This just in, I got a chance to talk to someone else who used to write reviews, and is now making mystery novels. His name is Ron Base, and his years of experience inspire me to keep this site going.
Ron grew up with people like Clyde Gilmore who had quite some involvement in CBC, and wouldn’t you know it, Clyde got replaced with Ron. Interesting how things like that happen. But after 10 years of working in working as a reviewer, Ron began to wonder if there was something else, and so he moved on to making novels and that’s what he’s been up to lately. But I had to talk to him even more about his past because meeting someone with similar work experience is something I don’t get often. Seriously, I’ve spoken with a few reporter types at the Leo Awards, but I don’t get to talk to too many other reporters or reviewers because it doesn’t seem like there are too many around here in Vancouver, especially of the film variety. They aren’t even getting to cover Leo Awards as much anymore. I’m mad as hell about that.
But since I got an amazing chance to talk to Ron Base, we engaged in a long worthwhile conversation and he shared lots of great stories.
HNMAG: So it’s my understanding you write mystery novels currently. How did you go from screenwriting to book writing?
Ron Base: Well, I have actually written three mystery novels back in the 80’s when I was a movie critic. They did quite well, but then I got ready to write a couple of non-fiction books about movies, and ended up in Los Angeles writing a book about movie stars and how some people got the roles of their career, how these other people said no and did not get the roles of their career. While I was researching that and pretending I wasn’t interested in screeenplays at all, I got involved in screenwriting of course. Everybody does. If you’re in Los Angeles, everybody has a script. I ended up with a script, but I did something that most people don’t get to do. I actually got to make movies based off the script that I wrote, but as time went on it became apparent that none of these projects went anywhere. There was no real future to this and I was very unsatisfied. As the writer, you turn out to be the dumbest person in the room, they all know exactly what’s wrong with the script except you. Whereas writing these mystery novels is tremendously satisfying. You are in charge, yet you have editors obviously who hold your hand and at the end of the day you really care to put your foot down and say “No, I don’t think we’re going in the right direction here” doing these novels, it hasn’t been necessary. But you do have a power and an influence that you didn’t have writing screenplays. You have a certain grasp, no influence whatsoever. If you’re a writer, it’s not a very satisfying way to earn a living.
HNMAG: You’ve had past experience as a movie critic during the time you started writing mysteries. Were there any movies you watched that inspired the novels you made?
Ron Base: A very good question. It wasn’t quite a wasteland for the movies back then, but it was close to it. I really wasn’t inspired by anything, but I think the first three mystery novels I wrote were somewhat inspired by people I met. A lot of these nomadic types of characters were those I met around at Cannes Film Festival and that sort of thing. It’s good therapy to write these very early novels which I look back on and kind of cringe now, but if I got any inspiration, it was from interviewing everybody I talked to over the years as a freelancer, a movie critic, a lot of profiles in the Toronto star as well. Experience over the years talking to famous people, I was able to learn a lot for 5 years and rub shoulders with everybody.
HNMAG: And what about screeners? Did any of them have something really elaborate and over the top that fascinated you?
Ron Base: Back in those days… (laughs) They actually screened the movies for you. The movies were sort of 8 or 9 or 10 or more that you were invited to. A screener of the new Indiana Jones movie or James Bond movie, or something like that. During that period, there was three movies that really grabbed me at the time in terms of commercial American movies. Tootsie, I remember we went in not knowing anything about it, and then I remember just being swept away by it. The same was true again, not knowing anything about E.T. that Steven Speilberg had made, and it was one of the few times in my life as a movie critic where you knew absolutely nothing about the movie you were about to see. Usually there’s press material but with ET, there was absolutely nothing. We piled into a theatre at 8:30 in the morning at a film festival. The kind of instances like that during my tenure as a movie critic. Then Chariots of Fire as well, at Toronto Film Festival and nobody knew much about it. But the moment it started, I think Vangelis score had a lot to do with it. Interestingly of those three movies, the only one I really remember today is ET. It was certainly a very special film at the time.
HNMAG: Have you attended any other screenings in the Canada or Vancouver area?
Ron Base: In the last few years, no. (laughs) Nowadays I go to afternoon movies with my wife. We are usually the only two in the audience. I still love to go to the movies, the problem is these adult skewings are you get very few and far in between. If there’s something that we want to see, like drama. I still like to go to movies with the popcorn and my wife beside me.
HNMAG: What about film festivals and events. Have you gotten any chances to attend those?
Ron Base: Many times. There was a lot of writers and critics at the Toronto Film Festival, I covered that for 10 years, I covered the Cannes Film Festival for about the same amount of time. For a few years after I left The Star, I attended the Toronto Film Festival, but I prefer to go at the theatre.
HNMAG: And you’ve met a lot of celebrities as well. Any Canadian celebrities that you really enjoyed interacting with?
Ron Base: People like John Vernon who I got to know quite well on set in Israel of all places. Leslie Nielsen before he became a funny guy, I interviewed the cast of SCTV, spent a lot of time with Dan Akroyd at one point before he went to Saturday Night Live and really took off. When I first interviewed Dan, I was doing this piece at Toronto Film Festival on someone else. I had met Dan briefly at a television show and he was in the back of the writer’s room cracking and everybody else were all in stitches. He was doing impersonations and when it came time to do the piece on comics, I immediately thought of Dan and found him on Queen St West. I got there, he was sitting and his place turned out to be an abandoned storefront. Dan was sitting in the window in a rocking chair.
HNMAG: Going back to the fact that you’ve written some of your own screenplays, did you feel any of them have potential in becoming movies and did you think of selling them to a distributor?
Ron Base: I thought they’d be masterpieces of cinema, but the odds of these things getting made back when I was doing it were very very high, and I never wrote anything particular and the only thing I was involved in and for years I hid it, I certainly downplayed my role in this. A dance-and-musical movie called Heavenly Bodies and it was a very small budget produced by the most successful producer in the country, Stephen J Roth.
For those who don’t know about Heavenly Bodies, it’s about a single mother named Samantha who quits her job and decides to become a dance instructor. But she’s got some competition with a tycoon in the process when opting to become tv show host for a dance training series. Ron and some other associates wrote this script and somehow it took off, he told me that the MGM got involved, some well known people did the soundtrack, and a little producer from Canada even got involved. That was supposedly the last time an independent movie got released by a major Canadian studio. If I’m wrong, let me know below. But seriously, we need more of that. However, Ron also informed me how it bombed at the box office, opening around the same time as a snowstorm but since home video needed some material, the film was saved and even went to Cannes. I had to ask Ron some more about his career in reviewing so that’s what I did.
HNMAG: How did people react to your reviews? Was it mostly negative or positive?
Ron Base: Well, it varied. You would get people who would say you ruined a movie they wanted to see because you didn’t like it. But it was in the last golden days of newspapers, You really felt that you did have some influence. You were writing reviews, and certainly had readership. I’ve worked for a lot of newspapers, I freelanced for all sorts of major publications in the States and Canada. But when you’re a writer for the largest newspaper in the country, you know people read what you write. That was kind of interesting.
HNMAG: What is something you truly admire about Canadian movies?
Ron Base: I’m not sure, given the state of films these days, but there’s not much to admire since there’s not much to see. I guess I’d have to go with streaming and say Schitt’s Creek which is a TV series. Back when I was doing reviews in Toronto Film Festival there were some Canadian films but they were very narrow subjects. They didn’t get much audience or distribution, they ended up playing at the festival only. They haven’t really run many films at all and I don’t think they ran any of the films. We’re basically the sets for American films and we have crews and great facilities in Vancouver and Toronto, dollars compared to American is cheaper to shoot up here.
HNMAG: And how do you feel with everything changing so fast and classic style of content disappearing?
Ron Base: When the television came in, everybody thought it was the end of movies. When I was a kid reading about the movies, a lot of the books were asking how could Hollywood survive television? Back in the 20’s, Hollywood survived radio. Hollywood changed the way it made films, shook off the conservatism, now it’s facing an even greater challenge with streaming which has become legitimate for major stars. It’s a mixed bag, but somehow we’ll always need content. You just got to whipsaw back and forth. Something like Hail Mary comes along, it’s going to make a billion dollars.
HNMAG: What are some other things about movies that you have noticed?
Ron Base: What’s suffering is these so-called adult movies, the ones pushing the envelope a little bit. A whole lot of special effects, they seem to be going to the streaming service. One way or the other, the people will still continue to make movies. How they will be screened or shown is anyone’s guess in the next few years.
HNMAG: Is there any kind of movie you’d really like to see get made?
Ron Base: How bout a movie about Priscilla Tempest in the swinging 60’s solving mysteries? How about my latest novel? I’d love to see that. But I’m waiting for that call from Hollywood.
HNMAG: Out of everything you’ve ever written, reviews, articles, novels, and screenplays, what felt like the most challenging?
Ron Base: Well, novels. I think that that’s the gold standard for anyone who’s in journalism. The amazing thing for me at this age is I’m still writing novels. Absolutley thrilled, but that is the challenge. I was writing reviews for a number of years as I’ve said, a contributing editor at MacLean’s, I wrote a New York section called Writer’s Block, and in those days all the major newspapers had Sunday supplements in magazines that came out on the weekend.
Ron’s section was featured in Chicago Herald, Miami Post, Los Angeles Times, and more papers almost every time, very periodically. He called it a very satisfying period of his life until he got more into novels which he has found more enjoyable. I can’t wait to see some of his books become movies. Whoever makes it happen, don’t you dare botch it. I know how some movies don’t do the book justice, and I can be hard-hitting at times.