Vancouver: Canadian Bob Saget was in Vancouver this month making his dramatic directorial debut on another disease-of-the-week mow for abc. An odd choice, you might think, for the man who laugh-tracks it through America's Funniest Home Videos each week. But the film is a fictionalized account of the real-life tragedy of his sister's battle with a rare and deadly disease, scleroderma.

The disease, of unknown origins, progressively petrifies the skin and internal organs of its victims.

The producers at Brillstein-Grey Productions spent over $100,000 on prosthetics, designed by Tom and Barri Burman of Burman Studios in l.a., assisted by local prosthetics specialist Todd McIntosh.

Application of the prosthetics kept star Dana Delaney glued to the makeup chair six hours a day.

Canadian actor Henry Czerny (The Boys of St. Vincent) costars along with Polly Bergen (Winds of War) and Tracy Nelson.

Series action

Executive producer Chris Carter wrapped production this month on the third season of his hit tv series, The X-Files. Several longtime crew members, like dop John Bartley, are moving on, while production manager J.P. Finn remains, but gets bumped up to full producer status.

This month, Fox also gave Carter the go-ahead for series production on his new pilot Millennium, which shot here in February.

Meanwhile, across the lot at North Shore Studios, Cannell Film Services, owned by New World Communications, began production on 22 episodes of its new syndicated series Two. The series pilot, about a man whose life is turned around when his separated-at-birth twin brother shows up seeking vengeance for his unhappy childhood, had originally been shot for cbs. The network took a pass, but Cannell is going ahead in syndication anyway.

The series stars Michael Easton. Vancouver's David Levinson is executive producing and N. John Smith is producing.

Even though Cannell's fledgling series Profit, starring Adrian Pasdar, has been getting the best critical reviews the Cannell camp has ever seen, Fox yanked it from the air this month prior to the May sweeps.

According to the network, the series just wasn't getting the numbers, so in an effort to salvage its significant investment, Fox is hunting for another time period and will air the remaining four episodes sometime this summer. Word on the series' renewal will be announced on May 21 in New York.

Take a bow

Two months ago when bcmpa executive director Brenda Collins phoned to say she was trying to organize the first-ever b.c. motion picture industry awards, I said, "Great idea, but two months? Can't be done." Wrong! On May 5, over 800 members of the industry headed out to the Hotel Vancouver in their tuxes and taffeta for the first annual Leo Awards.

Granted, it was a bit of a rush job: they handed out paper certificates in lieu of trophies because they didn't have time to sculpt those stone lion heads. And yes, the clips were definitely too long and occasionally misplaced. But in the end you have to hand it to Collins and a crack support staff - they pulled it off.