Brave Films Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever

Over the last decade-and-a-half, The Toronto International Film Festival has grown from a blip on the cinematic radar screen to one of the biggest and most influential annual events on the movie industry calendar. Now, Brave Films Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever by Maclean's entertainment writer Brian D. Johnsoncelebrates this festival's evolution through a broad-sweeping and compelling analysis of its turbulent and colourful legacy. From the heated wars over government censorship to its coming-of-age in the '80s and '90s where alternative film hipsters gather alongside Hollywood icons every year, this book offers an authoritative and entertaining historical analysis of North America's premiere cinematic spectacle.

A retrospective look at one of the world''s premier film festivals. The Toronto International Film Festival was created 25 years ago by a bunch of high-rolling Canadian impresarios. Since then it has grown from a rude upstart to one of the world''s largest and most influential film festivals -- second in importance only to Cannes.

The Toronto International Film Festival has a deliriously split personality, playing host both to Hollywood stars -- from Warren Beatty to Tom Cruise -- and to the renegades of independent cinema. And its own flamboyant history mirrors that of the art it has showcased.

This is a story of a volatile marriage between the counter-culture and the mainstream. From the fabled battles with Canadian censors to near riots outside cinemas, excitement and controversy have always been integral to the Festival. The Festival was famous for its parties. And in the early years it underwent a turbulent rite of passage, with tales of sex, drugs, and rock ''n ''roll involving such guests as Robbie Robertson, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro.

But as the Festival matured, it became famous for its films. Among the landmark features launched at the Festival are The Big Chill, Diva, Chariots of Fire, Reservoir Dogs, Dead Ringers, Boogie Nights, Leaving Las Vegas, To Die For and Life is Beautiful. The Festival has also discovered hit documentaries, such as Michael Moore''s Roger and Me, and found a North American audience for international directors such as Krzysztof Kieslowski and Wong Kar-Wai.

Brave Films, Wild Nights will chronicle the 25 years of the Toronto International Film Festival, and will feature numerous photographs and fresh interviews with stars and directors who have made it the extraordinary cirque of cinema that it is today.

A retrospective look at one of the world''s premier film festivals. The Toronto International Film Festival was created 25 years ago by a bunch of high-rolling Canadian impresarios. Since then it has grown from a rude upstart to one of the world''s largest and most influential film festivals -- second in importance only to Cannes.
The Toronto International Film Festival has a deliriously split personality, playing host both to Hollywood stars -- from Warren Beatty to Tom Cruise -- and to the renegades of independent cinema. And its own flamboyant history mirrors that of the art it has showcased.
This is a story of a volatile marriage between the counter-culture and the mainstream. From the fabled battles with Canadian censors to near riots outside cinemas, excitement and controversy have always been integral to the Festival. The Festival was famous for its parties. And in the early years it underwent a turbulent rite of passage, with tales of sex, drugs, and rock ''n ''roll involving such guests as Robbie Robertson, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro.
But as the Festival matured, it became famous for its films. Among the landmark features launched at the Festival are "The Big Chill, Diva, Chariots of Fire, Reservoir Dogs, Dead Ringers, Boogie Nights, Leaving Las Vegas, To Die For and "Life is Beautiful. The Festival has also discovered hit documentaries, such as Michael Moore''s "Roger and Me, and found a North American audience for international directors such as Krzysztof Kieslowski and Wong Kar-Wai.
"Brave Films, Wild Nights will chronicle the 25 years of the Toronto International Film Festival, and will feature numerous photographs and fresh interviews with stars anddirectors who have made it the extraordinary cirque of cinema that it is today.

Based in Toronto, Brian D. Johnson is the film critic and senior entertainment writer at Maclean''s. He has written for magazines ranging from Saturday Night to Rolling Stone and appears weekly on television to talk about film. His published books include several works of non-fiction, a volume of poetry and a novel, Volcano Days.

This interview was originally featured on the Chapters.ca site in September 2000.

Chapters.ca's Rae Ann Fera had the opportunity to speak with MacLean's film critic and author of Brave Films, Wild Nights about 25 years of Toronto International Film Festival history.

IN THE BEGINNGING...

Chapters.ca: Can you talk a little bit about the resistance the festival met from the Toronto media in the beginning?

Brian D. Johnson: I think it's very Canadian, that sort of scepticism. If you look at Toronto before the festival and Toronto after the festival there are lots of reasons to believe that the festival couldn't happen here. The festival was sort of a civilizing influence; it's turned Toronto into a cosmopolitan city.

Conversely, before the festival started, Toronto was quite parochial in a lot of ways and I don't think people had the vision to imagine that we could have a major film festival in the city. I think they were sceptical because of the bluster of the organizers.

Also, a lot of the promises didn't pay off that first year. Bill Marshall promised to deliver Jack Nicholson, Julie Christie, Robert Towne . . . none of these people showed up.

Chapters.ca: How has that relationship changed now?

Johnson: Well, now the media has a complete love affair with the film festival. The festival can do no wrong.

I think the media realizes that the festival is the best thing that ever happened to it in terms of arts and entertainment in this city. Also, I think the festival has been very savvy of the media. One of the reasons the festival succeeded so well right from the beginning is because it cultivated the media. Marshall and Dusty Cohl knew that the media were the key to success.

Chapters.ca: How did you think mainstream success has affected the film festival?

Johnson: I think it's a mixed blessing. It's a deal with the devil. Most people who have been around the festival for a while are nostalgic about the days when the festival was smaller, when you could see the buzz travel through the festival. It's harder to do that now. I think of it sort of like trying to pick out stars in the night sky in a city when it's full of light. It's much harder to make discoveries now that you made before. There is just so much going on.

On the hand, what are you going to do? Are you going to say, "sorry, we don't want Robert DeNiro, we don't want Tom Cruise?" I think we just have to be very careful that we don't let Hollywood run away with the festival.

Chapters.ca: You refer to Hollywood as the "Hollywood Machine" in the book. How do you think this machine has affected the development of Canadian film in general?

Johnson: Well, I don't think it's had an affect one way or the other. You could say it's affected it in the sense that the Hollywood machine fuels the festival, and the festival tends to promote Canadian film. It uses this big gala stage as a way of throwing the spotlight on Canadian film -- particularly on opening night, where one Canadian film gets to play queen for a night. But those are really the two opposite worlds.

I think the festival has different cultures within it. The people who like to go to the galas are not the same people who like to go to strange Japanese movies. The odd thing about the festival is that you can't get in to Canadian films half the time. It's a really hot ticket, Perspective Canada. The festival goes out and courts Hollywood and then goes and showcases Canadian film.

CENSORSHIP, IDENTITY AND CANADIAN CINEMA

Chapters.ca: You touched on the issue of censorship a moment ago. One of the biggest obstacles the festival faced in the early years was the Ontario Censor Board. What changed over the years that made them back off?

Johnson: I think they basically wore the Censor Board down. It was a lot of work for the Censor Board because all of a sudden in the fall they had 300 films screening over 10 days. The Board had to look at every damn one of them. So after a while the Censor Board decided to go to a documentation system, where they would look at press notes and summaries of films and decide which ones they wanted to see. And now it's got to the point there's not really any censorship at all.

Chapters.ca: One of the stories I found extraordinary was the case of In Praise of Older Women, where they had both the censored and uncensored reels in the projection booth. And festival film reviewer Martin Heath just revealed in the book that the uncensored reel was in fact shown. It took so many years for the truth of that screening to come out, which begs the question, are we still afraid of censorship?

Johnson: Well, if anybody had tried to get this out of Martin earlier, my guess is that he wouldn't have told them. Martin is very secretive. Well, secretive is not fair . . . Martin lives in his own little underground. Martin acts as if he's part of strange guerrilla movement or would like to think that perhaps there is still some danger in that secret. But you know you are breaking the law by interfering with the Board like that. And I think the penalties are quite considerable, so these people were quite scared of what they were doing.

Censorship was a double-edged sword. It created a lot of buzz around these films; it was great for the local media and the local profile of the festival. On the other hand it was quite embarrassing for the festival because a lot of the films [being censored] were not Canadian films they were international films. It's very embarrassing to have filmmakers come in from around the world into this one-horse town where someone decides their film can't be shown.

Chapters.ca: At one point in the book you mentioned that English-Canadian film suffered a lack of identity. Has the festival helped Canadian film develop it's own identity?

Johnson: It's just helped Canadian film, period. If you look at English-Canadian film as we know it now, with a few exceptions like Goin Down the Road, there was no Canadian cinema. The festival helped develop a group identity.

Also the festival provided a sort of goal. Getting a film into the festival was like heaven. It's like being discovered by Hollywood, locally speaking. Atom Egoyan still looks back at his first feature accepted. In fact, he's still got the voicemail tape on which the programmer called and told him his film had been accepted.

The festival community was just that, a community. And if you think of the Canadian film community, what it is , where does it meet, what is it physically? Well, the festival gives a physical manifestation to that community for 10 days. So I think the festival provides a hothouse environment for English-Canadian films.

Chapters.ca: Has Canadian cinema been successful in its growth in breaking the stranglehold from American film? Is it going to?

Johnson: No, I don't think it's going to. And also, I don't think you can blame it on Hollywood. There is still an economic argument; the Americans control our distribution system. Distribution is how you fund production, so if Americans control your distribution how are you ever going to fund production except through a dribble of grants through the public sector. But Canadians are not going to make films on the scale of Hollywood unless we go to Hollywood.

The other thing standing in our way is the kind of films we make. We're a very different kind of culture from the United States or even Australia for that matter. We're not a larger than life culture. We're not a heroic culture.

Consequently, we tend to make more introverted films and they don't play well commercially. They can't be expected to. But some of them are extremely interesting. The directors who have tried hardest to stay true to their vision, and do not sell out to something more commercial, in the end, they prevail.

People tend to think there is only one kind of success to movie making. But you know if we applied the same standards to literature, we'd be dead. When we look at literature we don't think everything should be like Tom Clancy or Stephen King. Literature that doesn't sell like that but is critically esteemed is considered to have some shelf life and is considered more valuable in the long run than another potboiler.

I think we have to be tolerant to art in filmmaking as well because when filmmaking is that dominant in the culture, it's much harder to find a place for movies that are quiet, interesting, challenging, disturbing.

FESTIVAL DIRT

Chapters.ca: What was the lowest point of the film festival?

Johnson: I think when Leonard Schein, and I mean no disrespect to Leonard, took over the festival there was basically a mutiny over his leadership. There was a really sense of the festival expelling someone who was not of their culture. I don't think it was just a matter a clique expelling someone who was not cool; I think it's got a lot do with the kind of values that are inherent in the festival community.

When I was writing this book I didn't really feel a responsibility to the organization -- none at all, really. They commissioned me to write the book and then I struck a deal that if I wrote it, it would be completely independent; I would have complete control over it. But I did feel a responsibility to the festival community, because that's the core readership of the book and they're not a corporation, they're a community.

Chapters.ca: So of all your time at the festival what were some of the wildest moments?

Johnson: Well, I still remember the Beatty tribute as being pretty exciting. Seeing Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty I thought was a real kick. Seeing Nicholson and realizing what a huge star he was that all he had to do was put on a pair of lime green sunglasses and the crowd went wild. It was like watching a rock star.

The tributes inaugurated that Hollywood buzz around the festival has never really left it. That was its coming of age. Some people though that was the most exciting thing that could happen and others thought it was the beginning of the end. Sex, drugs, rock & roll and movie stars is a pretty potent combination.

It's funny, you know, I didn't write about myself in the book at all except for when I talk about driving film. There was a thrill of just driving a truck of celluloid around town, showing up at theatres, flinging film canisters around like weights at a gym and feeling really pumped, and going to parties. I had the hottest commodity in town. I think the most fun I've had at the festival is driving film.

Chapters.ca: What was best film you've ever seen at the festival?

Johnson: Well, I can only think of the most recent best film. But the most recent best film I've seen was Beau Travail, which was the last film I saw in the 1999 festival. It hasn't been released yet and I don't think it will.

It was such a strange and marvellous film, one of those ones you hear a little bit of a buzz and then your eyes just pop out of your head -- you can't believe what you're seeing. It was just pure poetry. For me that's really exciting. There's nothing arid about that. It's like sex -- it's just completely liquid on screen.

That's what you go to a festival to see. It's a bit like being a junkie. You're looking for the really good stuff, the pure stuff -- not that I've ever been a junkie or know what it's like to be a junkie -- but I think there's something very drug-like about the experience. It's like being at a festival and sinking yourself into the films -- you enter a dreamtime.

THE FUTURE...

Chapters.ca: So what's in store for the next 25 years of the festival?

Johnson: The festival has continued to grow every year in the last little while. I can't see that continuing. I hope that it doesn't continue. If it does, it'll be bigger than Cannes, which will not be a pretty sight. At least in Cannes, you're on the French Riviera, but something on the scale of Cannes in Toronto sounds nightmarish to me.

I see the festival as a bit of a trust. Not in a financial sense, but sort of a sacred trust. The people running it really have a mandate to create a space for us to see the movies that we don't get to see normally and that's the most important thing about it. We just have to be very wary of letting it slip into the wrong hands.

Chapters.ca: Who are your favourite authors?

Johnson: It would sound pretentious -- Shakespeare. These days I like Russell Banks, Michael Ondaatje. I'm in love with Anne Carson. I used to be a big Thomas Hardy fan when I was a teenager. I always draw a blank when I'm asked that because they're always so obvious. Fitzgerald. I like Ian McEwan a lot -- I like that kind of writing. Spare, kind of dark, no words wasted. I have trouble with big fat novels; I like shrewd, economical works of fiction.

Chapters.ca: Are you reading anything now?

Johnson: No, I had a summer vacation where I read a whole whack of books. I discovered Anne Carson and read all of her works. Read some Russell Banks, read Experience by Martin Amis, which annoyed me. But at the moment I'm too busy. I find at this time of year I read magazines.