Toronto 2005: Day Two - Confessions of a Festival Junkie

Day Two

The first full day of the Toronto Film Festival arrived about 8 a.m. and this particular cowpoke found himself crawling not jumping into the saddle.

Film festivals are rather unforgiving when it comes to human frailty. They do not adjust; they simply continue on in hopes of receiving the sort of favorable report Il Duce earned about keeping the railroads on time. The optimist had ambitions about seeing perhaps four films but as the day evolved an option had to be jettisoned.

Following a mid-morning screening I stopped by the press office to collect the day's mash notes from my cubicle. Jean-Pierre Tadross, a long time writer based in Montreal, who ran the now defunct Cinema Canada magazine, was just arriving fresh and gave me a hearty hello and congratulations. I assumed his respects related to the fact that I was on the jury but he was referring to something altogether different and unexpected.

He had seen a film in Montreal titled Silent Men and it just so happened (to be overly generous) that its star was this writer. Tadross appeared to be genuine in his compliments about my performance. I really couldn't disagree for the simple reason that I hadn't seen the film nor was I aware that the single day gig back around 2001 was ever going to see the light of day. I'm not sure that had I known about the festival screening that I would have mustered the courage to see the picture in such a nakedly public venue.

Before I press on about the film, I'd just like to point out that this was not my screen debut, even if it is of a piece in relationship to my other memorable cinematic performances. I can also briefly be seen in Beyond Kicks as a drug counselor and I was the convict being taken to prison in Tramp at the Door. At a press conference at the Banff Film Festival, when producer Dick Wolf received a career achievement award he talked about first arriving in Los Angeles intent to establish himself as a screenwriter and mentioned his first effort Skateboard. Reflexively, I found myself blurting out: "I was in Skateboard" and, to my embarrassment, disrupting the otherwise civilized press conference. I should also mention that I have had some professional acting training and worked in real theaters as a child before an epithermal moment at age 12 that made me realize this was not the career path I ought to be pursuing.

So the handful of subsequent forays have been brief and invariably done as "favors" for friends. My involvement in Silent Men stemmed from a phone call from Bashar Shbib, a filmmaker that had an indie success in 1991 with Julia Has Two Lovers that starred Daphna Kastner and David Duchovny. A talented and tireless director, Shbib was then living in Los Angeles and asked if I would play a part in a movie he was about to make. I instinctively said "yes" in part because I'd brushed off a similar request two years earlier from Henry Jaglom. My assumption was that the role would occur at a party and I might have a couple of stray lines of dialogue that were likely to be excised from the final cut.

The truth turned out to be slightly more daunting. Silent Men really stars Alexandra Woodward as a woman reaching a certain age who decides she wants to have a child before her biological clock runs down. To that end she begins auditioning several fathers including Paul (my character). For whatever reason, Shbib sensed that I could play someone that would not be incensed by such a proposal and would have his own perhaps less than honorable reasons for agreeing to such a pact. Go figure!

He completed the film but ran out of money to finish it and subsequently moved back to Montreal. Tadross's comment was that although I didn't get the girl, I was really good. Obviously the finishing funds finally arrived. About seven hours later another acquaintance offered second hand kudos from someone that had also seen the film and, at a festival lunch for the Canadian jury, I received a laugh when I forewarned everyone that I might have to opt out of the panel in the event that I was awarded an acting prize in Montreal.

The first jury session was primarily a meet and greet because obviously we hadn't seen a sufficient number of the 27 features to do much else. It was a pleasant diversion and a casual setting to talk with Piers Handling and Michele Maheux the CEO and managing director of the event. On opening night Maheux had told the crowd of patrons that Toronto was pound for pound the film festival with the largest and broadest spectrum of corporate and private sponsors, and I was curious about the research that led to that claim. I don't doubt the validity of the statement but she said it arose out of the fact that other majors festivals including Cannes, Berlin and Sundance have told them it was the case.

So briefly playing devil's advocate, I asked Handling what the biggest complaint was from their film goers. My guess was the ticket system and, while he conceded that it prompted some negative response because one can never create packages and access policies that suit every individual need, it's the actual price of individual tickets and specialized packages that most often comes up as a complaint. Still, he didn't particularly view this as something in anyway crippling to the future of the festival.

Toronto's problems tend to be the sort that stem from fabulous success and popularity and are the type of headaches aspiring venues would love to experience. It's an extremely well attended event both on a public basis and in terms of industry participation and media coverage. Very high profile films and filmmakers want to be present but from that perspective they prefer a considerably compressed schedule and that's evolved into a showcase that's more and more viewed as front loaded. Certainly the higher profile movies among the 300 plus selections almost exclusively debut on the opening weekend and if there are "discoveries" to be had during its waning days, they don't receive comparable media support because a significant part of the international press corps has also vacated.

But Toronto is also a hometown happening and its clear its organizers want it to sustain excitement from beginning to end. So what can it do to satisfy local needs and those of buyers, sellers and personalities arriving from the film capitals of the world? The answer, whatever it may be, is what separates the great film festivals from those that have their moment in the sun and realize too late that night has descended.

by Leonard Klady