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Behind the doors of Cellar Door Productions in Charlottetown, nothing has gone into cold storage for the winter, and company president Gretha Rose shows no signs of hibernation. In the multibillion Canadian film and television industry, her production company (with a full-time staff of just five) now ranks among the top ten in revenues, financing $10 to $15 million worth of projects a year, mostly through co-productions and partnerships.
The company began from a series of fluke events and synchronicities. “I wanted to do something creative that also used all my business and strategic skills,” Gretha says. As fate would have it she broke her back skiing, and suddenly had time to consider her options. While convalescing, she happened to see a newscast on developments in the film and television industry; soon after, Ron Howard of Imagine Entertainment came to Charlottetown with his family. Then Gretha began to develop, with David Weale, ideas for a feature film. Her ideas began to converge.
On her own at the time, with two kids to support, Gretha couldn't afford to go to Hollywood: “I decided to bring Hollywood to me,” she says. She organized Hollywood North conferences to bring people from LA here. The conferences “opened every door I could want.” She realized she “had great properties” and thought, “Why not develop them myself?” And Cellar Door Productions opened its doors.
Gretha had a passion for feature films, but little knowledge of the film and TV industry. She didn't see this as a problem. “I think ignorance is a great gift,” she says. “So many people won't try anything because of not knowing—I'm the opposite. I truly believe it is more powerful not to know. Possibility comes from the unknown.”
With little knowledge to go on, Gretha built instead on “natural strengths”: recognizing good stories and building strong relationships through communications.
“Story is everything,” she says, emphatically. “The rest is nothing unless you've got a story. . . . I decided that would be how I would distinguish myself: being true to good stories. Then the business side could support the creative side.” But she admits that a producer's work only begins with the story: “There are lots of great stories—but they're not told unless you can finance them.” That's where her background in business comes in.
Gretha and Cellar Door have surprised some of their co-production partners with unusual priorities. They've refused the role of poor country cousins—and they've not always made profit their first priority. “I trust relationships. I don't trust business,” Gretha says of the company's ethos. “And that's really different for some of my partners. Or it was at first. Now, though, we know each others‚ families.” (Happily, it was by building a business based on solid relationships that she met her husband, who is in the talent business.)
Gretha's priorities come from “being proud of where she comes from,” and she's proud to be from PEI. “Doing business from here has been a huge benefit,”she says. “And I'm a firm believer in contributing to community,” she asserts. In fact, 99 of 100 voices for Cellar Door's animated series Eckhart are Island actors.
“If we all do well, I'll do well—not the other way around.” Being Island-based is, in her view, in nothing but an advantage: “It's all perspective in this business. And I perceive . . . we're exactly halfway between Hollywood and Cannes. We're actually at the centre.”
With Eckhart, the cooking show Chef at Large (featuring Chef Michael Smith), and a new series, Doodlez (the first flash-animated production ever to be produced in Charlottetown) as only a few of the properties in production, Gretha can declare of her own story, and that of Cellar Door Productions: “It's a success story. It's a fun story. It's a good story.”