Town Talk: Local movie addresses boxing peril

RINGING SUCCESS: Sixty-seven professional bouts led to the pugilistic dementia that hastened gutsy featherweight Bobby Chacon’s recent death at age 64. Guts were involved, too, when actor Ben Ratner played the vacant-faced, near-incoherent-voiced role of a similarly afflicted boxer. Still, he did so convincingly in Ganjy, a movie Ratner wrote and directed and Tony Pantages produced. The 14-minute picture is dedicated to the late Muhammad Ali, who appears in it in a real-life 2009 photo with Ratner and co-star Aleks Paunovic. Boxers themselves, the two and actors Zak Santiago and Donny Lucas give Ganjy unforced authenticity. Two soundtrack songs by city-based Jesse Zubot float like butterflies. The Haven Films picture will screen before Marrying The Family at International Village 10 at 1:30, Oct. 8. Crowd-funding for feature-film development may see Ganjy go the full 15 rounds. It’s already a knockout.

BOWEN SANS BONE: The dismissive word “ham” for performers may be as old as show business. Not that the 30 actors that agent Carrie Wheeler sends out for film and TV roles necessarily warrant that designation. And there is certainly no ham in her and director-screenwriter-husband Jaman Lloyd’s personal life, as both are vegans. “But you don’t have to be one to eat our products,” Wheeler said. She meant the all-organic sauces, rub and ketchup their year-old Copper Kettle Fine Foods firm produces on Bowen Island. Although residing there, the seven-year-wed couple hope to see their existing and newer products retailed far beyond local farmers’ markets and online. As for business premises, “You’ve got to go to what’s available on Bowen Island,” Wheeler said regarding Copper Kettle’s location in the thoroughly carnivore Alderwood Farm butcher shop.

CUM LAUDE: Commercial realtor Andrea Eng had a stellar career before edging from the spotlight to strategize global property deals for the likes of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s son Richard. Now she has a link to a similar entrepreneur who seems determined to give away some of his billions. Charles Chen Yidan, 45, co-founded the now-enormous Tencent holding company and endowed central China’s private, non-profit Wuhan College before establishing the Chen Yidan Foundation. Chen recently added to earlier commitments by endowing US$320 million to provide Yidan prizes for education research and education development. In consequence, he may now be China’s largest philanthropist.

Of the fiscal resources he amassed, Chen said: “They just happened to fall in my hand for a while, and I ought to put them to good use. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do so.”

Helping ensure that good use is Rhodes Scholar-journalist Brian Yeung, 29. With senior Chen staff, he conferred with Bill Gates en route to a first-in-Canada meeting with UBC brass regarding the Yidan prizes. Impressed by her founding role in the Tom.com Internet portal that became CK Hutchison Holdings’ online Tom Group, Yeung then powwowed privately with Eng.

SCREEN PLAY: Vancouver International Film Festival’s four-year executive-director, Jacqueline Dupuis, extended her influence to start year-round programming. The 35th annual running, which ends Oct. 9, kicked off conventionally with a world premiere of shot-in-Sooke The Devout, followed by a gala party at the 1889-founded Vancouver Club. Like its three-years-younger neighbour, the Terminal City Club, the former men-only institution eases membership fees by holding many such events. Its two traditionally fashioned main rooms and VIP suite are more congenial than the cavernous Vancouver courthouse where previous runnings likely reminded movie biz pros of a sound stage and others of possibly unsettling futures.

TIME TO BEAM: While film-festival organizers and audiences merely celebrated, local movie producers exulted. That’s because a gangbusters’ business year is more than fulfilling the showbiz adage: “Chicken one day, feathers the next.” Hosting a party in the Main-off-Hastings Imperial recently, Lighthouse Pictures producer Jamie Goehring was happy as a boar in ordure to see bartenders pump out free jolly juice as though the joint was ablaze. It’s an inspirationally hot location, too, as the late Bill Vince, who developed it, also produced the Oscar-winning Capote and 35 other feature films. Goehring said Lighthouse rostered 26 productions for 2016, “double what we did last year,” including a now-shooting version of the Stephen King novella 1922 for Netflix.

BRIGHTER YET: Lighthouse Pictures executive producer Shawn Williamson, who also founded and chairs Brightlight Pictures, oversaw that outfit’s traditional filmfest celebration at CinCin. As actors, agents and other showbiz folk jammed the second-floor eatery, Williamson welcomed Arts Club Theatre artistic managing director Bill Millerd who, in 1983, “gave me my first job as an assistant stage manager.” Sharing the family feeling were grown-up child actors like Jodelle Ferland who was 11 and a seven-year screen veteran when she attended Brightlight’s 2006 party.

DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Arts Umbrella will honour 33-time Splash gala auctioneer Barry Scott, whose professional skills see many charitable events raise funds that well-meaning others may unwittingly miss.

malcolmparry@shaw.ca
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