Looking for Richard by Aaron Kopff on September 9th, 2009

One of my fondest memories is skipping school in in grade 11 to go see Al Pacino’s directorial debut “Looking For Richard” with my mom at the Uptown Theater.  The moms was really excited to see one of her heros: lil’ Al. This was back in the days of me obsessively quoting Glengarry Glen Ross and besides her being a huge fan of his, my constant screams of “Patel, Fuck You! Fucking Shiva handing this guy a million dollars told him sign the deal he wouldn’t sign!” made the experience a night to remember. She got us tickets for the premiere and it was going to be our first film festival experience. I think it wasn’t even referred to as the Toronto International Film Festival at that point, or maybe I just wasn’t aware of the hype. The truth is there was very little hype. It was still a big deal for movie fans, four of which seemed to follow me to every screening I went to, but there was a lot of talk about how big movie stars liked Toronto because they could be left alone. There were no big red carpets and people would almost treat them like they were regular people. So there was lil’ Al Pacino standing on stage at the Uptown 1 answering all the stupid film fest goers questions we love to hate. Al had to catch a plane and left right away, my mother got to see the actor she loved since she first saw The Godfather, and I got to see a great movie that might never get released. Or at least see it before anyone else. I attended the film festival for many years after that and I got to see it grow in a number of ways. More movies, more theaters, and more hype. I don’t know if these days I can have anymore warm fuzzing moments about the film festival. The lines are huge, the ticket price is almost double of a regular movie (back then it was even cheaper than going to the movies), and now even a Canadian filmmaker has withdrawn his film from the festival (article here) for political reasons. I make films and when I went to the fest all those years ago I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe. I thought that maybe one day I could be up there with my movie premiere. That I could be answering questions like “How much did your film cost to make?” and “What happens to the boy at the end of the movie?”. I thought about how happy my mother would be to see me up there. Now all I think about is this. Brian DePalma’s The Fury, where Amy Irving blows up the Godfather of independent cinema John Cassavetes with her mind. Interesting side note about Amy…Spielberg hit that…

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