“Alliance Atlantis to Make ALL their Films Canadian Friendly with ‘Bilingual-Cinema-DVD’”

by Thomas Jensen, moviesham.net

First, Alliance Atlantis Video was only a simple sticker on the back of an american import DVD for Miramax and New Line Cinema DVD’s. Then they started making exclusive DVD’s like “Good Will Hunting” that were actually BETTER than their American counterpart. Thinking that wasn’t good enough, Alliance wanted to support the french minority that insist we remind the english majority that they must have dubbed films, and therefore all Alliance product has bilingual packaging with french and english dominant titling on both sides.

But Alliance wants more. Alliance Atlantis corp. will be going INTO films and changing content to make Canadian releases more studio friendly for Canadians. “We want to remind the consumer that the product you’re watching is an Alliance Atlantis production, not an American version from Miramax or New Line Cinema.”

Bilingual-Cinema-DVD will get underway on December 24th with the re-release of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back/Jay et Bob Contre-Attaquent”. Things will be getting a little bit more interesting. Not only will there be “Alliance Atlantis” only menus and dropped American logos, there is a nice added bonus for lucky Canadian consumers.

“Every reference to Miramax films in “Jay and Silent Bob” will be reshot by director Kevin Smith to say “Alliance Atlantis”, so the film makes more sense to Canadians,” says Michael MacMillian, Chairman and CEO of Alliance. They were kind enough to provide us with a sample of dialogue:

US VERSION:

Brodie: Miramax optioned Bluntman and Chronic.

Jay: Miramax? I thought all they made were arty films like “The Piano” and “The Crying Game”!

Brodie: Yeah, but when they made “She’s All That,” everything went to hell.

“People won’t understand this reference, because they’re Canadian”, MacMillan continues. “So, we have refilmed the scene to say:”

CANADIAN VERSION:

Brodie: Alliance Atlantis optioned Bluntman and Chronic.

Jay: Alliance Atlantis? I thought all they made were arty films like “Crash” and “Exotica”!

Brodie: Yeah, but when they made “Men With Brooms”, everything went to hell.

Some other changes in dialogue:

Original: “He calls himself Magnolia-fan.”

New: “He calls himself Maelstrom-fan.”

Original: “Those Miramax-motherfuckers.”

New: “Those nice but confused Alliance Atlantis people who make great movie product for consumers.”

Original: “Come on Silent Bob, we’re going to Hollywood!”

New: “Come on Silent Bob, we’re going to Toronto!”

Kevin Smith was not available for comment, as he is currently shooting the new footage, and “Jersey Girl,” which will be retitlted “Toronto Girl” upon its release into Canada.

Reshoots of the film in Toronto are currently underway. Erica Ehm has been casted in the part once played by Jules Asner, and Mike Bullard will play a hilarious cameo as the host of “Entertainment-Eh?”, as a parody of the “E! News” segment hosted by Steve Kmetko.

Also, in this Canadian version, you’ll get to see the backlot of Alliance Atlantis, where Jay and Silent Bob will get into crazy adventures. “Remember the scene where Jay and Bob get into the set filming ‘Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season?’”, asks MacMillan. “Here, we’re showing you a scene from “Men in Brooms 2″ where Paul Gross now stars with Don McKellar and Marie-Josee Croze, re-enactacting many scenes from the first film and ending choice lines with “HERE WE GO AGAIN!” This film is really in production and will be in every Canadian movie-house next spring. So, think of it as a promtion within a movie kinda thing. People love that stuff.”

As for Bilingual packaging on their DVD’s? MacMillan laughs, “Oh, people love it. A guy came up to me in a store one day pointing at the french/english spine and the french language markers, throwing his arms around, talking loudly, making all sorts of interesting comments. Course, I didn’t know what he was saying because he was speaking french.”

Alliance is also going to non-letterboxing only for all of their future titles as well. “Letterboxing is so foreign to us, we don’t understand it. It’s an American thing”, MacMillan continues. “Why do people want black bars on their TV? Does it look like a theater screen? Are you seeing more picture or something?”

If this new format takes off, what next? “Well,” MacMillan thinks, “We are going to go the next step and REALLY revolutionize Bilingual-Cinema-DVD and run both English and French audio tracks ON THE SAME AUDIO TRACK! You know, if you focus your attention closely, you can keep track of the english dialogue while the french people can get what they want too!”

“After they decided not to get married in real-life, I thought, OK, do I leave in that 12-second shot that looks real pretty and run the risk of the audience sitting there and going ‘Wait a second, didn’t these two not get married in real life? This is creepy’, and suddenly lose my audience for 12 seconds or for however long, if you ever get them back after that,” Smith said.

“As a film-maker, you want people in that black box, sitting there and being in your world, the world you are creating, for the 90 minutes to two hours. You don’t want them heading off into reality and thinking about the shit tabloids put in their head.

“You want to transport them.

“That ain’t Ben and Jen on the screen. That’s Ollie and Gertie. And for those 12 seconds it wasn’t Ollie and Gertie, it was f–-ing Ben and Jen.

“I was just like, ‘What do I do?’

“I spoke to Scott Mosier, the producer, and said ‘What do you think? What should we do?’

“He said, ‘Well, if you take the shot out can the story still be told’ and I was like ‘Yeah’ and he said, ‘Well, let’s take a look at it and if you feel like the story can still be told, take it out’.”

“I was still not sure if Kevin Smith was going to make it to the set or not because he called me the night before telling me he was completely slammed that day.
He had a pitch meeting at Sci-Fi with Brian Lynch and then he had to record an Audio Commentary for the Directors Cut of Donnie Darko. Then he was flying out to Las Vegas to work on a new script.”

I’m writing to let you know that I will be a contestant on the 8/4/04 airing of the new game show BALDERDASH on PAX-TV. I normally wouldn’t send in
something like this but since I’m such a big View Askew fan I did something wacky on the show – in the context of the show you have to wager points on
whether a “celebrity” is telling the truth or is full of Balderdash – all of my wagers end in “37″ in a reference to Clerks and the host Elayne Boosler
made comments about it the whole show. It’s silly, but hey, you gotta spend your time on the planet doing something.