Malibuite Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Canadian Directors Guild

• Pioneer in ‘Golden Age of Television’ and Noted Filmmaker Adds to His List of Accolades •

BY ROBBY MAZZA

Longtime Malibu resident and director Paul Almond, who was a pioneer in Canadian broadcasting and film,was recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Canada, where he did most of his work and is acknowledged as a trailblazer and consummate professional.

Although retired from the industry, Almond who has lived here more than 30 years with his wife Joan, has contributed his talents to many local projects. In 2001, he founded the One Act Plays for St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church. The annual event that presents plays with a moral or spiritual theme.

Almond began his career at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation in 1958. He attended Oxford, where he directed plays, working with students who became directors, including John Schlessinger and Tony Richardson. He was also an avid hockey player, who played professionally in Italy, before returning to Canada.

“I had always wanted to be a poet,” he said. “When I came back, I was living with the leading dancer of the National Ballet of Canada. She told me I needed to get a job and I said, ‘What? I’m a poet, I don’t work.’”

Apparently, that answer did not satisfy her. So he joined the CBC as its youngest producer and director, and within six weeks, had a production on the air, starting a career that would span four decades and prove to be one of the most innovative and groundbreaking in Canadian television. “I did a lot of firsts because it was new,” he quipped.

“In the ’60s Canadian television was the finest in the world,” he said. “It was ahead of BBC television because when BBC began in the late ’40s, there was a thriving film industry in England and it just adapted the film industry to television, so it didn’t truly use the medium to its fullest extent.

In America, television began in the late ’40s and early ’50s with some wonderful dramas, but it was controlled by CBS, NBC and ABC, and their main objective was to attract as large an audience as possible. Of course at CBC, we didn’t try to attract a large audience; we wanted to entertain and enlighten and even educate the little towns and villages all across Canada with no access to the world’s theater.”

Because the CBC was the only network in Canada, Almond had the opportunity to bring classic theater to television, including “MacBeth” with Sean Connery, “The Rose Tattoo,” and “Under Milkwood,” using innovative techniques and stage design.

“I believed television was closer to the radio medium, so therefore, the function of television was not only just to do the play but to stimulate the imagination, so when I did “Under Milkwood” by Dylan Thomas—the greatest radio play ever written—I did it on a set with just a fragment of light and shade so the imagination would be stimulated,” he said.

When the BBC did it, they went to a real village. It was a radio play, so it was meant to be poetic and the images were meant to be poetic, not just ‘here’s a cottage.’ They were meant to see the images that Dylan was creating with his words.”

Although his work was praised for its directoral and technical innovations, Almond did encounter some negativity. “I did a Pinter play—the first Pinter play ever done on television in Canada (“The Dumb Waiter”) and the CBC was the only channel in Canada,” he said. “We got so many hate letters from all across Canada because they didn’t understand Pinter. They’d ask, ‘What are you putting this rubbish on for?’ Well, because we wanted people to see what’s happening on the world stage.”

Almond also worked on several documentaries, including the first “Seven Up,” in 1965, a series that follows the lives of seven British children, tracing their lives every seven years.

“We wanted to reflect Canada to the Canadians back in the ’50s and ’60s. Therefore, we were doing things they couldn’t do in America, which was controlled by the commercial interests, and they didn’t do it in England because they didn’t have the fluidity and new approaches we pioneered in Canada. We did lead the world in the Golden Age of television in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said.

His pioneering did not just stop at television. He started Quest Film Productions in 1966, the oldest motion picture company in Canada. Almond made the first motion picture in Canada—“Isabel”—that was made with a major studio, using only Canadians—cast and crew (starring his then-wife Genevieve Bujold)—for which he was nominated for a Director’s Guild of America Award and won best film in Canada in 1968. He produced four more films at Quest, two of which featured Bujold.

“My films were groundbreakers in a way and were quite different than the run-of-the mill films and recognized as such by the American critics,” he said. Canadian critics never came to terms with me but the American critics were very kind and generous in their praise. I’ve been attacked so often in so many media that I don’t think anything can alarm me.”

During his career, Almond has received several awards for his work, including the Ohio State Award, Liberty Awards and 12 Genies—Canada’s equivalent of the Oscar. He has also been awarded Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee Medal, an award created by Queen Elizabeth to be given to citizens who have made a significant contribution to Canada, to their community, or to their fellow citizens. But, Almond says, the most important recognition he has received is being named an Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 2002. It is so prestigious,” he said. “There are so few Officers of the Order of Canada that it iss a great honor. I don’t know how on earth they gave it to me.” He laughed, “I keep saying that there are so many wonderful directors but they’re dead and I think that the secret is if you can stay alive.”

Although flattered about receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award he says he wouldn’t want to direct anymore. He has returned to his favorite medium, the written word. He has authored two books and now plans to spend the next few weeks in Gaspe on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, where he grew up, pursuing his ongoing love, writing.

“I am writing a series of eight to 10 books which trace the major developments of North American history from 1800 to the present as seen through the eyes of a settler family on the banks of the St. Lawrence in Gaspe,” he said. “History books are always so dull. I flunked history in school. I hated it, I couldn’t face it, all those dates,” he laughs. “So I thought, if I can write a bunch of stories that are exciting and gripping with man against wilderness, kids and adults will read and say ‘that’s how people lived back then.’”

“I’ll be staying in an old wooden house, and then I’ll come back to the world of light in Malibu, back to my wonderful obscurity,” he said, “It’s time to just relax and be creative in a simple way instead of having 60 or 100 people running around on a film set. Now I have a computer and a blank piece of paper—it’s a much easier way to create.”