Glamour, Canadian style
Canadian Screen Awards gala caps a week-long celebration
Don’t worry: There will only be one envelope per award at the Canadian Screen Awards this Sunday.
“We’re the Canadian Academy. We don’t have the budget for two sets of envelopes,” joked show producer Barry Avrich, referring to the gaffe at the Oscars that, for a couple of painful minutes, stole the Best Picture glory from Moonlight after La La Land was mistakenly declared the winner when presenters opened a duplicate Best Actress envelope.
Now in its fifth year, the Canadian Screen Awards is a week-long annual celebration of film, digital media and television.
All of that culminates in a Sunday-night broadcast gala, complete with a red carpet, musical numbers and, of course, the industry’s hottest celebrities.
As in 2016, this year’s presentations will come live from Toronto’s Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, with comedian Howie Mandel taking on hosting duties.
Joining Mandel onstage as presenters are stars such as Olympian Penny Oleksiak, Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany and an American ringer, comedian Dave Chappelle.
Just two hours long and without the luxury of going overtime like its American counterpart, the big night takes months of planning to make sure it not only goes off without a hitch, but is also enjoyable to watch, Avrich said.
It’s his second year producing the CSAs.
“We live in Canada and we’re exposed to American production values and American award shows,” he said.
“This isn’t a show that we’re going to do in a neighbourhood restaurant and have folk singing. It needs to be great. I’m not competing with the Oscars,” he added, “but I want to be as good.”
Preparation work was still in full swing at the Sony Centre Wednesday, including the actual building of the set.
A swarming crew of workers in hard hats will have transformed the theatre into something glamorously unrecognizable by Sunday night, with set pieces that reflect both oldschool Hollywood and a modern, sleek design: a shiny black floor, two slightly-above-floor-level platforms for the live orchestra, a backstage bar and a mini catwalk that juts out into the audience to let Mandel interact with the crowd.
“He’s going to be feeding off the energy, just a pinball,” show director Shelagh O’Brien said during a production meeting in a small boardroom one floor below the stage.
The night of, O’Brien won’t be in the building; along with a crew of 12 technicians, she’ll be sitting in a truck parked on the Esplanade, keeping an eye on live feeds streaming in from the 10 cameras inside and choosing the best shots to pop up on the TV audience’s screens.
The show airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBC and will also be broadcast live on the CBC’s Facebook page with a red carpet show at 7:30 p.m.
Mandel, although based in Los Angeles, has apparently been very involved in the planning, getting in touch with the production team daily about details such as his opening monologue — a make-or-break moment for hooking the TV audience — jokes he wants to set up and when he’ll be onstage (apparently a lot). O’Brien’s worked with him before. She knows his style.
“He’ll be following the teleprompter, but there’ll also be those unscripted moments where he’s play- ing off what just happened onstage, who’s in the audience; his mind just works so fast,” O’Brien said.
Sitting on the meeting room floor and propped up against a wall is a large corkboard covered in a grid of celebrity headshots and sticky notes with things like “host” and “commercial break #5” scrawled on them, an outline for the night that is, at this point, set in stone. Now, it’s just about polishing it until it shines.
There are no long video montages, which bore TV audiences, and the presenters are noticeably diverse and split 50-50 between men and women, a conscious effort on the part of the production team.
“We’re not sitting there going, ‘OK, check these boxes,’ but you are looking at the show and saying, ‘Does this reflect Canada?’ ” Avrich said. “The Canadian Screen Awards will never have a hashtag that says, ‘#CSATooOld,’ ‘#CSATooWhite,’ ‘#CSATooMale,’ no way.”
As the meeting ends, writer Briane Nasimok announces he needs to make changes to actress Catherine O’Hara’s monologue because her team wasn’t completely happy with the script. Writing edits, he says, happen right up until show time and sometimes even during.
Walking around the labyrinth that is the Sony Centre’s basement, empty Wednesday save for some fold-up tables (but which will be a whirlwind of crew and talent bustling to and from the stage Sunday), Avrich said he isn’t nervous.
The day before the audience and talent and cameras pour in, he’ll sit on the completed set one last time and stare out into the empty theatre, hoping of course for the best, but not afraid of what’s to come.
“Nobody watches an award show on television and says the next day, ‘What a great show that was!’ ” he said.
“You remember the monologue, you remember what the people were wearing, you remember some of the screw-ups . . . (but) when the curtain comes down, we’re done.”
Avrich said he never goes to afterparties. Instead, he’ll slip out and go grab a burger in a quiet place with Nasimok.