Days 2 and 3 were quite a whirwind so I had no time to blog--which is the way it should be, after all. (No, I didn't see any "celebrities," just huge crowds of people gathered around taking pictures of them.)
After sleeping in (I'm getting too old for 9am screenings after party nights) we started Saturday off with a bit of hanging around festival HQ next to the Lightbox just to have a coffee and take in the madness. Had we been a little more bold (or desperate) and a little less proud, we could have run up to Ted Hope (the indie producer/god with over 100 titles to his credit) and others, with our script. But that is not our style; with all the Blackberries going off and industry-types milling about, we were out of there after an hour or so.
Our film of the day (ticket prices are so prohibitive that we had to limit ourselves) was FUBAR-director Michael Dowse's new movie, Goon. After the last night's heart-wrenching Marécages, we were in the mood for a comedy and this one delivered the goods. I am a long-time Dowse fan but had heard absolutely nothing about Goon before going in, so it was even more of a pleasant surprise. The screenplay was co-written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg (whose previous credits include Superbad and Knocked Up) and was delightfully over-the-top, as was Baruchel's performance as the foul-mouthed, mercurial sleaze-ball host of "Hot Ice", a web TV show devoted to minor-league hockey fights and hits. Dowse introduced the film saying it's been a hard few months for hockey goons (referring to the untimely deaths of enforcers Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak) and he said that although this film is a comedy and has "no social agenda whatsoever," his heart goes out to these guys and their families. Someone asked him in the Q & A if this film is an attempt to move away from FUBAR and into the mainstream, and he replied that he doesn't know what mainstream is, he just wants to make good movies. The refreshing thing about Dowse is that his movies have a lot of heart (often lacking in our cerebral, ironic national cinema). Furthermore, this film is an interesting case study of what is possible when a bunch of Canadians who have "made it" in Hollywood get together to make a movie in Canada--hopefully this time the distribution won't get bungled and it will be widely seen.
The rest of my stay at the festival was pretty much devoted to the business side: cocktails and schmoozing. For the first time, I really felt that we were getting somewhere and by coincidence we crossed paths with many of the people we were hoping to talk to and some unexpected ones too. As a writer/director I'm often more comfortable in my bubble off in a corner somewhere, but I'm gradually learning not to try too hard and simply be myself in these situations. It can definitely be overwhelming trying to make meaningful conversation with dozens upon dozens of strangers, but that is why there are free drinks. In the end, I felt like we are finally starting to make the right connections and come across kindred spirits who are actually willing to help. They are out there--it just takes a lot of beating around the bush to find them. With a bit of post-festival follow-up, who knows what could happen?
My stay was only three days but that was just enough; a person can only take so much schmoozing, boozing and waiting in line (we actually decided to step out of the rush line for Take this Waltz just before the start because there were so many people our seats would have been terrible). Some of us may have day jobs to get back to, but attending the festival makes us feel like filmmakers again. Regardless of the outcome, I had a good time at TIFF this year.
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