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HOGTOWN OR HONKYTOWN: Let’s All Hate Toronto
by MATTHEW HAYS
Northrop Frye once argued that the quintessential Canadian question was, “Where is here?” But Toronto-based filmmaker Albert Nerenberg, formerly a Montrealer, thought the question he found most intriguing was, why does everyone hate Toronto so damn much?
“I’d had this idea kicking around for years,” says Nerenberg, whose past docs include everything from Climate for Murder (about the rash of homophobic murders in Montreal in the ’90s) to Stupidity (about, well, stupidity). “There was real resistance at the CBC to us doing it, because I think they knew that part of the critique was going to be the media’s tendency to be Torontocentric.”
But eventually, Nerenberg—along with co-director Rob Spence—found a producer who was intrigued, and decided to delve into the question that forms the crux of Let’s All Hate Toronto. And Nerenberg and Spence came up with a silly device through which to explore all things Torontonian: Spence became Mr. Toronto, a suited, briefcase-toting, button-down type who ventured across the country to hold “Toronto Appreciation Days” and to ask people why they hated T.O. so much.
CITY SHTICKER: Mr. Toronto Some of the answers are predictable. People in Vancouver, Edmonton and the Maritimes are interviewed, and the constant is that Toronto gets all of the attention due to media concentration there, but doesn’t really warrant it. Toronto wants to be world-class, but really isn’t. But the nice thing about a feature-length doc is that it allows for a bit of digging; when a few people are pressed about their own working lives and what constitutes success, they acknowledge that in order to hit the big time, one often imagines having to move to Toronto.
Urban angst
As a Montreal ex-pat, Nerenberg knew all about hating the place down the 401. “In Montreal, we’re bred to hate Toronto. So many people felt forced to move here from Montreal, everyone just resented it and slammed it.” At the same time, he concedes, “There are things to love about Toronto. It’s not all evil.”
While giving non-Torontonian detractors a good chunk of screen time, Nerenberg moves into existential territory, allowing Torontonians to explore their own entirely mixed feelings about their burg. “Toronto is just a terribly stressful place to live. It can be an asshole machine. People are so worried about paying their mortgages, it creates all sorts of other problems, like road rage.”
Nerenberg also found that Toronto, arguably Canada’s most American city, suffers from many of the same problems that large urban centres south of the border do: congestion, pollution and out-of-control real estate prices. “The real estate prices make buying there akin to some kind of pyramid scheme,” he reports. “If you sell to buy another, it’s going to cost even more. People talk about Toronto’s diversity, but there’s no economic diversity. The only people who are served well in a place like Toronto are the very wealthy.”
Nerenberg also busts some of the myths surrounding T.O. In particular, for many years the city was repeating the mantra that their town had been declared the most diverse city in the world by the UN. But in fact, some investigation revealed that no such declaration had ever been made. This false info-bite had been repeated so many times in the media, it became a reality in many minds.
“The idea that Toronto is so diverse keeps getting repeated, but it’s not really true. If you walk into a TV station in Toronto, once you go past reception, you’re in honkytown. It’s the same thing with city council. There are a couple of non-white people, but for the most part, it’s also honkytown. And Bay Street? Honkytown!”
The good part about Toronto is that “the people really have a sense of humour about themselves. They have taken this film in the spirit in which it was intended, there have been no hard feelings.”
And, having completed the project, does Nerenberg have any great pearls of wisdom about the main difference between Montreal and Toronto? “In Montreal, people drink themselves to death. In Toronto, they die of stress.”
Let’s All Hate Toronto screens on Saturday,
July 14, 7 p.m., at the Cinéma Imperial, with
directors Albert Nerenberg and Robert
Spence in attendance
Cro’ knows
>>Former Expo Warren Cromartie on coaching, swearing, Japanese baseball and the
documentary Season of the Samurai
BLACK SAMURAI: Cromartie and the Bears
by ERIK LEIJON
“It’s about one old-school major leaguer. One black samurai, managing 28 Japanese ballplayers,” is the very succinct description former Montreal Expo and Japanese baseball great Warren Cromartie has for Season of the Samurai, the baseball documentary that will make its Montreal premiere at Comedia on July 12. Cromartie, a larger-than-life character who will seemingly try almost anything once, made his managerial debut in 2005 for the Japan Samurai Bears, a travelling baseball team made up entirely of Japanese players in California’s independent Golden Baseball League.
It was the team’s only season, but the contrast between the hard-nosed, passionate Cromartie and the inexperienced, reserved Japanese players made for an interesting story, and directors Matthew Asner and Danny Gold captured the best moments of the 96-day, 90-game season. Cromartie may have seemed like an odd choice to manage a team of Japanese players in America, but he’s still a legend in Japan, where he starred for the Tokyo Giants for seven seasons from 1984–’90.
“I know the mentality and I know the work ethic of Japanese players, and they didn’t complain for 90 days on the bus,” the 53-year-old said from his home in Miami. “If I had North American players, they would be bitching the whole time.”
Part of the learning process for the players was to learn the nuances of the North American style of game—including how to properly swear at umpires. The film starts with a staged scene in the dressing room, where Cromartie teaches how to properly enunciate terms such as “fucking amateur” to his largely non-English-speaking players.
Fond of the F-bomb
What Cromartie didn’t realize until watching the documentary premiere in Santa Barbara earlier this year was that during one of the games, the players took bets on how many times he would say “fuck,” keeping score with a counter. The number far exceeded the century mark, “Supposedly I dropped the F-bomb more times in that game than Al Pacino did in Scarface,” he says jokingly. Many of his in-season tirades were caught by the filmmakers, but Cromartie insists that none of his actions were showing for the camera, but merely Cro’ being Cro’.
Cromartie can also sympathize with the acclimation process of his young squad, since after a successful stint playing for the Montreal Expos from 1974–’83, he signed a seven-figure contract to play in Tokyo, where he similarly was a fish out of water. The character of Max “Hammer” Dubois in the 1992 film Mr. Baseball (played by Dennis Haysbert) is loosely based on Cro’s experience as a gaijin (foreigner) in Japan, and in 1991, he wrote his autobiography, Slugging It Out in Japan: An American Major-Leaguer in the Tokyo Outfield.
“I didn’t think the guys knew what they were in for, and at times they were overwhelmed with the play. I was rough on them, I was tough on them, but we had some fun also. I didn’t want them coming over and thinking this was a Disneyland trip.”
During his time in Japan, he admits it was difficult at first to make the adjustment, both on and off the field. “Playing with the Giants, it was like the Yankees and Dodgers combined,” he says, adding that he returns to Japan two or three times a year to do promotional events, including his first-ever wrestling match this past June.
A self-professed legend in Japan, Cromartie remains a well-known former Expo in Montreal—three days after his in-ring debut against Tiger Jeet Singh, he was at Jarry Park for the ALS charity softball game with fellow ’Spos Bill Gullickson, Bill Lee and Andre Dawson.
Either in America or Japan, Cro’ hopes his time with the Samurai Bears will help him land a managing gig elsewhere. He would love to manage in Japan (where American managers are becoming more prevalent) but says the Japanese leagues have been forever changed with the best Japanese players coming to America. “It’s become a minor league for Major League Baseball. They would rather watch the Ichiros and Matzusakas (Japanese players who play in America) on television. It’s never going to be the same again.”
Season of the Samurai plays
at Cinéma Imperial tonight,
thursday, July 12, 7 p.m., $9
>>
Movie Listings
Screening with laughter
>> More projected hilarity at Comedia
by MARK SLUTSKY
It ain’t just baseball players and Toronto haters at this year’s Comedia, as the fest has scored a clutch of Hollywood premieres, celeb hosting spots and plenty of shorts. The festival’s biggest ticket is probably the premiere of Hairspray, the musical film based on the stage musical based on the film by John Waters, and starring John Travolta. The latest from that bumbling Brit Mr. Bean will also make its bow at the fest with a presentation of Mr. Bean’s Holiday, featuring Rowan Atkinson in attendance.
The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry will be around to introduce The Ten, a comedy based on the 10 commandments from Ken Marino and David Wain, of Wet Hot American Summer and The State fame, and featuring a grab-bag of stars like Winona Ryder and Jessica Alba (neither of whom, sadly, will be in attendance themselves).
If you’ve got a longing for shorts, there are plenty of bite-sized yuks to be consumed. None other than Marlon Wayans hosts the Best of Comedia, and of course there’s always the Eat My Shorts and Eat My Twisted Shorts programmes. The Big Stars, Short Films showcase is pretty self-explanatory, featuring movies with “big stars” like Sean Astin, Rainn Wilson and Bob Geldof, and there’s also the NBC Comedy Short Cuts show, showcasing stuff from the 2006 Comedy Short Cuts DiverseCity Festival. Oh yeah, and 100% Animation, which is almost entirely animated. All in all, there are something like 125 mini-movies from around the world.
Finally, if you find yourself loitering around the “Cineplex Entertainment Terrace” (read: Emery and St-Denis), check out a selection of short flicks that’ll be projected outdoors during the festival.
For more information and showtimes,
see www.hahaha.com |
