By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com

Confessions of A Film Festival Junkie: Toronto Day One

Posted Wednesday, September 7th, 2016 - Comments Off on Confessions of A Film Festival Junkie: Toronto Day One
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I’ve attended the Toronto International Film Festival since when it was still called The Festival of Festivals, a moniker discarded in 1994. There have other changes across the years, of course. It’s been a long time since  TIFF could be shorthanded as a “plucky” or “upstart” festival.

tiffWhen Dusty Kohl, Bill Marshall and other conspirators concocted the first edition on the terrace of Cannes’ Carlton Hotel (print the legend, please), they couldn’t have imagined their modest brainchild would one day be spoken of in the same breath as the fest on the Croisette.

Toronto is the only great film showcase created by businessmen. That’s not as a smear. Cynicism aside, the founders loved movies. Their bottom-line instincts didn’t hurt, since it’s always been show and business in the Canadian metropolis that spent decades erasing its late nineteenth century image as “Hogtown.”

tiffOnce I arrived, I ran into a handful of film folk collecting their fest passes. If the mood wasn’t exactly jolly, you could blame it on jetlag or the unseasonably hot, sticky weather in southern Ontario. Everyone’s here to work, not hard physical exertion, but at least buying, selling, extolling or discovering an accomplishment among the 350 plus features that have been programmed.

It would be easy to neglect the local audience that embraced TIFF from day one. Their enthusiasm remains legendary and film buyers have always been fond of murmuring that you never acquire a movie out of a positive public screening. The one thing that makes me queasy about the fest today is the literal separation of public and industry. It is an event on two tracks, and an industry attendee could schedule nothing but press & industry screenings for their entire stay.

tiffStill, Toronto is one of the few festivals that challenge all who wade into her waters. Some arrive with specific agendas, and they may be the lucky ones. The obvious virtues of TIFF are like the visible part of the iceberg: a majority is hidden, and finding the really good stuff will take patience and diligence.

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Posted in Festivals, MCN Originals, Movie City News, TIFF Originals, Toronto Film Festival | Comments Off on Confessions of A Film Festival Junkie: Toronto Day One

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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