Saturday, March 13, 2010

Awesome Job, Brian Linehan!

There are probably a lot of people now who don't remember Brian Linehan, which is a pity, because he was a real advocate for the arts, just as much as he was a Hollywood A-list interviewer. I'm thrilled to hear that his legacy (he died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2004 - the same disease that killed my grandfather in 1995, coincidentally) is supporting TRUE undiscovered talent in Canada (not in a televised talent competition, either! What a concept!)

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/778684--somewhere-brian-linehan-is-chuckling

Somewhere, Brian Linehan is chuckling

Late talk-show icon left surprise financial legacy that's helping Canadian talent like Allan Hawco

This is the kind of thing Brian Linehan lived for.

The first part of the tale is all too familiar: An unknown young stage actor from Bell Island, Nfld., a graduate of the National Theatre School, is propelled by his ambition and initiative to Toronto to start up a small, struggling theatre company, maintained by small episodic roles and bit parts in the occasional film ... for all intents and purposes, doomed to the typically anonymous existence of the average unknown Canadian actor.
Except that there was nothing average about Allan Hawco, as anyone who saw him on stage can attest, with a talent that outshone even his rugged good looks – bearing, as he does, and as you can see from the photos, a rather startling resemblance to Colin Farrell.

And now, thanks in large part to Linehan's legacy, Hawco is the creator, co-producer, co-writer and star of the hit CBC series Republic of Doyle, a show that managed to pull more than a half-million Canadian viewers up against CSI and American Idol, and slightly less than half a million opposite Canada/Russia Olympic hockey.

Somewhere, Brian Linehan is laughing. The late interview icon, Canadian television's premiere celebrity schmoozer, was, for all his noted facility for stroking the A-list rich and famous, a passionate advocate for homegrown talent at a time when that was a fairly revolutionary concept.

It was – and is – a sentiment shared by the country's most respected and connected industry deal-maker, and Linehan's long-time advocate, adviser and friend, Toronto lawyer Michael Levine.

"Three weeks before Brian died," Levine recalls, "we're sitting in Morton's restaurant, and I finally said to him, "All right Brian, what do you want?'

"And he said, generously, "I would like to help artists. (I'd like) the best of the best of the best to have an opportunity to come forth, because I've always believed our talent is as good as any in the world, and all they need is training, good work and promotion.'

"And I said, 'Who do you want to do this?' And he said, `You.' "

When Linehan died, in 2004 from non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he left behind an estate, to be administrated by Levine, totalling $4.5 million – much to the surprise of even those of us who knew him well, and generally assumed he was broke.

"Even I had no idea what Brian was worth," Levine confesses, "because Brian was the world's most private individual. And then I wake up one morning, and when the bank tells me I literally started to laugh. I mean, I didn't know if I had enough money to pay for his funeral.

"I remember, shortly after Brian died, Norman Jewison yelling to me from the stage of the Elgin Theatre, 'Levine! You know the money he left? It's ours!' "

And indeed, Levine did funnel some of the funds into the Jewison-founded Canadian Film Centre, toward establishing the new Actor's Conservatory.

"We put in 20 per cent of the money, got a network to put in money, got the government to put in half the money ... and now we have about a $5 million fund sitting there, and we just graduated the first class a couple of days ago."

There have been other endowments, to the likes of TIFF, Soulpepper and the Stratford Festival. "Everything we do has to be not-for-profit," stresses Levine. "And I am very careful as to how it is used.

"I have said to recipients, 'I am not a rich philanthropist. I have a duty to a beloved friend and to a concept ... and if we can't bring that added value to the project, I am not interested in giving you money."

So he was skeptical when Seamus O'Regan, co-host of CTV's Canada AM, started badgering him to come out to see his best pal, Hawco, on stage in his Company Theatre's inaugural production, Whistle in the Dark.
But saw him he did, and was immediately impressed.

"Blown away" is how he puts it.

"So I sit the kid down and ask that same fatal question, `What do you want?' And he said, `Well, I've got this little theatre company ... do you think you might give us a little sponsorship?' "

Levine did more than that. "I give the kid a small grant, I tell him to apply to BravoFact, I give him a Heritage Minute, which is a program I ran. And I take him by the hand to the CBC, and I get a little bit of money for a treatment, a little more money for a script, and literally put together a $20 million package.

"That is a perfect illustration of how we're trying to, in a very quantifiable way, use Brian's money."
It does not, of course, stop with Hawco.

"I went with my wife last year to see West Side Story at Stratford," says Levine, who is on the festival's council. "And I see this incredibly talented kid, and I'm asking, you know, `Who is that?' And they say, `Paul Nolan.' And I say, `Who's he?' `Well, he's this talented song-and-dance guy.' And I ask, `How old is he?' And they say, `30.'

"I went, `You're telling me that this kid has been professionally in this country, doing this quality of work, for a decade, and nobody knows who he is?'

"I mean, he's a former professional hockey player, for crying out loud."

It strikes Levine as typically Canadian that we so readily celebrate our athletic achievements – particularly, most recently, at the Olympics – and yet still somehow manage to overlook our actors.

"Oh, we take great pride in anybody who makes it abroad ... but we have got to create a standard of excellence for what we create, not just export the raw material so it's created elsewhere. Don't export all of the wood and build the furniture in Minnesota. Cut down the wood, build the furniture in Ontario and export the furniture, because you get more money for it. Let's become stars at home, and let's export ourselves.
"I'm saying we're as good as anybody in the world. And that exactly was Brian's philosophy."

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