Time was, movies were made in Hollywood. Then came a time when it was cheaper to make movies outside L.A. and producers started looking for cost-effective locations. Nova Scotia was happy to comply.

The province, a.k.a. Nollywood, was among the first in Canada to set up a Crown corporation to attract film business and work to meet the needs of that business. This it did quite successfully.

But the time came when other provinces saw dollar signs twinkling and began competing for movie and television productions to take place in their backyards.
As a result, Nova Scotia, once called the Hollywood of the North, found itself losing ground, losing business and losing its edge.

Not for long, the government hopes. The Nova Scotia Film Development Corp.
recently announced investments in seven new film and television projects. The numbers are right for investing, claims Ernest Fage, minister responsible for the corporation.

The province will plunk down $700,000 for one television documentary on UFOs, one variety show, one musical and four series made for the small screen. In return, the productions in question, with combined budgets of almost $13 million, will pump more than $7 million into the economy.

You spend a little to make a lot more, says Ann MacKenzie, CEO of the province’s film corporation. “Our programs are built to support the industry today and well into the future.”

Indeed. Nova Scotia’s film industry is the fourth largest in the country, and brings in, on average, more than $100 million. The government and the film corporation can’t take credit for all this wealth generation, although it is fair to say they have been instrumental in meeting the industry’s
needs at a price it can afford.

Credit must also be given to on-the-ground producers, directors and talent. For example, the home base of the Halifax Film Co. is clearly articulated in its name. A relative newcomer to the scene, the company was one of eight — out of a total of 47 — that received money from Telefilm Canada to fund its $12-million project, Dallaire, which will explore the genocide that defined Rwanda for decades and that the rest of the world comfortably ignored.

The company may be a new name in the film business, but its principals aren’t. The names Michael Donovan and Charles Bishop are synonymous with Salter Street Films. You may remember that company. It won a little Hollywood award, the Oscar, for a little documentary by Michael Moore called Bowling for Columbine.

There are other names you may also remember that deserve credit for building and continuing to build a winning film and television industry in Nova Scotia. Of those, none are perhaps as disquietingly familiar as Julian, Ricky and Bubbles. Trailer Park Boys is a phenomenon that defies categorization or reason. But fame being what it is, and that fame being connected to an industry that knows how to milk a sound bite for everything it is worth, the boys are helping to entrench Nova Scotia’s reputation as a film mecca.

It’s come to this: Nova Scotia is gaining back the ground it lost and is once again a contender for big-budget and return-budget productions. Who knows how far the glory days can stretch. After all, the boys are now making their own movie. It’s being produced (we hear) by Ivan Reitman. You may have heard of him. He directed a string of films with one-word titles that include
Ghostbusters, Junior, Meatballs, Evolution and Stripes.

Oh, yes, scuttlebutt is that the movie version of Trailer Park Boys is being distributed by DreamWorks. We know you’ve heard of them. IE