.
"Tour insurers have been advised against the show taking place in the interest of public safety in Toronto and other concert stops by the EJ/BJ tour, potentially jeopardizing the remainder of the tour," the statement continued, underlining the chilling economic impact of the SARS bug.
Clarkson's cancellation comes as auditions are taking place for "Canadian Idol," a spin-off of the top-rated TV show. Auditions across Canada started April 22 in Vancouver, and there are concerns SARS might affect 4,500 Toronto auditions set for May 25.
The mystery virus has also prompted a shift in the shooting locale to Vancouver, British Columbia, from Toronto for Neil Simon's TNT telefilm "The Goodbye Girl" and the cancellation of appearances by music acts Styx, Lisa Marie Presley (news) and the Notwist.
A number of conferences and corporate conventions in Toronto have also been canceled.
A weekend major league baseball series at the Sky Dome between the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays passed off without incident. The visiting team employed a number of health precautions, including not shaking hands or signing autographs with someone else's pen, and staying away from public transport or local hospitals where transmission of SARS has occurred.
To ease any health concerns, the Royals also had their team meal in their hotel and established a recreation room to dissuade players from venturing outside.
Rogers Communications, the owner of Toronto's major league baseball team, the Blue Jays, said it was buying up all unsold tickets for Tuesday's game against the Texas Rangers and would
Major League Baseball, which so far has decided against canceling Toronto baseball games, will advise similar precautions for other teams set to play against the Blue Jays here in the coming months.
For their part, local film and TV industry officials have been at pains to insist Toronto is a safe city to shoot on location and is open for business. Because SARS has so far been confined to hospitals and has yet to spread to the general community, the risk of contracting the disease in and around Toronto is minimal, according to local health officials.
More important, film and TV industry officials are attempting to dispel the gathering perception in the world media that Torontonians go about wearing masks in a quarantined city.
"There's a huge amount of fear-mongering going on," said Paul Bronfman, president of the Toronto-based Comweb Group, which also includes William F. White International Inc., Canada's largest film and TV production equipment supplier.
"Film producers are human beings, they turn on CNN and pick up the Los Angeles Times with its headline 'Toronto added to SARS list'. Misinformation has spooked people," Bronfman said.
Among artists that are going ahead with prior engagements in Toronto is Ellen DeGeneres (news), who was set to perform at Massey Hall on Sunday night.
Canadian-born singer Louise Pitre (news), who made her Broadway debut in the starring role in "Mamma Mia!," on Thursday night walked on stage at Massey Hall to begin her concert with a face mask on. In Friday newspaper accounts, Pitre reportedly ripped the face mask off, threw it to the ground, and declared "Isn't this ridiculous?" to the applause of the Massey Hall audience.
Heather Clark, managing director for Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, two of the city's largest venues, said Pitre, in pre-concert media interviews, stressed that the SARS scare resulted more from overblown" rumors and a media frenzy than from actual health concerns.
"I'm fielding inquiries from artist managers and we're telling them that concerts are going off nightly here, without incident," Clark said.
Richard Flohill, a Toronto-based concert promoter, said he is behind a double bill at Massey Hall on May 27 featuring Harry Belafonte (news) and Nana Mouskouri (news).
Flohill said the performers have expressed concern, but that the event is still on and they are expected to perform.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival kicked off Friday night with an opening night film and a capacity house. Hot Docs co-chair Anne Pick, welcoming the opening night crowd, noted that Toronto was now regarded as the "SARS capital" of North America, then dismissed any outstanding health concerns.
"We're healthy, we're sassy and we're willing," she said, lifting the curtain on the documentary festival.
But the big headache for organizers of North America's largest documentary festival, which is set to run until May 4, is the Toronto Documentary Forum scheduled for Wednesday-Friday.
The flagship market event, in which independent documentary producers pitch their projects to international commissioning editors for additional financing, has been hobbled by a slew of cancellations by broadcast executives.
Among the no-shows so far, according to event organizers, is Paola Freccero and Cynthia Kane of the Sundance Channel, Udy Epstein of Seventh Art Releasing, and the BBC's Nick Fraser and Jo Lapping.
Hot Doc organizers expect to have a better head count on Monday, and are considering collapsing the two-day event into one, or patching in key missing international broadcast executives using video-conferencing technology.
Sophia Loren (news) held a press conference after wrapping a Toronto shoot for the TV miniseries "Lives of the Saints," a Canadian-Italian co-production, and was asked by reporters what she thought of SARS.
Loren just shrugged, said she had been in Toronto last year to shoot "Between Strangers," which was directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti, and had no health concerns at all while here.
Others are less certain about health concerns. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., George C. B. Smith, senior vp of human resources, on Friday sent an internal e-mail to employees at the public broadcaster to ease fears that they should avoid the Toronto production headquarters for fear of infection.
"There are no known cases of SARS at our Toronto broadcast center, nor at any other CBC site," Smith said.
"Because of the large concentration of CBC staff in Toronto, our largest and most critical operations center, we want employees in Toronto and traveling to Toronto to be aware of and to heed all precautions set out by the ministries of health of Ontario and of Canada that relate to the prevention of the spread of the SARS virus," he added.
An earlier internal e-mail urging CBC workers outside Toronto to "reconsider non-critical travel to Toronto" caused concern among some employees that Smith attempted to allay.
"CBC/Radio-Canada is not banning employees from travel to Toronto," Smith told public broadcaster workers. He added that some employees "not critical to the smooth functioning of the business" may choose not to travel to the Toronto broadcast center.
Elsewhere, frustrated Toronto studio operators continued to measure the economic impact of the WHO decision to place Toronto on a travel blacklist.
Nick Mirkopoulos, president of Cinespace Studios in Toronto, said his complex faced no cancellations, but that "everyone's concerned and monitoring the situation carefully."
He added industry officials had to be realistic when assessing Toronto's financial health and signaling the all-clear.
"We're not doctors. If I was to give any one of my clients in Los Angeles irrefutable reassurance and then tomorrow something happens, I've lost them forever," Mirkopoulos cautioned.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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