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Riverdale star vs busker: how Vancouver film productions cost some small businesses

Owner of grilled cheese food truck knows what it’s like to lose money when film productions park next to Vancouver Art Gallery

Fans of the Netflix show Riverdale might have taken to social media to support the actor who took on a busker outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Thursday night, but at least one business owner in the neighbourhood is on the busker’s side.

In a video that went viral, Cole Sprouse, who plays Jughead in the TV series, approaches a busker whose singing has interfered with filming a night scene at the gallery. “We’re begging you. We can’t film anything,” Sprouse tells the unidentified busker. “I know you’re asking for compensation [to stop playing]. We’re asking for simply an hour to finish the shooting.”

It might have ended there but Sprouse turns to the crowd and tells them that “This is one of the secrets of film production: we give a location to the city and then some scam artists come out and start playing.”

Before he finishes saying “scam artists”, the busker uses her microphone to interject. “Excuse me, excuse,” she says defiantly. “I play here regularly, every day, so you guys came into where I perform.”

When Sprouse continues to talk over her to a crowd of young fans, the busker says “What you guys are is cheap. You guys are so cheap, and rude. You're interfering." Then starts playing her guitar.

Cindy Hamilton worked 20 years in the film industry before she opened Mom’s Grilled Cheese five and a half years ago.

She has a City of Vancouver licence to park her food truck on Howe Street near Georgia — right on the south side of the gallery.

As per the licence, about 60 times a year, the city tells her she has to make room for film and television production trucks at the gallery. The city helps her find a new spot a block or two away.

“My business is cut in half or worse” on the days she’s not next to the gallery, she says.

That translates into $500 of lost revenue every day she’s not in her usual spot. Sixty days times $500 adds up to $30,000.

“For a small business, that’s a big chunk of change,” she says.

moms grilled cheese truck
About 60 times a year, the Mom's Grilled Cheese food truck has to give up its location next to the Vancouver Art Gallery to make room for a film or TV production.

She also notes that the city gets paid twice for renting out the same spot: once from her and once from the production company.

Hamilton says the busker had every right to be playing in front of the gallery. As much as she appreciates the film industry, and having worked in it for so long, she says “a lot of time film companies think they can just take over anywhere. Sometimes they think they own the place.”

While film companies will pay bricks-and-mortar businesses for lost revenues if they ask to use the building, no such offer is made to businesses such as Hamilton’s or, apparently, the busker’s.

Creative BC, a provincial agency that helps promote B.C.’s film industry, has a loss of business form that businesses can fill out if they think they deserve compensation for lost revenues.

However, Hamilton says film production crews have told her that the compensation is never enforced so they don’t pay so she hasn't filled out the form.

“While there are obvious benefits to having a production shot in our communities, merchants are often concerned about the effect the work might have on their businesses,” Creative BC says. “The BC motion picture community supports compensation for those businesses that have been negatively impacted during a location shoot. If a business believes that a location shoot has resulted in lost business, and there is no separate deal with the producer, a Loss of Business form should be submitted to the film production company's Location Manager.”