Toronto Dispatch: A TIFF Primer from guest blogger Taylor

We've invited two guests to file reports for us from the Toronto Film Festival. First up is Taylor Barratt. Taylor is a senior software engineer, who is also an amateur motorsports competitor in his "other life" – one whom spends much of the time at the track defending his priorities how film festivals come before race events. He's a fan of the ridiculously entertaining (Singing in the Rain, Bring It On), and the technically brilliant (JFK, Requiem for a Dream) and always hungry for a touch of the masterfully peculiar (Jacob's Ladder, Mulholland Drive). Tay lives in Toronto, Canada, has submitted a motorsport related television show pilot and is still working on sorting out ideas for his first short film...which is funny since he knows nothing about short films.

Check his first entry, "A Toronto Film Festival Primer", after the jump.

So I’ve offered to be one of two people covering the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival for Cinematical. I thought perhaps a good way to introduce myself and the festival to the readers would be to paint a little picture involving some personal history of the festival since my wife and I started attending 5 years ago.

In 2000, I first discovered the festival existed when reading the localpaper. “Wow… this thing sounds great!” Problem was, it was so close to the start of the festival we had missed what we later learned was the “Advanced Ticketing Procedure,” and even after standing at the front of the GALA ticket lineup for 3 hours we were treated to a lot of red markings on top of many of the 20 Gala Titles reading “RUSH ONLY”.

“Rush? What does that mean?”
“Sold out?!?”
“How could they be sold out already?”

To add insult to injury, being the total greenbacks we were, what we left with were tickets to 3 GALA films at a whopping $25 per  ticket: The Weight of Water, The Luzhin Defense, and The Dish. A painful lesson indeed as we ended up missing some actual good Galas, such as Almost Famous, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Sexy Beast.

However we quickly learned of the film festival website and the next round of tickets to go on sale, the single (non-gala) tickets. So, skipping work, I made sure we got a good position in that line. But once again, as we approached the ticket office doors, the film lists were covered in ‘RUSH ONLY’ again. *Sigh*.

At the end of this process we left with tickets to a handful of films, none of which we were initially looking for… but fortunately for  us, some of the GALA films had availability in their second screenings. So not only did we manage to get tickets to what turned out to be one of the funniest screenings ever (Best in Show), but we also managed to fumble and blunder our way onto a couple amazing films, most notably the world premieres of Momento, Requiem for a Dream, and Before Night Falls.

Let's jump to 2003: an old friend of ours came along to attend all the screenings with us, and having 3 people really helped make the 28-screening schedule bearable. The prices continued to climb, but the Uptown Theater was still standing. However, its fate was sealed and it was to be closed immediately following the festival. Once again, my bad luck with the audience award winner reared its ugly head. However this time, I was much closer – I actually HELD a ticket for Zatoichi. But due to an unfortunate real-life scheduling conflict, I missed it.

However. we managed to come across many great films such as Pieces of April, The Green Butchers, the disturbing Indian film A Nation Without Women, after which a number of people in the audience, Indians, made many comments during the Q&A which initially seemed like outrage but later appeared to be embarrassment over the film's content. In fact my wife’s best friend, also Indian, was already trying to downplay the director to us before we even saw the film. However, the director was there, after the screening, to ensure no one could sugar coat the message in the film. This was executed with what in retrospect was admirable tact on both sides, and definitely a moment that could only occur in Toronto and with a film festival crowd.

That year the big buzz film was Ong-Bak which we were unable to score tickets for, instead going to see Miike’s Gozu after which my wife announced she would kill me if I made her sit through something like that again. Somehow, this year, we missed a few gems but left feeling we did see the best film that year, Lost in Translation. That year we sensed the festival had gotten a lot more popular in general, but also found ourselves unsuccessful the both times we stood in the Rush Line to see 21 Grams. This was a first.

2004 marked the first year without the Uptown theatre, which meant a replacement was needed. The result was the slightly larger, but much more uncomfortable, Ryerson University Theatre, located in the middle of downtown Yonge street not too far from the Elgin Theatre, but this year also added a couple screens from the Paramount Theatres, which… are not  close to anything. This in effect spread the festival out across the downtown core, which indeed impacted our movie schedule, as seeing a minimum of 29 films in 9.5 days requires some skill in scheduling and planning. You want to get in line well in advance of the screening, you want to attend as many Q&A sessions as possible, you need to find time to eat and also make it from one venue to another. With the festival being spread out so much that year, we focused mostly on the Ryerson and Elgin theatres. Ticket prices were now up to $18 and the festival was getting noticeably crowded.

Being sure we were going to hit the Audience Choice this year after having actually held a ticket the previous year, we were stoked, and certain we had indeed seen it after the world premiere of Sideways. But no, once again, it did not happen. But just how close were we this time? Well, we actually stood in line for Hotel Rwanda, but the girls didn’t really care to see it so with some reluctance we left. So as you can imagine, when the winner was picked, I was a little perturbed… especially since I could be heard saying in that line, “If you guys weren’t here, I would be seeing this, but since I’m only 1 of 3 people we’ll do whatever you want to”. Needless to say, my wife then relinquished all future film decisions to me. Fortunately we saw many other wonderful films that year, such as The Machinist, Buppa Rahtree, The Merchant of Venice, Old Boy, The Woodsman, Downfall, Red Dust, The Motorcycle Diaries and Primer.

Now it’s 2005, and the festival starts tomorrow. I have tickets to 31 films; my wife is seeing 29 of those with me. More of the Paramount has opened to the festival, and the single ticket prices have reached a ridiculous $19.50 taxes-in, Galas are $35! The news is reporting on all the parties and the general public complaining about the complexity of ordering tickets. Bah! I say (ironically, maybe). If you love films you’ll figure it out; if you don’t, great, it’s busy enough! Fortunately, our advanced ticketing allows us to enjoy a paltry $12 or so per ticket, but having bought only 60 tickets, which we were sure would be sufficient, we only have one movie scheduled on two of the 10 days. I know, even in our sheer exhaustion, we’ll manage to fill in the holes.

Needless to say, I’m NOT missing this year's Award winner.

Why do I feel like I just set myself up for failure there?