Patriot Hearts by John Furlong

Author:John Furlong
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: SPO000000, BIO003000
ISBN: 9781553657941
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2011-02-18T10:00:00+00:00

8

Little Big Man

THE OPENING CEREMONIES are often viewed as the jewel of any Olympics. Anxiously awaited, they set the tone and mood for everything that follows. After the Games are long over, they are often remembered by a shining moment that occurred during opening ceremonies— Muhammad Ali lighting the cauldron in Atlanta, a ski jumper flying through the night sky in Lillehammer, the archer and flaming arrow in Barcelona, the fireworks spectacle in Beijing.

After the display that the Chinese put on in 2008, many in the media wondered how we would possibly match it on February 12, 2010. We weren’t going to. Never planned to, never could. First, we didn’t have that kind of money to play with. Second, and more importantly, that’s not what our Games were about. We wanted our opening ceremonies to make Canadians proud, while at the same time tell the world our story. Our opening and closing ceremonies were always going to be about hearts and minds, about touching the soul of the country.

We needed to find someone special, someone who had the horsepower and creative ambition to stage a wondrous production that captured the deep essence of our country, striking a proud and emotional chord among those watching at home, while captivating those taking the ceremonies in live at BC Place Stadium.

Whoever we found would have to deal with the lingering albatross that was our bland contribution to the closing ceremonies in Turin in 2006. Fair or not, our production there had created doubt among some of our Olympic partners about our ability to pull off something as big, complex and important as the opening ceremonies.

After Turin, we formed a committee to find the right company to stage our ceremonies. We realized there were no more than three or four big players in the Canadian entertainment world who would be possible candidates. And then there were a number of international figures who had the depth of experience to handle something of this nature. We had Terry Wright put together detailed specs that set out the scope of the project and then we put out a call for tenders. We told prospective bidders to submit their credentials and tell us why they were especially qualified to do the job.

We realized that we were going to have to be somewhat kinder to any Canadian applicants. In an ideal world, the producer would be a homegrown talent. We got an excellent response and eventually put together a field of 16 contenders, including controversial impresario Garth Drabinsky. I met him a couple of times but discussions went nowhere. But we also got strong proposals from Scott Givens and Don Mischer, who produced the events in Salt Lake City; Andrew Walsh, an Australian who had a long list of high-profile events to his credit; and Blue Mountain Concerts, a B.C. firm.

Guiding our selection process was the notion that we wanted whoever got the job to weave together a uniquely Canadian story, using Canadian talent. We were looking for a giant in the industry and we found someone who was just over five feet tall: David Atkins.

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