Geminis foster sense of pride
At last we celebrate our celebrities
I woke up yesterday morning with the most peculiar sensation. I would have just dismissed it as a hangover from the Gemini festivities the night before — except that this was a good feeling, all warm and fuzzy and upbeat and optimistic . . .
It took me a while to clearly identify, unaccustomed as I was to feeling it. But there it was, swelling up within me: pride in the Canadian television industry.
Don’t get me wrong. I have always been proud of the worldclass television we are capable of producing in this country — often quite in spite of ourselves. And I have always acknowledged and tried to advocate the vast pool of creative talent we are able to draw from to make it. But every year, when it comes time to pull this all together and celebrate ourselves with a homegrown industry awards show, we immediately start getting all self- conscious and tentative and embarrassed and apologetic and cynical and sarcastic about it. This Gemini weekend was somehow different, and I’m not sure I can tell you exactly why.
I can tell you it wasn’t really about the winners, or even the nominees — except in the most general sense.
Watching the nominated clips on the monitors inside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, one could not help but be impressed by the breadth and depth of the top- quality television we are capable of creating: comedy, drama or documentary, series, special, movie or mini.
It is only when we get down to the specific, the unfortunate but intrinsic awards-show conceit that one show ( or actor, writer, director) must be deemed the best over others, that the waters start to muddy.
While I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of the Gemini nominating and voting process, it is clear from the results that some tweaking and streamlining is in order. There are still some inexcusable omissions and some unfortunately entrenched voting patterns that need addressing. And there are, from a purely selfish standpoint, way too many categories to try to keep track of in any meaningful way. But then the Geminis should be — and, in essence, are — less about acknowledging excellence than they are about investing in it, and I’m not talking financially here. If the Canadian people could just be convinced to watch more Canadian television more consistently, the dollars would inevitably follow. The Gemini show itself ( that is, Saturday night’s televised major
awards event) has been
getting better and better at doing that, and
doing it in an amusing
and entertaining manner, like the running
sketch gag ( introduced
last year) of crossbreeding programs as diverse as ReGenesis and Trailer Park Boys to considerable comedic effect. Ditto the hilarious series of “ international” versions of Corner Gas.
There is always a sense of celebratory glamour at the Gemini Awards, this year more than ever. And it goes beyond the usual dazzling display of snappy tuxedos and fabulous evening gowns. It’s the people wearing them. The talent. The . . . dare I say it? . . . stars.
“ But we don’t have a star system here in Canada,” the naysayers are so fond of naysaying. I’ve got news for you folks: somehow, when you weren’t looking, we got one.
Again, this is not meant as a measure of talent; that we have always had, in abundance. No, this is about something else. This is about celebrity, which, shallow and transient and ultimately meaningless as it may be, is still the grease that keeps the wheels of showbiz turning.
I got my first sense of this sea change at last week’s pre- Gemini nominees party, where the maybe half- dozen name nominees who were present ( the majority were apparently actually out working) were blinded by the sun- gun lights of a barrage of competing video cameras, jockeying for sound bites on behalf of a sudden proliferation of Canadian entertainment TV news mags.
For a moment, I forgot where I was. It was starting to look like a typical L. A. industry party. And that sense was even stronger Saturday night, as first-time awards host Global TV seized the opportunity to sex up the cocktailer pre- party with all the unapologetic Hollywood-style glamour one would associate with its slickly franchised ET Canada. Now, I hesitate to even make that comparison, Mary Walsh having so eloquently ( and, God bless her, profanely) affirmed, in a rousing end- of- show speech, that only Canadians would use Americans as any sort of example to aspire to. But if there is one thing that they do better than anyone else in the world, it’s celebrating celebrity. It’s a lesson I think we are now finally ready to learn.
It’s not going to happen overnight. One of the more amusing aspects of the evening was watching the bottleneck form at the entrance to the pre-show event, accessible only via the brightly illuminated red carpet, as chagrined attendees tried in vain to find an alternate, less pretentious route to the open bar and nibblies.