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Leonard Klady

By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, September 12th, 2010 - Comments Off on Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie
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Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie

In the early days of the Toronto International Film Festival (then known as the Festival of Festivals) its chief nemesis was the World Film Festival in Montreal that immediately preceded it on the calendar. About a decade back the WFF imploded following government investigations and rival local events that nonetheless failed to put a stake through its heart. It still exists but at a considerably diminished level from its heyday.

Despite overlapping schedules, Toronto has never really viewed Venice as competition. The two events do share a significant number of films, particularly those from high profile filmmakers. Venice concluded yesterday with the announcement of its jury prize winners and all, with the exception of Somewhere by Sofia Coppola which took the top prize, are on the Toronto schedule.

One anticipated film that Toronto received the very first look see is Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter. It screened yesterday for press including the army of junket scribes that attend about 20 interview roundtables during TIFF’s opening weekend. They were grumbling about the filmmaker only doing two interviews during his stay and having to go to New York in October for the official press junket.

The film itself can glibly be described as Eastwood does Lelouch. The story, like many by the French writer-director, has multiple story lines involving people whose lives and tales are unconnected at least until the third act. At that point luck and coincidence take hold and, in the case of Hereafter, converge somewhat sentimentally as the principles deal with death and beyond. It’s a pretty good Lelouch and a pretty good Eastwood … but not great stuff.

Three days into the festival I’m feeling a little ambivalent about the paucity of press/industry screenings after 5 p.m. It appears that (at least during the weekend) the Scotia Bank multiplex is reluctant to give up evening screen time and the festival doesn’t quite have its home Lightbox in full operation enough to pick up the slack.

I say ambivalent because I’m using the night time to write and work and the routine of watching and writing seems significantly more grueling than in the past.

There also appears to be fewer regulars attending this year and I don’t feel like I’m getting the tom tom messages about interesting films. It may simply be the physical move this year that’s yet to establish a new buzz central or it might just be me. Grrrrrr.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon