When worlds collide
>> The Toronto International Film Festival presents an odd and often uneasy mix of art and commerce

by MATTHEW HAYS

What arts journalist could complain about the kind of access you’re granted at the Toronto International Film Festival? As per usual, the caseload of major talent attending is staggering. In one day—this past Monday, in fact—I spoke with Todd Haynes, Paul Schrader, Willem Dafoe, Greg Kinnear, Mike Leigh and David Cronenberg. It’s worth repeating: that’s in one day alone.

The festival standout, I report with little doubt, is Michael Moore’s latest first-person documentary, Bowling for Columbine. Even being a Moore freak, my expectations were outdone; this is a surreal, incredible and exemplary look at the state of America, something that’s wrongly being billed a pro-gun-control movie. It isn’t at all, as Moore told me: “No, that’s the funny thing about this. People are talking about it that way, but it’s not. Basically, I’m agreeing with the NRA. When they say that ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,’ I’m sort of agreeing, except that I would say, ‘Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.’”

In typical Moore style, he takes on virtually everyone involved in the gun lobby, from NRA rank and file members to the mighty Charlton Heston, who appears in the film’s final moments, in a delicious interview that’s every bit as tasty as you’ve heard. The film won an anniversary award at Cannes, and its winning roll continues here. The film has been completely sold out and audiences could be heard weeping during its heavier moments, as well as punctuating each screening with standing ovations. Moore takes on everyone, and everything, imaginable, juxtaposing never-before-seen footage of the Columbine massacre with the bomb factories that exist not too far away (where parents of many of the students at Columbine work) with gonzo interviews with Heston, Marilyn Manson and Dick Clark. Moore also includes some history-lesson interludes; one montage, about American foreign policy and interventions, concludes with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of last year; I often wondered how the shot of the second plane slicing into the World Trade Center would feel when it played on the big screen, as opposed to TV. It’s incredibly powerful, especially when Moore cranks up the irony volume by playing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” to accompany it.

Northern exposure
The Great White North plays a co-starring role in the film, as Moore points out that Canada, in fact, has loads of guns kicking around, but that Canadians seem far less inclined to pick up firearms and shoot one another than Americans. This is a particularly brave film for Moore to have made; one major distribution company in the U.S. has already refused to carry it in their cinemas. And Moore found his producers not in America, but in Canada. (Alliance-Atlantis backed the project.) The film is currently slated for an October release.

Sitting down to talk with other celebrities felt like a scene out of one of Moore’s movies, seeing as the studio slated me in for a quickie with Pierce Brosnan, 007 himself. The Irish gent was busy promoting his latest film, Evelyn, a tearjerker about a man attempting to get his children back from the authorities after he’s deemed unfit to single parent. Naturally, while people did politely ask him questions about the family melodrama he was here primarily to hawk, reporters were soon asking him nagging questions about a certain British agent with a license to kill.

Brosnan, frankly, seemed bored by the whole affair. So I thought it fair to throw some much-needed spice into the scrum. “In your interpretation of James Bond,” I pondered, “could you see him swinging both ways, as in having any bisexual tendencies?”
A pause. Brosnan didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Who are you writing for??!” he asked.
“Well, I write for the Montreal Mirror, but I also occasionally contribute to The Advocate,” I responded.

“No, I think it safe to say he’s pretty much a ladies’ man.” Brosnan then comments that he gets “a lot of Bond questions, too many. But that’s a good one. I’ve never had that one before.”

Cronenberg’s latest, Spider, is the haunting tale of one man’s insanity. Ralph Fiennes is striking in the lead, playing an emotionally hobbled man whose traumas catch up with him as he looks back on his parents’ troubled marriage and the murder of his mother. Cronenberg insists he was not the least bit put off by the placement of Atom Egoyan’s genocide drama, Ararat, as the opening film at the festival. “The festival has always embraced my work and been incredibly supportive. They need a certain kind of film to open the festival. Not everyone at opening night is necessarily a diehard filmgoer, rather, there are sponsors there and government officials attending. It didn’t bother me in the least.”

Speaking of festival politics, it should be noted that much of the chatter around the film-critic water cooler often winds its way back to Montreal. “Do you think the World Film Festival will ever get better?” is a common refrain. The answer is a difficult one; most of us from la belle province simply shake our heads in both embarrassment and disgust. It’s a depressing scene, one that’s played out far, far too often. Apparently, the WFF tanked so badly this year because fest ringmaster Serge Losique was spending too much time focusing on being a documentary filmmaker. Choose your target, man, and let someone else take over the festival. At this point, it’s clear almost irreparable damage has been done to our city’s international reputation as a festival stopover.

The real thing
Funny as it may seem, I ventured away from the new film fest fare to take in a film by Allan King. The festival is rightly honouring the trailblazing filmmaker with a retrospective. The man’s work is astonishing, from his A Married Couple to Warrendale, the latter I’d never seen until this past week. It’s an incredible film, focusing on a home for emotionally disturbed children. The film drew loud praise in the late ’60s for its unblinking look at this group of kids and their social workers, who are committed to the cause but are flawed like anyone might be under this kind of pressure. The film has many despairing moments; throughout, children who are having emotional fits are constrained by social workers, in a therapy that seems extremely misguided. (Today, of course, the children would simply be drugged into oblivion.) This film really must be re-released or broadcast again on TV. It’s a documentary both stunning and devastating. I’m also stricken with curiosity about these kids. Where did they go? Where did they end up? Did this therapy help them? It’s been over 30 years—I think it’s high time for a followup sequel. I want to know what became of these charming, troubled kids.

Operating on a far more prurient level is Paul Schrader’s latest, Auto Focus, the lurid tale of Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane. The sitcom staple had a legendary fixation with homemade pornography, a penchant that, this film suggests, led to his downfall. (Crane was bludgeoned to death with a camera tripod in the late ’70s.) The film supports the theory that Crane (played by Greg Kinnear in the movie) was murdered by an adoring bisexual pal (played by Willem Dafoe). Any worries this falls into the age-old cinematic cliché of repressed homosexuality making people crazed psychotic killers? “No, not at all,” says Schrader. “[Dafoe’s character] was very open about his sexuality in real life, so that doesn’t support the repressed part of the equation.”

It must be noted that the festival is part victim to its own success. While there are lots of great films here, for the duration of the event Toronto seems to become the 51st state of America. There is plenty of arrogance here. And there’s no shortage of adoring fans and star-worshipping, shitty journalists to prop up the arrogance. And with so many screenings, so many interviews to conduct and so much festival traffic, film critic tempers inevitably flare.

Take last Saturday night, for example, when Todd Haynes’ exquisite Far From Heaven (a vague remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows) had its press/industry screening (not open to the public). Typically, there weren’t enough seats at the cinema to accommodate the massive hype surrounding the movie, which stars Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid. Legendary thumbmeister Roger Ebert was fuming at the prospect of not making it in, and began to make a rather humongous stink. “Why are you letting those people in??!” he yelled at one of the festival volunteers. She remained cool and collected, explaining to his majesty that the screenings had to be conducted on a first come, first served basis. This didn’t wash with Ebert.

“You mean to tell me that critics from the New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times aren’t going to get into this movie??” he shrieked, turning a candy-apple shade of red.

This was too much for little old backwater me to bear. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, perhaps it was too many movies in a row, but I felt his giving fest volunteers a bad time was simply nasty and arrogant, and had no place at a Canuck-run festival that is run on good manners and graciousness.

“Go back to America!” I yelled. This shut Ebert up, who then turned an unusual shade of purple. He and his entourage of Yankee critics left shortly thereafter, overheard to be discussing a nearby place where they could wolf down some chicken. It was an emblematic moment in a festival that is as filled with nasty film-biz types as it is genuine cinema worth celebrating. :

The Toronto International Film Festival runs until Sept. 14

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