Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Norm Wilner: Toronto Mike'd #142

Episode Date: November 17, 2015

Mike chats with senior film writer for Now Magazine Norm Wilner about his years at The Toronto Star, his brother Mike, TIFF, Rob Ford and his podcast.

Welcome to episode 142 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is Norm Wilner, Senior Film Writer for NOW Magazine. Cheers, it's filmed before a live studio audience. Now Magazine. Is it asking too much for me to get the same treatment once in a while? She's right. Try it again, sweetheart. Yeah, thanks. Hello, everyone. Norm! That's better.

Welcome, Norm. Thanks for having me. Hey, Bruce! Is it Norm or Norman? I generally go by Norm. I'm named for a great-grandfather that I never actually got to meet, and he was very much a Norman. So I figured, let's leave that in the 19th century and move a little bit forward. How did the other Norm get that Twitter handle, at Norm?

Norm Kelly's got at Norm. He's faster than me. I don't know. But there's no way he's faster, Vicky, because he doesn't get that Twitter handle until well into the Twitter era. That's true. That went first day. Well, my first Twitter handle was Wilner Vision,

which is my website. Yes, which you've been to, yes. So that was the... It never even occurred to me to look for Norm to see if it was available. But I didn't get on until... I wasn't on Twitter until 2010, I don't think. Late adopter.

I'm a late adopter. Not too late. I don't know. I think I was 2009. My wife was on well before that. She's under Kate Atherley. She's a remarkable author, knitting professional, knitwear designer. She started as Wise Hilda, which was her brand, and then she switched to her name. And I used to sort of say, you know, I've never really been particularly active on social media until Twitter.

And with Facebook, it was always just like, oh, Jesus, really? There's all these pictures of cats. And then I remember I like cats. I sort of got into it. But yeah, I followed her onto Twitter. The big news, I guess, in your Twitter life is that you recently became verified. And was really obnoxious about that. But how did it happen? I've been begging them for a few months. You got to beg them. Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of us now were verified at the same time in a big wave,

and I wasn't. And I don't totally know why, but it took months or even years for them to figure that out. It took months for me to figure out a way to contact them. And then it's just basically low level, passive aggressive whining, which is the same way I got my podcast noticed by the AV club in the end. Yeah, that, that works. I'm, I want to be verified too. That's the thing. I haven't done enough begging, I don't think, but I don't, I mean, I also don't have like you have the now Toronto. Yeah. I think that's how I got in. If I was just me. Right. That's my problem. I also don't have like you have the now Toronto. Yeah. I think that's the, that's how I got in. If I was just me. That's my problem.

I needed, I mean, the journalists and, and media personalities, and I guess technically I'm both, get verified first and fastest. Authors, musicians, you know,

entertainers, definitely. Sure. But it's, but it's. What about podcasters? Probably less. I gotta find somebody on the inside.

If anybody knows somebody on the inside of Twitter Canada, let me know. My show's not verified. So, you know, I am, but the handle for the someone else's movie isn't verified. So there's that. You would think it would cascade down, right? Like everybody I know must be also real. Yeah, that's congratulations anyways

on being verified. I'm a little bit jealous of that. Yeah, I find gravity doesn't work on me quite as much as it used to. Just a little bit more. That's fine. Not flying around or anything, but I'm a little bit jealous of that. I find gravity doesn't work on me quite as much as it used to. Just a little bit more. That's fine. Not flying around or anything, but I'm looser. Later, we're going to talk about your podcast and how you're set up and everything.

And this is just another friendly reminder, though, to be right on that microphone. I am on the microphone. Okay. And even if you have to push it closer. I'm worried I'm going to get a shock, frankly. No, no, of course not. And I have Lysol. I Lysol. I have wipes.

I guess you'd have to. Wipe them down. You never know who was the last guest. I'm trying to think. Oh, the last guest I want to speak to you about briefly, which is the gentleman's name is, I almost called him Norm. Nelson Millman. And Nelson Millman was a longtime program director on the Fan 590.

Oh, okay. And your brother, who we're going to talk about briefly at the beginning here, because I90. Oh, okay. And your brother, who we're going to talk about briefly at the beginning here, because I got to say a few things about your brother. But Nelson Millman, last episode, episode 141, told a story about the house he grew up in and his parents selling that house to your parents. And this story, and I actually asked Mike Willner.

When was that? Yeah. Yeah. Because Mike Willner apparently moved into Nelson Millman's room in this house. And I was telling Mike, like, I heard this story from Nelson last week for the first time. And Mike said, you don't know this story. I do not. I don't even know which house you don't know this story. I do not. I don't even know which house we're talking about.

Yeah, I can't. You got to go back. Your homework is to go back to episode 141 and listen. And he gives details about the street anyways. And yeah, I can't remember. North York, I think. Yeah, we lived in a couple of places in North York, but that would have been the last house my parents bought together

would have been in 1973 or four or something like that. Well, this may go way back. It definitely goes way back. Nelson's an older chap. I have no memory of any of this, but it's kind of great that my brother would stalk him that way. Yeah, you know, yeah. So I'll get my questions.

First of all, right off the bat here, did you know that Miley Cyrus does a little shout out to your brother in the beginning of We Can't Stop? Are you aware of this? I've heard that this is what people believe. Well, let me play it. No, no, I heard. Sure, play it for the listeners. I got to play it.

I got to play it now. But here we go. So here's a bit of Miley. Did you hear the Mike Wilner? It comes close. It's not him. I can't imagine. I mean, who knows?

Maybe she's into baseball. I doubt it. I think she's actually shouting out a producer's name or something. Yeah, Mike Wil made it. There you go. But I mean, I've listened to that because my daughter is 11 and she loved that track. In fact, my toddler loves that song. There's something about the video or something,

like the contrast with the red lipstick and the pale. It's something he likes, that he loves that video. So I've heard it a million times. And every time I hear it, I hear Mike Willner. And I know she's saying Mike Will made it. So knowing what she says and I'll listen to it, trying hard to hear Mike Will made it. And I still only hear Mike Willner.

Well, your brain gives you... It's messed me up. Your brain has started from a point, right? It's confirmation bias. I can understand that totally. No, I would love it if there was a shout out to my brother somewhere in popular culture because he is way more present than I am.

167 games, right? People hear him more often than me. 162, I think. Close enough, close enough. Post-season? Post-season, yeah. You got to add some for post-season. You were close.

But yeah, more people hear his voice than read me. Absolutely, no question. Especially this last year. I think the baseball fans all know your brother. Sure. But last season, and I want to learn quickly if you were a baseball fan at all growing up, because he's got encyclopedic knowledge of baseball. He and I basically split properties.

I'm entertainment and he's sports. We both have the running gag, and he may have even told you this. I didn't hear it in either episode, but he may have simply mentioned it to you. The running gag that defines this is that we both found ways to monetize and weaponize our OCD, which is that we have found careers that are based on knowing everything about something. That's true. And just this constant, and now that we're getting older too, it's terrifying because I'm 47 and I'm starting to have a little trouble grabbing things just in the back of my head.

It's like, oh, that – the guy who was in the thing and won the shiny thing. I got some of this going on too. Yeah, it happens when you get older. It's just a fact of aging. Your brain doesn't – it's not as elastic as it used to be. And it's like, oh, my God, this is what they talk about when they say the young will come for you. It's like, you're right. And they say, the young will come for you.

It's like, you're right. There's some 25-year-old who's YouTubed every small independent movie from the last 10 years. And he's going to kill me in my sleep and take my job. And you know, unlike you and your brother, I never figured out how to monetize it. Because I have something like this going on too. Like all these facts and this kind of archiving. And I can pull up these things.

And I'm not as quick at pulling them out now. They're there. And I can see them. And I sometimes can't remember what they're called. Right. But I never monetized it the way you two did. So he took baseball, and I guess you meet in the middle, so the middle would be like Bull Durham. Bull Durham is technically the midpoint.

He will have me on. We had a weird tradition of the radio would get pretty quiet around Christmas. He would need to fill time in his shows, so he'd call me in and we'd do an hour in the booth and take calls about sports movies. Which is a great idea. Yeah, it was always fun. Just some great sports movies. And people love arguing over nothing.

So there's an opportunity, Major League, why don't you ever mention Major League? And then I say, well, it's because it's not very good. And then they get upset. It isn't very good. And we have an hour. We're filled. We're good. Yeah, Bull Durham, well, he did Bull Durham on my show when I needed someone to pinch hit. Which is very good. It is very good. And we have an hour. We're filled. We're good. Yeah, Bull Durham, well, he did Bull Durham on my show

when I needed someone to pinch hit. Which is very good. It is very good, and it was really easy to talk about it for an hour with someone from that side of it whose perspective is completely different from my own. Do you have any memory of an early 80s I think was made for TV Disney movie called Tiger Town?

No, that doesn't make your life smart. I thought you were going to bring up the kid from Left Field or something. No, I'm talking about when I was a kid, I saw, and I saw it on VHS. So I guess it was put in video stores and stuff, but it was called Tiger Town. And then of course, then I saw the natural and realized it was like a kid's version of the natural sort of thing. But anyway, that's that movie was like, when I was a kid, that movie was everything to me, Tiger Town. It was like the kid who went to every game at Tiger stadium and he had to like he had to like uh send these vibes to his favorite player this washed up veteran who suddenly found like a second his second wind anyways fantastic baseball movie for like kids under eight i'd say kids under eight who are struggling with magical thinking and

obsessive compulsive like this is he's gonna grow up and if i don't wash my hands the plane that's a good point. It's terrifying. It explains a lot of things, actually. Yeah, that's an imprinter. That's horrible. So this last season, I would say non-traditional baseball fans sort of discovered the game. I think that the whole city.

Did you notice, as a non-baseball fanatic, because you're not a baseball fanatic. No, I played it when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed it, and I like being at a game, but I have just very little interest in watching. For those three months, did Twitter suck for you? I would think it's got to be annoying as hell

when everyone is gone nutso over something that you don't, you're happy for them, but you don't have the same passion in the belly. That's got to be a little annoying. I'm not as invested in it, but certainly I enjoyed, I like watching people like things. I'm really, you know, like a big part of my gig is enthusiasm, is finding things to recommend

to people rather than things to attack. I'm much happier championing something. So it was great to watch everybody who isn't excited about this sports world suddenly start realizing this is fun and we can talk about it. I mean, I was tweeting about it quite a bit in the last couple of weeks of of um toronto's participation just because i knew it bothered my brother to see well i just like he knows i'm a fair weather friend yeah it's not that i care i care about the fact that the city cares and so just became fun to sort of occasionally just quietly demonstrate that i actually do know what

i'm talking about in baseball and just watch him kind of quietly go, you shouldn't be venturing into this world. Yeah, that's called encroachment, I think, on his turf. Taunting. It was actually open taunting at one point. But it was delightful. And it was great every now and then to just feel that in the city. I walked to a screening of, actually, this is a really bizarre intersection of everything. I walked from my place in Kensington Market

to the Young and Dundas Cineplex in the middle of Dundas Square. Yeah, the AMC, whatever. The former AMC, yeah, to see Crimson Peak, which was made in Toronto, shot here a year ago. And on my way there, I passed three bars and one patio and people were just wrapped. They were watching, I think it was game five?

Oh, five of the, yeah, against Texas. Yes. That's the Batista flip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the flip happened, I can tell you exactly when it happened, it was like 6.50pm, or 6.45pm, because I walked into the building, the Young Dundas building, which is

this four-story building with theaters at the top, and to get there you have to go up four levels of escalators. And before I could even get on the first one, there was this phenomenal screaming noise that came. It was coming from the third floor and it radiated straight down. It was as though someone had just saved a puppy or a child or something. It's like you save multiple children i would think because that moment for a guy like me that moment i literally fell to the ground like i had a moment where i fell to the ground and i i it was like a moment where it's like well you can't even describe it as you know when joe carter hit the homer in 93 similar kind of sensation it's like it's just unbelievable and i just always

wondered when what about what about the guy out there who does you know who likes baseball enough a lot likes that it exists it makes people happy but for example that was an appointment viewing for you to watch game five no I had stuff to do yeah exactly and I always wonder though from that perspective like what's it like for that guy I was aware of it you know you kind of hear that like like like do you know what that is like I mean you know what I mean like do you appreciate what that was for the city, that moment, that flip? I think you couldn't. If you were outdoors or near sound, you couldn't not be part of it. It's, you know, the year the Jays won the World Series, it must have been 1992.

I was living on Yonge Street in a little apartment building between St. Clair and Summerhill. And the party walked past us at two in in the morning at least. And we just heard noise for 45 minutes and it didn't matter that we, it was two in the morning and I really wanted to be asleep. There was just this huge, huge thing happening in the city and it was amazing to be part of that. Awesome. It also reminds you that you're an animal, that human beings are still pack animals, that we're a herd because I don't know if you've ever been in a crowd that suddenly stampedes. It happened to me once on Halloween.

No, I don't think so. It's terrifying. And it's terrifying even though you completely understand you're going to be fine and everything's okay, because you can just step back into an outdoor world. Sometimes, or like at a concert when it starts and you don't realize that everyone's now rushing to the outdoor general admission,

and now they're going to come to the stage. Sometimes when you're with somebody who's not as big as you are, because you see I'm a very big guy, but you're with my girlfriend or whatever, they're smaller, you literally kind of have to protect them because now there's this big rush. Yeah, if that instinct kicks in at all.

Because fight or flight is a real thing. And it's those things where you realize that, oh, I'm not in any particular danger, there is no threat, but something is telling me, get the hell back. Moments like that are really kind of thrilling to be part of, even if you're unwittingly part of it. So you didn't know I invited you over here for an hour to talk about your brother.

You didn't realize that, did you? I'm good. So this is all to say that your brother was in demand for a few months there. I can't imagine any other point in his career because I even was like, I'm like, and we had met a year earlier cause he had come on this podcast and I'm like, uh,

Mike, when, when, when this magic number gets to single digits, you're coming over. Cause you know, he's from not too far from here. Yeah.

Yeah. This is pretty convenient. Not as convenient for you, but more convenient for him. It's fine. And, uh, I'm,

you have to come in. And, uh, I always wondered, uh, if you were aware that many people find your brother to be— now, some people love your brother, like I do, but some find him to be a little arrogant and condescending. Are you aware of this?

Well, I'm aware of it because every time there's a flare-up, I get asked if I think he's that way. Right, okay. So, yes, I'm aware. So you are aware of it. I've been aware of every single time that someone has a beef with my brother. Yes, I'm aware. So you are aware of it. I've been aware of every single time that someone has a beef with my brother. No, I think the problem is that it's a similar problem to what I do, which is that you have to present authority.

You have to know what you're talking about. You basically, if you do know what you're talking about in any industry that is in any way subjective, if you're not simply rattling off statistics, which he will do, too, to demonstrate his point. If you are in a place where you get to say, Oh, you know what? I didn't think Birdman was all that good. Someone's going to be upset. Someone's going to think you're an idiot for not liking the thing they like, and they're going to be dismissive and they're going to be confrontational. And so I think he handles it just about as well as anybody can. He blocks people on Twitter. I think at this point, it's sort of a reflex for fun that he does. I don't ever, I don't block anybody, which just, I don't know why.

I'm so offended when someone blocks me by accident that I refuse to do that to someone else. I don't want to inflict it. I kind of shine people on, though. If someone is being obnoxious, I'll just respond by saying, oh, okay, and never talk to them again. Are you blocked by Rob Ford? Yes, I am.

So am I. See, we can start a little club. I was blocked by Rob, Doug, and trustee sam in the same way i assume they just have this one guy doing all their social media or some some conservative intern who came along and said hey let me fix everything for you you'll never be bothered again right so i've been blocked by all those guys and you know what my life is just fine yeah it's i i'm i'm not i think i tried to you know how you can now you can rt with sort of you can quote it, instead of RT as the quote. Yeah, I'll still get quoted back into my feed sometimes.

And it's just too much fun not to. Right, right. I just wondered if you're in that elusive club, that special club. But we'll get to that later too. We'll leave the Mike Wilner stuff, except do you agree that he's condescending and arrogant? No, I don't agree with that at all.

I didn't want to have a sibling rivalry there. Well, no, I just, I think he defends himself when he needs to defend himself. And the, uh, how can I put this without sounding like a completely entitled middle-aged white guy? If you are operating at a certain level of professionalism and it does, I know how this sounds and I hate it. Uh, if you're operating at a certain level of professionalism, then you are expected to hold back on people who are not professionals. You know, you don't don't mock a civilian because they don't like what you're doing. That's just fair. Like you don't I don't want to treat people like enemies. But there is a point in sports, especially where people are just

assholes to you. And it's true. And there's nothing wrong with walking away from that. I have no problem with that. I don't think he's arrogant or condescending. I think he's worked really hard to maintain the level of connection and information that he holds. And I think he's good at his job. And I think a lot of people believe that just as, just as a lot of people believe of me,

that they could be doing what I do and I'm sure they could, they just wouldn't be doing it as well. Cause I've been doing it for 30 years and I'm really, really good at it. Uh, if I do say so myself, it's, you know, it's troublesome to be constantly told, yes, you can write a letter. That doesn't mean you can write a movie review. I once had this guy, uh, it was on my blog. I don't remember when it happened, but it was whenever the golden compass came out. I'm somebody who's just absolutely, just furiously attacking me on the comments on the review, emails to my editors, all this stuff about how I was unprofessional because I mentioned one thing. In the beginning

of the film, there's this little prologue that explains stuff. And I said, this is a silly idea. And it is. It's a fantasy. You can sell fantasy well, or you can sell fantasy badly. It's the difference between The Hunger Games and Twilight. You know, Hunger Games has an established world that makes sense. Twilight is, Stephanie Meyer saw an episode of Buffy and completely misinterpreted it and wrote an entire series of books about it. And so this guy wrote to me and said, you know, like, you're a terrible person. You're an awful person. You don't respect these books.

You don't respect this movie. Why are you, you know, and I was perfectly civil to him. And then I started making fun of his idiotic responses after a while because it was just more entertaining to me right to stay engaged and then he emailed my editor the review he would have written the review he wanted to read in the newspaper and i stopped and i read it and i was like oh my god this guy is just he's awful he's just he's absolutely inept and he doesn't understand it was simply a plot synopsis and it was i like the bear it was that kind of thing and it was and i felt so bad um reading it that i'd even been taunting him because although he presented himself as an adult he was clearly

10 years old and you don't want to be that guy i don't want to be that guy i never ever want to hurt anybody uh just because they're expressing their opinion. You're entitled to your opinion. You may be wrong in an assumption. And if, you know, the associate producer of Man Vs. left an angry comment on my review of that film last weekend about how my witless review wouldn't let it find its place in the market or something like that, but he didn't acknowledge that he was the associate producer. So come on, that's not a civilian.

That's a guy just trying to... And with an inherent bias that needs to be declared he's well he's simply trying to make his and and simply by saying you know like about talking about the marketplace when you're discussing a motion picture which is theoretically a work of art you know guy just say that you were hoping that this film's badness would sneak past people then just acknowledge that have you ever reviewed a Frank D'Angelo film? I reviewed No Deposit. I think that's the only one I've actually reviewed. I've seen a couple of them.

I always wondered if there was an inherent danger in giving a D'Angelo movie a negative review. No, I've never suffered any. You've never had to look over your shoulder? No. If I can call Rob Ford a human disaster, I'm sure Frank D'Angelo can't harm me any more than Ford's team would have liked to. I actually think D'Angelo is a little more scary than

Ford Bros. We've never met. I couldn't say. I know from his film work, he really, really enjoys being in movies. Yes, he does. And he likes to be in front of a camera and he likes to sing songs. He's perfectly entitled to do that. And I'm perfectly entitled to tell people that, you know what? Don't waste your money on this. $13.95 is still $13.95. Go do something else. That's right. That's right. I have just booked a little trip. It's mainly business, but there's a little pleasure mixed in there. But a little trip to Copenhagen and a guy, a Danish guy who I was talking to as I was booking this trip was warning me he wanted to warn me be careful because in January the temperatures can get to

zero like they can dip to zero in Copenhagen. Is that Kelvin? I was just I just laughed because and this is not about anything in particular except it just happened and i laughed out loud to myself like i'm a canadian i you know i'm torontonian i can handle zero zero would be uh an increase i'm sure from what i'll leave actually it's like that scene in uh under siege 2 where someone tries to pepper spray the bad guy and he's just like pepper spray is nothing that's exactly right so i i look forward i look forward to those balmy temperatures. Oh, my daughter. I mentioned my 11-year-old. The morning after the attacks in Paris last week, she recorded something for Paris.

It's like 20 seconds, and there's a little cameo here from my toddler. So I'm just going to promise her I would play this on the podcast. This is my daughter, Michelle, and then my son Jarvis is in there as well. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Okay. Hi. To my sisters and brothers in France, I want to say, live life to the fullest. Oh, little Jarvis here at the end. But anyway, that, I promised Michelle I would play that. So that was Michelle to Paris. And I don't, do you speak French? Un petit peu.

Okay, that means a little bit? A little tiny bit. See, that's as much as I know, too. Yeah, my accent is good enough that when I'm in Montreal, people think I speak French when I'm stammering. Well, that's pretty good. Well, they think, then they start speaking really quickly to me, and I just have to go.

It's a day. Anglais, mauvais, mauvais français. Very good. That's the extent of it. Now I was going to say, I, I, she told me what she said there. I'm not too sure what she said. Oh, live life to the fullest. I think, you know.

Keep living. The sentiment was something about, I remember it was something about, like, don't let them win. Like, keep living your life to the fullest. Like, this was the way you defeat terror is by living, enjoying life. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's a good sentiment.

I'm not going to change any of my behavior because some asshole with a bomb might be in the next room. I'm, you know, fine. Do what you do. I'm just trying to not live in fear. And you live in Toronto. You mentioned Kensington Market.

By the way, there's a Sweet Alenka's nearby. Like she's got the two, right? Because I know you tweet a lot about Sweet Alenka's. Yeah, yeah. We've befriended her. Kate and I were at her place. We went, we had an ice cream. We had ice cream for dinner one night.

It was the Labor Day weekend last year before the film festival and just because we were braced, I was braced for another film festival takes a lot of time out of my summer too the screenings start in July some years and so I've already been immersed in it and Labor Day weekend, now that I work it now Labor Day weekend is when we deliver the issue

so after that, Friday, when everything goes in we have a couple of days where I can do nothing, but maybe watch a couple more movies. I can't write. There's no more time. So we filed everything in at four, five o'clock. We walked the dog down to, down to Alenka's and had ice cream for dinner and it was great. It is great.

Yeah. And we tweeted, we just, because we are those people who tweet pictures, we, we tweeted photos of it and we ended up making friends with Alinka and her husband and her family over the last year. So it's been great. I've done a stint in her factory, just up the street actually. It's very close. What I've noticed is she's got the two locations,

the one by you and the one by me. And it seems like mine is the second class. Hers is that one. That was the first one. The one on Lakeshore. Yeah, and the factory's not far. And there's Was that the first one? The one on Lakeshore. Oh, is it? Okay. Yeah.

And the factory's not far. And there's a shop there too. There's a storefront built in. And there was a pop-up on Queen West, which might still be there, just west of Ossington on the north side. Not only is it great, like we buy the, it's just fantastic stuff. But on election day, if you come in with a picture of yourself at the booth or whatever. The ice cream election. Yes.

You get the free ice cream. That may have been me. It might have been Kate. It might have been me. It was one of the, we started it by accident. It was just one of those things where I said, you know. It's a tradition here now. I'm going to vote and I'm going to, it was in the municipal election last year.

Yeah, that's right. And I said, I'm going to go vote and I'm going to go get ice cream because that's what you do. If you vote, you deserve ice cream. And then Alenka said, well, I'll give people ice cream if they vote. So that's the deal now. And now, yeah, we just did it with the federal election. It happened again. So thank you. You're welcome. That's great. And it's good ice cream. It's very good. That's the best part. It's very good. And you're now with Now Magazine, but where I first learned the name Norm Wilner is the Toronto Star. Yeah. Where you were from, let me get the

years, 1988. could that be correct? 1988 to 2006. That sounds about right. Yeah, I would have written my first, boom, my first home video reviews were in the fall of 1988. And yeah, and I wrote for the home video and entertainment magazine for the entire run.

It was a monthly publication inserted on Saturday and Sundays. And then it was in Saturdays inside Star Week as a magazine. And then they killed that in 1991 and turned it into a column. I loved Star Week. Like, I mean, a different era, of course. Well, when there was content. Now it's all wire copy. But you know what else?

Before Google, TV Talkback, for example. TV Talkback was like for me and my brothers. And we had the Toronto Star delivered. So that's, I always know demon cox was here and i'm like this is the i remember you know it's like you know you got these these guys you just know because they were in your star when you were growing up and uh so um well what was i talking about before i uh oh just video home entertainment right right star week okay so the star week for example was a big deal like for us like because you you didn't you couldn't go to like imdb.com for example, was a big deal for us because you couldn't go to IMDB.com, for example. Oh, God, no.

Is this the same person who was in this or whatever? It was interesting. Every week, I look forward to Star Week. Well, and when Jim Bodden wrote Talk Back, he had met everyone. He had been to a lot of houses of famous people. He was just old enough and sort of veteran enough that he would go out for these TCA's every summer. You know, they'd hold this week, two week long thing where they introduce you to the next stars of television. And that was when television was three channels and all the money.

And he would get chummy with people. And he was old enough that he knew the Golden Age people and the Silver Age people and the present day people and everybody he was like the elwy yost of television exactly that's exactly another another great jam there yeah um how did you end up at the toronto star i had um i had been at uh york's film school for a year uh in 90 in in 87 uh started right out of high school and it was it was not a good fit. Either I was too obnoxious, I may have been too arrogant and condescending for York University. I definitely... It's a Wilder trait. It seems to be, and it's something that I struggle with every day. I took a year of York

in film, in production, really bombed out of it, I would say. I kind of self-destructed. After the first six months, it was really clear that we were not, the program and I were not going to get along. The, I can put it this way, the best way to describe how frustrating it was to be a student at York University's film program in 1987, and I know they're better now because there's some really, really talented people coming out of it, but more importantly, there's some really, really talented people teaching there. But when But more importantly, there's some really, really talented people teaching there.

But when I was there, we had a four-hour theory class every week, Thursday afternoons from 1 to 5. We would see a movie and then we would discuss it. And it would be specific to something and it would always have an aspect of film culture that we were going to cover. So the week we did widescreen, and this is 1987, 1988. It was probably like this January, February, 1988. Before home video, before letterboxing, I'll put it that way. If you needed to watch something in its original aspect ratio, you saw it on a laser disc or not at all. And the laser discs weren't available. Like you could not see films the way they were meant to be seen at

home. It wasn't possible. So they said, today, this week's class is going to be about widescreen, anamorphic widescreen photography, which if you're a movie nerd, you salivate it over because it's 1987, 88, and it's every major fantasy film, every major action, like the Star Wars movies, the diehard films.

When you think about scope, you think about this gorgeous process that's, you know. Right. The sentence we all saw was, this film has been modified to fit your tv screen so we had the opportunity to see something in widescreen in a theater that we had never seen before probably because you know also a lot of us were just turning 18 so the and restricted was restricted back in the day you could not see a movie if you were 17 that was rated r so there were all these films available to us and we were making suggestions of uh somebody thought of 2001 and uh somebody i wanted to see apocalypse now because i'd never seen it in a theater i um

you know oh no that's not right i'd already seen it in sinister i apocalypse now came up spartacus was the one i picked uh lawrence of arabia lawrence of arabia would have been great but it hadn't been restored yet so everybody just thought of it as that terrible pink movie that we saw on television one time same with ben hur a lot of the Technicolor prints weren't holding up very well. So they just looked terrible. Right. So we went through all of these films and, and, you know, we had, uh, we would stock the documentary, which was shot in scope with split screen, all kinds of options came up. And in the end they went with Woody Allen's Manhattan, which is a great film, but the reason they chose it was because it was 96 minutes and they wouldn't have

to pay the projectionist for an extra hour to show a longer movie. And that was the mentality that we were going up against. Also, that was rare for a film made after 1966 to be screened for us because there just was no acknowledgement of the Hollywood Renaissance that had happened in America in the 60s and 70s. So I just I gave up basically. I bombed out. I finished. You know, i did everything i made a i made a short film called hellblazer which was basically just a screw you to the concept of it we did everything

we were supposed to do we fulfilled all those cinematography requirements right and we did the score and i i made it with andre pagelic who went on to co-write cube uh with vincenzo natale so again talented people were going to this school it It was just, there was no support on the professorial side. So we did all that, and then I didn't come back. And I went to work in a video store for a while. I worked at Jumbo Video up on the edge of nowhere at Young and Steele's. And I met some really good friends there, met some really good people there. And that was my film school, because you could take home as many movies as you want at night.

My brother worked at Blockbuster. So same deal, right? And that was it. So many movies as you want at night. My brother worked at Blockbuster. So same deal, right? And that was it. So many movies. Yeah, absolutely. And some of it was, I mean, it was all panned and scanned. It was all formatted to fit your screen.

Before people were putting that, before there was the legal requirement to put that notice up. And that was my film school. I spent a good year just watching, working there and watching movies. And then somebody who was working there said they had heard that the star was looking for freelancers to write for this home video magazine startup thing that they were doing. And so I called them and talked to Rob Salem, who was editing the thing and running it. And he said, yeah, sure, bring some samples down. And when I was at York, I had written for the Excalibur. So I'd written a couple of little

shiny short review capsule things. I did a Halloween thing for people to go, these are the five movies playing in the area. And they were all 100 word reviews. So it was perfect. I had clips to take him. So I went down, so he said, yeah, just send something to the mail and I'll take a look at it. And because I was like 20 and stupid, I went down the next day and took my little samples and I'm like, hello, Mr. Salem here, look at what I've got for you. And I just said, look, here just said look here I was going downtown anyway but here I came by and he said oh here and he handed me a videotape

and it was a screening copy of a movie because I did not know this but they were two days from deadline on the first issue and he was freaking out that he wasn't going to be able to cover everything so he handed me a tape and he said can you review this 100 words tomorrow and I said yeah of course I can do that and he said great do that come back first thing and we'll talk.

See, timing is everything. It absolutely is. Timing and luck. I mean, you know, you can absolutely, the privilege of being a university student and still living at home and being able to do that, the timing was absolutely right. But, you know, preparation plus luck, right?

Right, right. But it was absolutely luck. So, and the first film that I ever professionally reviewed for 10 whole dollars, never cashed the checks, was Return of the Killer Tomatoes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, one of the B.

Not a good movie. But is that the George Clooney one? That's the one, yeah. So I discovered George Clooney, which makes it a good story. No, come on, Facts of Life discovered George Clooney. Oh, yeah, yeah.

They didn't know what to do with him. But I went down the next day with my little printout because there was no fax you had to you had to deliver your copy by hand and i were each way in the snow uphill and but this is one young street you had to go to yeah you know it's funny i'm there all the time because my wife actually works in that building so i'm in one young street all the time so think about going down there in the middle of nowhere before the development, right? There was nothing down there. You got off at Union Station and you walked for a year downhill to get to that building. So I took it in.

I took my single printout page and I gave them back the videotape. And Rob looked at it and said, okay, here, can you do another one tonight? And that was the next one. And just by the end of the run, I was writing almost everything in the little book. No, that's great. But to me, these stories, I always ask people how they got their break and everything. And timing is always a really important component like that. But the other is persistence, like kind of being there.

Like, you know, you could have done the mail thing or whatever, but it's smart that you go down in person. And that whole process, kind of like the timing plus the persistence kind of good things happen. Yeah, and the other thing was it was personal. I really liked Rob's writing and I wanted to say hi more than anything else. I'd been reading him for years.

You and me both, man. I read that guy for a long time. Yeah, so Rob ended up becoming my strongest mentor, basically my strongest ally at the paper for a good 10 years. And then there was this little crossover point around 91, maybe, or 92, where it became obvious that a lot of movies were being released into, say, the Eaton Center for a week's run, two months ahead of their home video debut, because that's when it started. That's when people realized that

if you put a bad movie in one theater in Toronto and one theater in Vancouver, you could tell the video company that was, or rather, if you were the distributor, you could tell the video stores that this film had a national theatrical release in Canada. Oh, yeah. And so we would have the tapes before. They found a little loophole there, yeah. But we would, as a result, we would have the tapes before the film opened, theatrically. So they would say, hey, there's this Michael Paret, Anthony Michael Hall Top Gun knockoff coming out.

Who goes to review that? And it was me because I had the tape. So that was the first review I had published in the paper. Into the Sun. Wow. It was not good. Into the Sun. No, that one, I missed that one.

Well, as a result, I ended up being the go-to guy for a lot of really crappy movies in the 90s at the Star. That's funny. Now, the whole video store thing, I recently just remembered the relationship I'd have with my local video store guys. Like, you know, those were the, I would go there and tell, you know, this is a movie I liked and then they would recommend, you know, I remember the guy, still remember the guy at the video store telling me, I got to see this Reservoir Dogs. Like, I still remember that. And it's like, I didn't know, I didn't even know, this is before Pulp Fiction. You got to see the Reservoir Dogs.

It's his recommendation. So you kind of go on that and you you end up loving it and you're like you don't give me more stuff like that yeah like don't you think um well that's the same function as a critic really i mean even if you don't like my sure if you don't like the stuff i like you know you don't like the stuff i like so you can use that as a barometer absolutely absolutely i miss the uh i miss the video store guys, but you know, one of the video store places I used to go to at Jane and Blue are still open. It's fascinating that they're still out there. There's one or two in every neighborhood still, maybe one now surviving, uh, the Bay street video, the queen video stores suspect in Toronto. The, uh, these guys are places I still rely on, um, to just see what's coming out, what's going on. I don't cover

home video anymore. It's been a couple of years and I and I do miss it. It was great. You got to feel like you were part of the conversation all the time. Speaking of Tarantino, because I'm looking right now at a Pulp Fiction poster, which I bought in like 96 or something like that. But every time my toddler walks by Mia Wallace there, he points and says, mama, Mama, my toddler thinks that's his mom. Serious, serious. Does your toddler's mother look like Uma Thurman? Well, she is a brunette

and looks enough, obviously. Not like Uma so much as Mia because they look close enough. But I just find that very amusing that every time he walks by Mia Wallace, he points and calls her Mama. Mama has a gun and a cigarette.

Yes. Don't, don't smoke. Don't smoke. Uh, okay. So the, the Toronto star and,

I guess the big question is cause you're there till 2006. So why do you leave the Toronto star? Oh, I didn't leave. Uh, and then it's the segues into something happening as we talk. It's the old Bob, uh,

the Bob Goldthwait line. It's like, I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that someone else as we talk. It's the old Bob, uh, the Bob Goldthwait line. It's like, I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that someone else is doing it. Uh, I wrote the home video column for the star video file from 91 when it was incepted to the first,

the last week of May or the first week of June, 2006. And I also was reviewing films for the Star until around 2001 in the paper and then I transitioned because when, you'll remember the war of the dailies, the free dailies, the Metro, the GTA and the 24, I think it was called FYI when they first launched it, the Suns version.

So when the Star launched theirs, it was called GTA today and they needed film coverage and Rick McGinnis was writing the occasional thing for them but he was primarily working as a reporter photographer and Vianne Ewart, who was a, he was an editor at the star that I'd worked with in the nineties, just called and said, Hey, we, we want original content in the, in the Metro section. And I think it's because the stars critics, like the, the, the concept of, um, GTA today was the same as the concept of FYI, which was that they took they turned the star

stories into wire copy. So they would cut down whatever it was in the star to 250, 300 words. And with the inverted pyramid structure of contemporary conventional journalism, you can do that. You just don't have any background or depth. You just have this happened at this corner, at this place, at this time. And here's a quote from a guy who saw it.

Which is great for news, but not so good for subjective stuff like film reviews. And so I think the star reviewers who would have been at that time, it would have been what Jeff Bevere and Peter Howell, they would have probably pushed back against seeing their stuff get cut in half without any, you know, there's, 7, 800 words per film, turned into 250 or 300. So Vian, who was editing the paper at the time, called me and said, listen, you write short for video. Can you do that for theatrical? And so I became their freelance. It was never a staff position, but I became their freelance film critic. And I wrote for them from 2000, the fall of 2000 till, till I went to now in the spring of 90 of 2008. And as far as the video column, I continued to write that every week until they just decided to dump me and

give it to someone else and then eventually just give up on it completely. So they didn't eliminate it right away. No, no, no. It was still around for a while. Other people wrote it. They had a kind of a revolving door of calmness cause it turned out it was

harder than it looked. But yeah, I, but that sucks, it does suck oh absolutely and i i got the worst like my the editor called to tell me this when i had food poisoning i was sick in bed and i got a call saying oh and by the way uh next week is your last column so you know they were gracious enough to let me sign off and and tell people that there was that i had a website to go to and and I set that up. So it was fine. It was cordial. It happens, but yeah, of course it hurts. It definitely happens.

I mean, as we talk right now, Bell Media. I know. I have friends who are listening to jobs. Well, yeah, one of my buddies, a former actually people who listen to this podcast, remember I talked to Bingo Bob. His name's really Bob Willett, and he had become the music director at Virgin 99.9,

and they eliminated that position yesterday. So what is it now, a computer? Yeah, well, I think, you know what, I seriously think it might be. He didn't tell me, but I have two thoughts on that. Either they just said, okay, all the stations can have the same music director. Like we don't need one for 99.9.

And for example, Chum FM, they can have the same guy or whatever. Or, you know, I think maybe they buy Billboard and say, oh, that top 40, there's our music right there. Yeah, that's not going to homogenize the landscape of radio at all. I'm sure that'll be great for everybody. Yeah, exactly. I understand the whole bottom line argument,

but at some point these are newspapers, radio stations, media. You can't always make money at everything. Some things will make more money than other things. Sports supports research. Entertainment supports news. That's how this goes. Damn it. It does suck.

These are hundreds of jobs that are going. And there are people doing good work, which is the problem. Nobody gets fired for causing these situations. They're just cut because they're numbers. Exactly. And today, so they did. The Bell Media is doing it building by building. I know, it's horrible.

So $2.99 queen or whatever gets it yesterday. So when I talk about it, I find out most of the people being let go are behind the scenes guys. You won't know their names because they're behind the scenes. Yeah, no, a good friend of mine lost her job yesterday in the same circumstance. Exactly.

No one will know her name, but she was really good at what she did. Yeah, I mean, like you said, this is not the person being let go. It's the position being eliminated and apparently the unions

get involved where if you have seniority, which my buddy did not have seniority at all, but if you have seniority, like they might see if you could take another, you know what I mean?

Yeah, lateral moves. Yeah, so you might actually stick around and bump somebody else out of their gig that becomes all like whatever. No, it's awful. And it never makes the work better. It never improves the product. No, and it seems like what suffers the most, it seems, is local. It seems like if they can do one national thing and slap it across the country, they'll do it. And today, where I'm getting at this today,

the TSN radio folks, so apparently the 1050 guys, that building gets done today. And what I've heard, the thing is 1010, which was done yesterday, 1010 has good ratings. They actually do well in the books that everybody judges this stuff on,

whereas 1050 does not. So 1050, your brother's station beats the pants off of 1050 for a variety of reasons. While licensing and connection, of course. Sure, and being there like 20 years earlier. So for, you know, so Nelson Millen, when you talked to him,

there's something about establishing yourself as the sports radio station for decades before the other guy gets in there. It really does make a difference. And so today, I'm going to learn names soon, but some names on the radio will be let go today. There's going to be some bloodshed, if you will, in the aging court office today.

So it is terrible, right? Hundreds of Bell Media people are getting let go this month across the country. Yeah, and of course, lest we forget, Bell Media still makes millions and millions and millions of dollars. It's all just throat clearing. It's ridiculous. Someone else can make a little bit more money

in their annual insurance package. Yeah, damn executives. Sorry, it turns into a sentence. I was curious, because you're at Toronto Star, which is the country's biggest newspaper. Still? Yeah, probably still is, right?'re a Toronto Star, which is the country's biggest newspaper. Still? Yeah, probably still is, right?

I don't know if it still is. I'm assuming it is. I can't imagine who would have passed it newspaper-wise. I think Globe could probably. You think so? They're national. Circulation, though? I feel like the Star is still good.

I don't know. And they're still, you know, they are still doing it. The whole industry is suffering as they move to digital and everything. And I just wondered, like, iWeekly, for example, iWeekly exists, and then it becomes the grid, and then the grid shutters, closes the door.

Do they still maintain the website, or is it all gone now? I don't know. I don't know either. I would assume, well, I'm sure it's archived in the Wayback Machine or something, but I have no idea if it's still there.

I guess I would, these paying gigs for content creators like yourself seem to be drying up. Oh, content creators. Yeah. No, I mean, I wrote for MSN. It was less than a year after the star cut me loose that I got picked up by Simpatico MSN for their coverage, and I was writing the same DVD column there.

I just had more reach because suddenly you had 10 million hits. Then it transitioned into just MSN when they split. And then MSN last fall went to an aggregation site, basically. And MSN.ca doesn't have original content anymore. And they removed all of it. Everything I wrote is gone. I mean, I still have the original copy. Yeah, no, all those webpages are gone.

It used to be so much easier to just Google a story I'd written to find a quote. I can imagine. And now they're just completely obliterated. And you're now the senior film writer for Now Magazine. I am. So how'd you end up at Now? The worst possible way. John Harkness died.

Oh, yeah. He and I were, he was a good friend of mine. He, this is awful. He dropped dead. He literally dropped dead. He shoveled snow, went home, and had a massive heart attack, coronary. He was 53 years old. That's too young.

He was also, yeah, well, he'd been diagnosed with coronary artery disease a couple of, or coronary, it wasn't actually disease. It was coronary artery issues because he was working to reverse them. A couple of years earlier, he was probably in the best shape of his adult life. Right. And he just didn't get far enough ahead of it. And I'd seen him the night before. He had just bought

a condo and he he wanted my advice on where to where to put the projector and the television and so we went and he showed me the place and it looked really great and it was up at young and eglinton's one of those mintos really good view he was turned like his life was was pretty good and he just um just fell over dead um it was quick. It was painless. Apparently his glasses were in his hand when they found him. And that was December of 2007. Spoken at his funeral a couple of weeks after that. And then a couple of weeks after that, Michael Hollett,

who I, who I'd known as I was friendly with, I'd known him for a few years through, through Ingrid Randogia and John and Cameron Bailey, coworkers that I, you know, people I saw every day at screenings and at interview situations. And eventually you meet, you go to a couple of things

and you meet Michael and he's really nice. And so he and I had this rapport and he always said he liked my work. And said, you know, he just, he called me in January and said, we got to, we got to move on. What do we do? Are you available? And I said, I guess so. And it was, it was incredibly intimidating.

And it's the kind of thing where I still, every time I pick up the paper, I remember that I shouldn't actually be in it. There's nothing that will make that. I can do a good job, but John was the best. And so whatever I do, and still just me, it's a different perspective. It's my own writing, but he was the best film critic this country, arguably this country's ever produced. Jay Scott and John would be neck and neck in my estimation. And it's the worst possible thing to do is replace somebody who not only you knew, but who you admired.

And so, yeah, it's rough. It's been, it's not rough anymore. It's been eight years now almost. And I'm okay with it. But I still miss him. He should be doing this gig, not me. No, I hear you. You got to move on,

I guess. No, forward anyway. Forward anyways, right. So you're reviewing movies. How many movies do you think you see in a year? I have no idea.

You have no idea? Hundreds, maybe four. Do they ever bleed into one another? Sometimes if I see three movies in the same weekend, okay, they've started to bleed into each other. That would make it way more interesting.

I have a scene I can't remember which movie it's from anymore yeah i remember james bond was shooting a transformer in the face that's right i'd watch that uh i yeah i have no idea movies i see i don't keep track i see at least in the month of in the month between the middle of august and the middle of september i'll probably see 100 films just because that's how it works uh and it's you know it's four day it's not that bad uh but it's a it's carbo loading you And it's, you know, it's four a day. It's not that bad. But it's carbo-loading. You're going through everything you can. And you basically, you watch and write and purge.

So you got to watch, write, and clean slate go back in, right? Like you can't. No, no, no. If you watch, watch, watch, watch, then write, write, write, write. It depends on the day. It depends on what time I have to me. I mean, sometimes I can make a note here and there

and sometimes I'll just pour, you know, like pour forward. There was a day this year, I think it was the first day of the Friday, the first Friday of TIFF, where I didn't leave the Scotiabank building. I was there for five days, for five screenings. It only felt like five days.

I did not leave the building. I got coffee. I came back into the theater. I went to the bathroom. I came back into the theater. That was it. That was all there was. You know, speaking of that,

you mentioned Young Dundas, when it used to be that AMC, AMC 24, whatever they called it. I was given a pass once. I had to write about it to get the pass kind of deal. And then it was the five movies nominated for Best Picture. We're going to air back to back to back to back. Yeah.

So I once saw five movies in a day as well. It's tough. It's not easy, right? And these are great movies. The Oscar nominees are. The Oscar nominees. Those are going to be long, though. That's the Best Picture ones are always long.

Yeah, yeah, some are long. And then they switched it. They stopped. They switched it to 10 nominations or, though. That's the best picture. Yeah, yeah, some are long. And then they switched it, they stopped, they switched it to ten nominations, or almost ten. Sometimes it's like nine, but... Yeah, it's as many as ten. Right, so once they left five, they dropped this date. This is gone now. You kill people, you can't do that. You can't do that. You can't do ten movies in a day. You can't do that.

Hey, am I the only one who didn't love Mad Max? Can I... Really? Fury Road? Yeah, can I tell you? You can tell me. I'm going to tell you right now. So, maybe it was too much hype and everything, but to me it was very exciting to watch in the sense that it's lots of action. And it looked good. It looked kind of cool and it sounded cool.

But it just seemed to me, I don't want to sound pretentious or whatever, but it lacked some depth or something to hook me in. Like it just seemed kind of empty. Am I the only one? I think I'm the only one who didn't love Mad Max. I didn't have that problem with it. I think it's...

You're not alone. I think the craft is the depth. Just the fact that you're seeing, you know, as Miller kept saying, real cars, real people, real desert. The digital effects are at a minimum. He's using them to illustrate rather than to create. So you're seeing this incredible propulsive action storyline

and there's stuff going on in there there's the whole feminism angle of having a character who's as strong as Max if not stronger and have her be a woman there's the cultural stuff there's the fact that it's hitting all these amazing beats from 1979 to 1985 in the original Mad Max movies

I saw it kind of thinking it wasn't going to be any good because they screened it for us in April before it opened. And, you know, George Miller was coming to town for a press day. So you go and see it. And in,

within, within five minutes, it just, I was all in, but I will say too, that, um, the year before,

uh, Tiff brought in Terry Hayes, who wrote the road warrior for a screening of that film. There was a new restoration and they wanted to show it to people. And they wanted me to do the Q and a with, they asked me, would you be interested? I was like, of course I would. He's awesome. Terry Hayes.

So he told me a story. This is a year before Fury Road opened. He told me a story about the opening shot. He said, oh, George had me over because they both live in Australia. George had me over to see a cut of the first scene. And you're not going to believe it. And I said, what do you mean I'm not going to? It's Mad Max. What is over to see a cut of the first scene. And you're not going to believe it. And I said, what do you mean I'm not going to believe it? It's Mad Max.

What is there to see? And he said, no, no, no, no. What happens is there's this one car comes over a desert, comes over a dune in the desert, and then another, and then another, and then another. And he started describing it to me. And then there's this guy. I should do the accent too. And then there's this guy.

And he's driving along. And he's got a guy and a guy behind him with a guitar and his guitar is on fire and they're playing and i'm like are you having a stroke right in front of me there's no way like it just sounded insane and he said the scene goes on for 20 minutes since the beginning of the movie and so if you've seen fury road you know that's not the beginning of the movie they shot this little tiny framing sequence and this little other thing so there were reshoots that hadn't happened yet and so i see the movie the beginning of the film is that little prologue with max and then there's the scenes in the citadel and i

thought oh okay he was insane he was just he was just screwing with me he was telling me a fun story to make me expect things and then 20 minutes in it happens and the first car comes across the dune and the second car comes over the dune and then there's the pursuit and i'm just thinking oh my god he wasn't kidding this is incredible this is the best thing i've ever seen in my in my life and it was on pure gleeful glorious craft it felt like george miller who is this delightful little australian man just kind of sitting up and stretching and thinking well nobody's made this nobody's made a mad max movie in 30 years let me show them what they're supposed to be doing and it was exhilarating.

You've got me thinking I was all wrong on this. That's your job, though. Just watch it again. I might have to watch it again. I'll watch it again. If it isn't nominated for Best Picture, I'll be really surprised. There's always one action film that kind of makes it ever since they expanded the category. And I would be really surprised. It won't win.

It doesn't have a chance of winning. Do you want to, real quick, take a stab at what the nominees will be? Is it too early? Yeah, it's way too early. It's way too early. Are there any releases out that you believe will be nominated?

Spotlight should get there, I think. Just in terms of the combination of material and execution, I think that'll get there. And it's great, so it should. And I haven't seen it yet, but I'm told The Martian. Yeah, i haven't seen the martian either actually oh is that right i have to catch up to it you and i both yeah glenn caught it for us i couldn't make the press screening this is the other problem with tiff is that something screens there's always

five movies playing against each other and you have to pick and you know we had this rule that if there's a jessica chastain movie i am on that because I think she's the greatest actress of her generation. I love her. And we kind of know each other now. We've reached the point where having done enough interviews, we did an onstage thing at the Varsity for Tree of Life and have subsequently sat and we've done interviews. Every time she's a TIFF, we sit and talk about something.

And so it just makes sense that I do the interview because she's looser anyway. But we ended up not getting her and I couldn't get to the screening that day. So Glenn took it and ran with it. And he got to interview Michael Peña, who I love to talk to. And that's the problem now. I have a team, which is fantastic, but it does mean I can't cover everything. Right.

So my first couple of years at Now are getting used to the idea that I'm going to have to let stuff get past me. I will catch The Martian in the next couple of weeks. I have to because the Toronto Film Critics are voting in the middle of December. So by then I will have seen The Martian. I need to see The Martian as well. I would like to. You've been covering that TIFF since it was called Festival of Festivals, right? Yeah. How long has it been? I went to my first TIFF properly, 88, 87 maybe. My first accredited one was 89. So yeah, 28, 29. And you haven't missed a TIFF?

No, no, you have to be here for it. If you live in Toronto and you cover film, you have to be here. And if you miss a TIFF, that's a bad sign. Something's going on very bad. Yeah, like you're sick or someone was cruel enough to schedule a major life event out of town that week. What do you think was the best TIFF ever? 92. 92?

That's easy, actually, because I wrote about it last year for the Toronto Film Critics website. 92 was the year where everything came together. It was the year of Reservoir Dogs, actually. It was the year of The Crying Game, Bad Lieutenant, the best Midnight Madness lineup we've ever had. Howard's End, I think, played? No, Howard's End was in the summer. We didn't get that and it was a surprise. There was, oh yeah, just everybody Google 1992 or look up the IMDb. Everything was here. It was a fabulous, fabulous year. The Midnight

Madness was amazing. We had Peter Jackson was here with Braindead, which was then retitled Dead Alive. Man Bites Dog was here. Candyman was here. If you were a horror fan, it was the best year for all that stuff. Nightwatch was that year, I think. Well, Roger Ebert was a big fan of TIFF. Where's Roger Ebert? I recently saw the Roger Ebert documentary. Life Itself. Right. Sobert documentary. Life Itself. Right. So you've seen Life Itself.

Sure. Fantastic. I thought it was fantastic. Just the way it makes you kind of look at life and death and everything. I just thought it was just genius. Yeah. It really captured something about Roger's philosophy. I mean, we knew each other a little.

I was always kind of too intimidated to hang out with him for very much time. But I saw him. We see each other every year at TIFF and we would email back and forth every now and then we, we, the first time I really, we really talked, it was in some weird pissing match over,

he misused, this is the problem with the, with the OCD. I am a little bit of a, of a format nerd. So when Stanley Kubrick's films were released on Laserdisc for the first time in the late 80s, they were released in these,

or the early 90s, they were released in these full frame editions, not widescreen. And they should have been matted down to widescreen, but he had shot them television safe

the same way everybody did at the time. Like if you have a 4x3 TV monitor, you protect the top and bottom of your frame, but you put black strips at the top and bottom when you release it theatrically.

Essentially, they matted it down to 185 to widescreen, to what was then known as widescreen, what is now just flat. And now with HDTVs, that's not a problem. We don't see the extra stuff at the top and bottom. We see the movie the way it was meant to be seen, the way it was framed. But in 1990, everything was 4x3,

and Kubrick insisted on unmatting all these images so they could be, so they would look right on television to his eyes so they wouldn't distract. He was fine with Letterboxing 2001 or Spartacus, the movies that he shot in scope, but the movies he protected for television, he insisted on framing that way. And so the DVD masters or the DVD,

sorry, the Laserdisc masters were the ones he signed off on because he was still alive after Full Metal Jacket came out. They remastered a bunch of his stuff. And then he died and his family continued to insist that this is the way he wanted these movies to be seen when they hit DVD. So the full frame, so Roger would refer to them

as Pan and Scan and they weren't. They're Open Mat, which is a huge difference. Yeah, it's a significant detail. Yeah. So I emailed, I called him out on that in a news group once and we emailed back and forth and he never changed it, which was really frustrating. they're open mat which is a huge difference yeah it's a significant detail yeah so i we i emailed i called him out on that on a news group once and we emailed back and forth and he never changed it which was really frustrating he always used that term even when it was inappropriate because his argument was it's what people understood right and i'm like well you're roger ebert you could

actually make them understand yeah they probably understand it because that's what you're calling it yeah so that's how we got to know each other so i was always the tech nerd who was annoying to him but we were friendly. And certainly he knew me at all. That dog, it sounds like he was a little bit of a jerk, sort of. They kind of talk about what he was like. Kubrick or Ebert? No, Ebert.

Kubrick maybe too. Different field. Because I remember they talked to Siskel's wife in the documentary. And there was sort of like, Roger Ebert, when she was pregnant, he would literally push her out of the way to get in the documentary. And there was sort of like, when she was pregnant, he would literally push her out of the way to get in the cab. And then after he falls in love and he starts to soften when he falls in love with the love of his life,

that's when he starts to change. And suddenly, you know. Yeah, I think that was part of it. Giving up drinking was a big part of it too. And I think also the antagonism between Siskel and Ebert is, you know, one for the ages. I don't know

at what point they really leaned into it and made it their trademark off camera. It was great though. They had a fantastic

That was a point in viewing for me with Siskel and Ebert. And Life Itself is a terrific movie. I was really impressed with what Steve James did. You know,

I targeted an hour here, but can I steal a little more of you? How long have we got? An hour? No, it doesn't feel like it. I know, it's ridiculous. Trust me, my show runs long all the time. So I have some quick notes I gotta ask you about.

So when a movie star dies, let's say a big star passes away today, you get, so news outlets will give you a call to sort of get, because I see you a lot on like CBC News, the Toronto News or whatever. And you'll be talking on the street about the person who died or whatever.

Yeah, CTV News Channel has me on speed dial for that sort of thing. And I hate it. It's just because... I wonder how many calls do you get from local news or looking for... One, two maybe at the most. Not that many.

But you'll do them? Sure. Well, you know... Is this good for your brand, your personal brand? It's part of the gig with NOW. If they call us, we're available to them we're we're a resource uh in this town and uh you know i know what to say uh generally it's not like there's i mean and and they all that the problem with these things is that they all fit into a certain formula everybody

remembers the one thing like it's going to be interesting when if i was trying to come up with an example and i want someone who no harm can come to, uh, Ray finds he's young and he's healthy, but if something happened to him, would you go for Voldemort or would you go for Schindler's list or would you go for M in the Bond films? Cause they're different targets. So you can always tell who the, how old the chase producer is when they ask you to,

when they start shaping their questions about, what do you think about this thing? What about that? What can you say about that? Yeah. First thing that comes to my head, for example, Schindler's List.

And it's, he's magnificent in that. I would maybe point to Corey Alanis, his, his directorial debut, which is just amazingly good. Actually, I don't know if it's his debut,

but he directed it and it's. True. But then you lose the, the common man is lost. Yeah. But there'll be a clip. It's television. Sure.

It's not like if I say Ralph Fiennes, they're not going to have a photo of him somewhere. And Voldemort and the others. It's like Daniel Radcliffe, I think, would hate to have Harry Potter around his neck forever. He's already done so many more interesting things. And he told me once, he doesn't like looking at the earlier movies

because all he sees is a kid who's learning to act, which is amazing. He sees his own mistakes. And nobody else does because we don't know he's making them. It's performance. But an actor is so much more than one role or so or one show or one thing like poor william shatner right yeah it's been 21 years since he played kirk right and we still

won't leave it alone so so you're just available to these news outlets uh and you'll go do it it's good for now it's good for your for your brand. Your brand compensated in any way. It's just, this is some kind of an agreement. No, it depends on the person. It depends on the situation. I have an appearance fee sometimes. I negotiated,

back when I was a freelancer, I negotiated one CTV because they kept calling. Right. And it's like, guys, I'm not making any money doing this and I'm not being paid

enough to do it. I wasn't working for anything. That's my curiosity. It was a fee here and there. Is there any compensation at all? Yeah. Less so now. doing this and I'm not being paid enough to do it. I wasn't working for anything. That's my curiosity. It was a fee here and there. Yeah. Is there any compensation at all? Yeah.

Less so now than there used to be. Well, now I hear today, maybe CTV just eliminated that position today. I wouldn't be surprised. Part of the Bell Media cuts. Yeah. I don't, I don't remember the last time I was paid to appear on something,

but it was fairly recently. I mean, I, you know, if I do something at TIFF, if they ask me to do a Q&A or do a presentation, there's usually payment for that. That's how that works, you know.

Kids don't work for free. It's basically that simple. If someone wants you for your time, you should be paid for it. I almost went down a road here, but now I realize, I don't know if I have time for it. I'm going anyway. I have time, feel free.

There's a great expectation the kids have to work for free. It's all, I talked to, in fact, I'm going anyways. I have time. Feel free. There's a great expectation the kids have to work for free. It's all... In fact, I'm glad I have you in because you've never worked in radio, right? I've done radio, but never worked in it. Done radio, but never worked in it. Okay, good. I just needed a little break for the radio people.

I can do the voice if you want me to. Yeah. No, thank you. And I hate myself. Yeah. I think there's a lot of expectation to work for free. Do it for free and work long hours for very little, and then maybe you'll get a break. Absolutely, there's the concept of apprenticeship and internship, and I've worked for less than I should have been paid a lot.

It still happens. I get offers that are really, really small, and sometimes I'll do it because I want to help someone, and sometimes I'm being and I'm aware that I'm being exploited. And I say no. I have worked for free. I don't I didn't like it. You're aware of it. You're always aware of it. And the problem is that, yeah, absolutely. Now in the age of self-publishing and blogging and like the tweeting is my own. I don't, nobody pays me to do that. The podcast is mine. Which we're going to get to right now. Yeah, well, whenever. But there are things that I am willing to do for nothing. And generally it's because I enjoy those things. And if you are going to be making money off my work,

I should be paid for that. Everyone should be. It's not just me. It's a simple standard. And it's something that people will bend themselves into pretzels to avoid acknowledging. But yeah, people get exploited all the time. Nobody gets into criticism looking to make money. There will never be another Roger Ebert. There will never be another Richard Krauss. Richard is doing fantastic work in a sort of a

broad spectrum critical approach. Has he done the show? Not yet. You should get him. He's fantastic and he has the radio voice. But Richard has found a niche, has created a niche in Toronto that no one else has and no one else ever will have because now it'll be split up between 16 people on a small team and they'll be fired when they're 23 years old because they'll start to get too expensive.

It's all about, you know, critics and film appreciation and film coverage all comes from, just as all art criticism does it comes from a place of love you don't get into this because you want to watch the crappy movies you get into this because you want to watch the great movies it is you know after 30 years in this business god help me well 30 27 28 27 professionally 28 29 and has a hanger on. It is a profound, I don't even know what to call it, a profound honor that Terry Gilliam vaguely knows who I am. And that's why I got into this, to talk to him, to learn from him, to see the world the way these people see it, these artists who changed the way

I think. And I would do that for nothing. But I also know that if someone else is going to publish it, they're going to get money out of it. They're going to make money on me. So that's how that works. I would never ask someone to work for free. I would never commission work unless I knew there was money in it because it's obscene to exploit someone's love like that. Okay, let's say somebody comes to you for something and you ask for compensation, fair compensation, and then they move down the line because it seems there's always someone who will do it for free. There always is. So just the fact that people exist who will do it for free must suck for the people who don't want to be exploited and feel that there's value in their work and they should be fairly compensated. Yeah, it also sucks for the people who do it for free. Like it really sucks for them because they're not going to be successful. They're, they're by definition, they will not make money at this. And if you can't make money at this, then it can only ever be a hobby or, or something that consumes all of your free time and ends up draining the rest of your life. Uh, I know people who repeatedly are paid less than they deserve. I've thankfully, I've never been in a

position to have to even offer that situation to someone, but I, I used to be paid less than I merited. I'm sure I'm still being paid less than I think I'm deserved. I'm worthy of, but, uh, that's, uh, you know, that's my own fault. I negotiated a salary. Um, and I'm incredibly, I, I, I gotta be the last person hired. I'm probably actually, no, I'm not. Cause Kate Taylor just became the Globes film critic full time. And I was sure they weren't going to hire a new person. It's a lateral move. She was already at the paper. But still, I assumed for years that I was going to be the last person to ever be offered a full-time salaried position as a film critic

in this country, in North America maybe, because three months after I got the gig at Now, everything went away in America because the recession hit and film critics were the first positions cut. I'd like to think that people leave me alone because I'm not expensive. I also, I don't demand an outlandish salary. I, you know, I had the, I actually was lucky enough when Now came from, came calling that I had the MSN gig, which was insanely lucrative because they had no idea what things were worth.

That's great. Microsoft and Bell throwing money at people. That's never going to happen again either. That's great. Yeah, that's not going to happen again. I've been incredibly lucky. I've also been able to do the gig. So that's something. But yeah, there are people who will do what I do for nothing. Of course there are.

I would like to believe they're not as good at it. They wouldn't be as good at it as I am. See, I used to think that was the big differentiator. But now I'm starting to get very cynical. I'm starting to think people don't care anymore. Equality seems to be taking a backseat here. I don't know. I know a lot of really talented writers who aren't making the money they deserve.

So I would like to think that people will go to them if they're looking for cheap labor. That sounds horrible and exploitive, but that is the way the system works. I also know that people aren't paying as much as they used to. So there's that too. A lot of people will be kind of leaving the gig by attrition just because you can't make a living at it so let's talk about your podcast because you you started recently you started it's called someone else's movie yeah and just this is something and i like that well maybe i'm a little biased here as i got a podcast but you you you can own your

podcast you're like the you're the creative director. You own it. So what do you think of my setup first? I'm very impressed. This is way more tech than I thought there was, than I thought you needed, frankly. And I'm beginning to see the benefits of it because I've been listening to your show and it's like, yeah, the sound quality is really good. I see, do you want me to tell people?

Yeah, yeah, sure, go ahead. I see a big mixing board with flicky lights that I don't know what they do. I see what looks like a preamp, three microphones, three headphone stands, and a MacBook. And it all seems to be working really, really well. So far, episode 142. So far, so good. How are you set up?

I saw a picture earlier. I have a Roland field recorder, an RO5 that I've been using for interviews anyway, and a tripod. And a basement. So when you have a guest, I guess it picks up from that distance. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a terrific little device. I would have had to spend a lot more money without it. How much money is that device? It's $250 tops, all in with taxes. It was great. It was one of those situations where I had a little Sony recorder with a rechargeable USB thingy in it. And the sound was pretty good, but it started

to die on me. It just, the battery wore down and wasn't holding a charge as much. So I just went to Babel Radio in the Manulife Center because that's where I bought the last thing and said, what do you got? And they said, we have these and we have these better things. And I said, well, you know what? The better things are going to last longer. What do you got? So I bought a reasonable, the RO5, it was a mod version of some other Roland product that was way more expensive. And they said, well, this is the prosumer model. Prosumer is a great word.

It means it does what you need it to do. And then when you need it to do more, it probably can handle it. And so I used that for a couple of years as my recording device for interviews and stuff. It records to an SD card. And it turned out when I was researching podcast equipment that someone was using it. So I did a test with Anne Donoghue and it turned out so well recording-wise

that it became the first episode of the show. And quick on the Bay and Bloor thing, remember if they have a sale, remember if you miss it, you miss it. Oh yeah, they're unforgiving in their radio ads to remind us of this yeah that's one of those toronto things the main bluer radio it's going through my head right now so i'm just trying to shake it aside here but you uh i know i know this from tweets but you do a lot of uh see see i record live to take live to tape i record live here i only make, the only edit I'll make is I'll trim the silence the first two seconds.

That'll be quiet in the last two seconds. And that'll be my only edits of this show. Assuming you don't blurt out something and have great regrets later. My God, I'll get fired for that. And then I'll be a nice guy and kill that. That happened recently with, you know, it does happen occasionally. Someone says something and then after they go, oh, I could get, I don't want to lose my severance or I don't want to get fired.

And I'm like, oh, what a pain in the ass. Okay, I'll get rid of it. But I don't do any editing, but you do edit your stuff. I do edit, yeah. Well, I have a dog who makes noise. The phone rings. You know, you record at home and you're still subject. That's part of the, you know, that's part of the authenticity.

Yeah. Okay. The one thing I haven't been able to fix fix and I've just given up on it. I even acknowledge it in today's, in the episode that went up today with, uh, with Michael McNamara on, uh,

Bob Dylan's don't look back the, the Panabaker documentary, which everyone should go download at that's on the iTunes store. You guys can find it. But, um, the only thing that I haven't tried to remove is the sound of the dog falling asleep and snoring.

Dexter snores like a, like a, like a big snoring dog. And he fell asleep on Scott Thompson during that episode. Like Marmaduke. Less truly. Oh, Scott Thompson, you mentioned that? Scott Thompson did the show back in the summer.

He did Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and it became really obvious that the dog's snoring was reading. And I don't know how, because he's further away from the microphone than anybody else. The recorder's just good enough that it picks it up. And I don't know how because he's, you know, further away from the microphone than anybody else. The recorder is just good enough that it picks it up. And so you'll start to hear. And it sounds like

I'm breathing through my mouth. That's the worst part because it's someone else is talking. That's because you have the one, my mics, as I mentioned before we began, and I think on the podcast,

you got to be right on them. So if the dog's like over there snoring, it's not getting picked up by these guys. Sure. But it's also a less comfortable situation for the guest. Not for me.

I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. Yeah, because you got to be on a mic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get how it works and everything. I'm comfortable with it and I am a professional.

But if I've got an actor or a director coming into my house to sit in my basement and we just sit on a couch and record, I've just gotten into the habit now of telling people, don't even look at the thing. Just to me you're absolutely right you can't go like you can't lounge and chill because you got to be on the mic so it's like you're aware sort of you're more aware that this is a recording and this but the show is also an interview show like you're actively questioning me about stuff you're asking real people yeah you're asking me but you're also asking me to come up with things from memory and all that. And the thing about my show that, oddly enough, does set it apart, and that was the goal, was just to not do... Well, when I started... Sorry, I'm interrupting myself. And this is why I edit.

love or at least admiration or appreciation. I, I, I understand why shows that hate on movies are popular. People love it. People like that stuff. And it's great. You get to say mean things about Prometheus. If there was a podcast called mean things about Prometheus and Jocelyn Getty was on it, I would listen to it every goddamn day because she hates on Prometheus. She loathes it in such a magnificent fashion that we were going to do an episode about it. And then I thought, it's not the purpose of the show. We'll find a way because I want to get her on that. I want to capture that anger. But what I wanted to do was offer a chance to,

well, here, this is how it happened. A couple of years ago, when I was still doing interviews for msn i a year and a half ago i interviewed tatiana maslany about a movie she made called kazan dylan that was just coming out on dvd uh she's in it with richard dreyfus it was made a couple of years ago just before orphan black started shooting right and um so it took a while to come out because it was on the festival circuit for a bit and then it opened theatrically a couple years ago and then it came out on dvd last year and it's it's a cute to come out because it was on the festival circuit for a bit. And then it opened theatrically a couple of years ago.

And then it came out on DVD last year. And it's a cute little film. She's really good in it. And people should go seek it out. And she was in London. She was working on The Woman in Gold where she played the young Helen Mirren. And she and I were talking about Kaz and Dylan and shadowing Helen Mirren and all that stuff. And we talked for, it was a good 20-minute conversation.

stuff and we talked for it was a good 20 minute conversation and in the middle of it she said that they had just sent her the producers had just sent her the um the first like the first kind of beats of the third season of orphan black and she said and you know there's good stuff in it and she was clearly waiting for me to ask her and i said well i don't want to know i i love the show i follow the show i want to find out when i find out don't like i don't believe in spoilers and she just said oh my god i'm the same way i hate that i won't even watch trailers like me too so we were chatting about how she had just gone to see uh under the skin the scarlett johansson movie uh the day before saw it totally cold she knew nothing about it all she knew was that it was science fiction that it did really well at tiff and scarlett johansson was in it so she saw it just knowing nothing which is the best way to see that movie and pretty much

any movie i agree yeah because if you know i don't like i don't watch trailer i not to interrupt story because i love this story but i i will not watch my wife and i are on the opposite ends of the spectrum though so she'll i'll hear movies very good i'll hear it from people i trust it's a great movie and i'll we're gonna watch this movie what's it about she'll ask me trailer and she wants it about she wants a trailer and she wants the trailer and she wants the what's it about she wants the trailer she wants to know

the plot I won't even read I don't even want to I just want to know this is a good movie I don't care what the genre is I don't care who's in it

I want to go in cold it should be that way I mean just there's no like they're releasing scenes from films now you can watch the first seven minutes

we've released clips of the ending of this movie the man from uncle trailer uses the last shot. Wow. It's so frustrating. And it's because that means there are no surprises for you. I just, I don't want to know. Disney had this, they do this thing every year at the end of the year where they show us a reel of stuff and, you know, come and have a cocktail or, well, sometimes they're in the evening, sometimes they're drinking. This one was morning, so it was breakfast. I don't want everyone thinking we drink in the day.

Some of us have to. But, you know, you come and you have a little breakfast, you have a cup of coffee, watch an hour of presentation. And we're going to show you trailers and we're going to show you scenes. And here's some clips from our next animated feature, which you'll see in a year. And then they show you, this time it was The Good Dinosaur, which was screened for the press afterwards, the finished film. So they call it a sizzle package. They call it a preview package, whatever it is. So they invite me and I say, thanks very much.

When is the sizzle package over? And that's when I'll come in. They once showed us an entire dialogue scene from The Avengers. I knew about it and I didn't go. And everybody was like, oh, but you passed up on The Avengers. Like, yeah, I know, but I'll see it in the movie in context where it belongs right um and i have a whole long origin story about why that is for me and it's boring and weird it involves seeing like the middle of the abyss a month before the film was released because fox was worried that people the release dates kept getting pushed it was supposed to open in may and it didn't open until aug. And so in the first week of July, they invited all of us

to a 70 millimeter preview presentation at the Varsity when they, back when it was just two theaters, one of which was equipped for 70 mil. And they showed us a 15 minute sizzle trailer promotion from mostly footage of James Cameron and a couple of effects shots saying how, you know, it's going to be worth the wait.

And then they said, and we have a special treat for you. We have a reel of the film that's completed with music and effects and everything. And you want to see that. We'll screen it. And I was 21. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Preview of the James Cameron movie. Let's see that. So it turned out to be the sub chase in the second act. It's the sub chase that ends with, no spoilers, I drown, you tow me back to the rig. So all of that, including the sequence that follows the towing. So it was a good, I remember it as 25, 30 minutes of movie. And it was thrilling and fantastic. We didn't know who these characters were, but that's Ed Harris,

and that's Michael Bain, and that's Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. And oh my God, that's happening right now. It was incredible. And by the end of it, you're sold on it. And then you go see the movie a month later at uh, at the Cinesphere in that case. And that was actually, that was where I first met John Harkness or we first spoke to each other because they had one of those reception things. Um, and they screened the movie for us. And then for those of us who had seen that reel, it went dead because we knew what was going to happen.

And for 25 minutes, nothing, no tension, no involvement, nothing. So then it picks up again and there's more stuff, but it's all lesser, right? It took the air out of the film for me. And so I just pledged then never to see it again. Well, never, never, no teasing. No, don't show me a scene from a movie because I'll just be thinking, well, when does that happen? You know, I'm sure you get this when you see a trailer in a theater and then that footage isn't used in the film. You're always just kind of waiting for it. Right, right, right. I don't want to know that. So anyway, we were talking about, so Masl anyway, we were talking about,

so Maslany and I were talking about Under the Skin and we talked about it for a couple of minutes. She wanted to know what I thought of it. I wanted to know if she liked it. And as an actor, I thought she'd have a really interesting perspective on Johansson's performance, which is really great. And so we talked and then at the end of the,

we went back to her stuff and talked about the movie that she was promoting and playing the interview back later as I was transcribing it, I just realized this is the best stuff and I can't use it. Like there's no place for that. The meandering is always the greatest part. Well, yeah, it's the digressions and it's the conversation, but it's also somebody talking about something

from a perspective of artistic appreciation and from a perspective that the average person, like the average critic doesn't possess, the average layman certainly doesn't possess. This is a person who plays other people for a living, appreciating someone else who did something truly alien and a film that executed it beautifully. And I thought when the time came, when the MSN gig died finally, and I had to figure out what else to do with this day or so of I usually spend working on the MSN gig. I've been thinking about podcasts for, I love them. I listen to them all the time.

I usually spend working on the MSN gig. I've been thinking about podcasts for, I love them. I listen to them all the time. And I thought this would actually be a, a way to frame it. It's a device that no one else is using. And so, yeah,

it was going to be called look again for a while. And I was going to, the idea would be to get people to talk about movies that they thought deserved a second chance. And then I realized if you just frame it as pure love and like, tell me about a thing that you love to watch that you don't have

any connection to. So it can't be about an agenda. It can never be about and this is why I did this movie. None of that. It just has to be honest. And it's been fantastic. People are picking stuff

I wouldn't see coming and the choices have been great and we've got some terrific guests. People have agreed to do the show that haven't come on yet. But oh, if they come through, it's going to be fantastic. Can you tease me?

It was a big name there. No, it wouldn't be fair. Just because, I know, because then they're... If it falls apart. If it doesn't fall apart, you'll always know they blew you off. Well, or for whatever reason. I mean, scheduling, I've been... I can...

Who would be fair? Oh, you know what? This is okay. I can say this. Wim Wenders, who is... He made Wings of Desire and is just an absolute legend in cinema. He started as a film critic. And so I spent all of TIFF, basically every interview I did would be sort of like, oh, and I also do this other thing. Do you think you'd want to do it? said yes and people are very enthusiastic about it patrick stewart seemed delighted that the show even exists i have no idea if i'm ever going to get him but that was great uh this is fantastic i would love to you know that kind of thing and vendors vendors was over the moon like he's just like why isn't anyone doing this it's like well i am he's like yes i know but why why hasn't this

happened before that's awesome so yeah he said he'd do it i don't know when we'll see each other again but the next time we're in the same place, he said he'd do it. The hardest part of my experience is the scheduling and the, the herding of the cats and everything, especially cause at least you're mobile. Like everybody comes to me. Okay. So far, we have the exception of two shows that I taped in New York,

uh, which have aired, which have already gone live. I don't know what the term is, which are dropped. Uh, I did. I uploaded.

I went, yeah, I went to, uh, to New York in August to do now's cover story and interview with no bomb back. And while. I went, yeah, I went to, to New York in August to do Now's Cover Story, an interview with Noah Baumbach. And while I was there, because I couldn't not, there was also an opportunity to talk to Bridie Elliott, who had a film coming out called Fort Tilden. So that was part of it. And I interviewed the cast for now, but I also got some time and did the podcast with,

with Bridie and she picked Rosemary's Baby, which is a really great choice for her. And the next day was, oh, no, the same day I talked to Alex Ross Perry about, he had a film coming out called Queen of Earth with Elizabeth Moss. And we talked about Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's film, which, again, was a film I never would have seen him pick. But they were both great conversations. And those were the remote recordings. And I did a-

And everyone else comes to you. Everyone else comes to the house. Well, the acoustics are great. We're in the basement. The dog is there to make friends. Faith Erin Hicks, I did, we talked, she's a great illustrator. I made a slight exception

because she hasn't worked in film, but she did work as an animator for television. So I figured that counted. That counts. Oh, totally. And we did the, we taped an episode in the Toronto. That counts. Oh, totally. And, uh, we did the, we taped an episode, uh,

in the Toronto reference library. Oh, cool. In a little quiet room, which was not nearly as quiet as I would have liked it to be. But yeah, that, those are the only remote episodes.

And I will do another, I have another trip to New York coming up and I've planned a couple of things. And the, the talent pool is just huge there, but it's a lot, you're right. It's a lot harder to pin down. I am working my way in Toronto

through the cast of Orphan Black. Christian Broon did one of our first episodes and he was delightful. And Ari Millen did one. It was tied to the first episode of the season and the last episode. And Miss Lenny said she'll do it. So I think I can say fairly that-

Well, that's a huge gain right there. I fully expect, well, it's her damn fault. She has to do it. I bumped into her at TIFF and she's very enthusiastic about it. It's just a matter of figuring out how to do it because she's allergic to dogs and she can't do it in the house. Oh, yeah. That's a remote one right there.

It would kill her. I would kill to Jana Maslany if I recorded the show the way I want to. That would not be cool. No, I'm not prepared to do that for art. Do you have any plans to monetize this podcast? I don't know how. It is. Yeah.

I mean, because I ask naturally, I'm curious because I know of podcasts that have been monetized, but the podcasts I know of that have been monetized properly, they actually are monetizing their established brand names in the, you know what I mean? These are people who have been on terrestrial radio for 20 years. Or somebody like Mark Maron, who has discovered a thing that only he does,

which is amazing. And, or Chris Hardwick for Nerdist. Uh, and Maron, Maron is a, a podcaster who I, I admire greatly,

although I don't really enjoy the show. Right. Um, which sounds weird. Depends who the guest is, I think. Yeah, but I think that's the problem.

If you don't like me, you're not going to like my podcast. I think that's how it comes down to it. And with Marin is just, I get it. I understand the seething psychological issues that drive him. And I respect them greatly. But I just, I can't plug into that. Hardwick, on the other hand, is incredibly enthusiastic.

But he gets people to match his enthusiasm, which is the key, which is why the Nerdist interviews are so much fun. And they have built empires, absolutely, but they're both in LA. Right. So they're able to. And they really are outliers. Like if you think of...

Oh yeah, no one else is that successful. So then in my experience, the guys who have managed to actually make some money off their podcasts are basically, they have companies that will sponsor the content and they'll sort of speak ads through the podcast. But they're, like I said,

these are people who've been on terrestrial radio for 20 years in this city and have like a brand name like these are known entities if you will or somebody like paul f tompkins who's a living god uh who does have you know he's got sponsors but he makes those he makes the ads as much fun as the content of the show like he's doing he's got a show called spontaneous nation where one of the ads is for i don't even remember i don't think it's the same show. Like he's doing, he's got a show called Spontaneanation where one of the ads is for, I don't even remember, I don't think it's the same product even, but he's created two characters, Mitch and Dolores,

who talk to each other in the ads and it's him performing them. And there are just these magnificent escalating catastrophes every time. They're always like the last one I think was Mitch will start talking to Dolores about some product when they're trying to escape death.

That's the concept. And the last one was they were being chased by the ghost from the ring. And it gradually becomes clear that that's what's happening. And, you know, if I can do that,

if I can make it fun and get paid, sure, why not? And to me, it has to be enough compensation to make that trade worthwhile. Yeah, because you are whoring yourself. Once you introduce the ads, it changes things. And it's got to me, it has to be enough compensation to make that trade worthwhile. Yeah, because you are whoring yourself. Once you introduce the ads, it changes things.

And it's got to be worthwhile. It's got to be worth your time to do that. Otherwise, just keep it independent, passion project, and enjoy it. I would love to make money on it. I think that would be fantastic because I own a home and I have a mortgage. Sure, of course. I am in a position, again, where I am lucky enough that I have a full-time job and I can take the time to do this.

But sure, it would be great. I could see myself easily. There are podcast networks that I respect immensely. I'd love to be part of them just because the access would also improve. We got reviewed. And when I say we, it's me and a tripod. Yeah, I do that too. The staff at Toronto Mike would like to think.

The show was reviewed. I should just start saying that because that makes it its own entity. The show was reviewed in the AV Club yesterday and it was

amazing and they liked it, which was even better. But it's the first recognition, external recognition other than the review on iTunes here and there or a

comment on the website. I've been doing this for eight months now and suddenly the downloads have spiked. We did the traffic yesterday that we do in three weeks. And hopefully that will continue because people will subscribe and stick around. I have no idea. It's tough to get somebody to subscribe to a podcast.

It's not the same as reading a blog entry. I've been kind of at this. Usually it was behind the scenes now that I'm doing this like I've, I've been kind of at this. Usually it was behind the scenes now that I'm doing this, but it's been years I've been at this and it's, it's, you know, you're like somebody might love your content and they might really want to hear that.

But then getting them to actually subscribe to this podcast, it, for some people it's very intimidating. It's, it's still that kind of nerdy bleeding edge kind of people. Like I'm a podcast, you're a. Like, I'm a podcast guy. You're a podcast guy. I'm a podcast guy.

But I was an RSS guy for content and stuff. And every time I mention RSS, because I'm a marketing guy, I'll mention the RSS. It's like, oh, man, just send me an email, man. Well, that is the genius of iTunes. I mean, there is a button that says subscribe. You don't have to be any more technically savvy than that. And then, of course, iTunes is a way to do that. I i mean it's still i find people i love that content i love this

sounds great which yeah i can't get my i think maybe i have one brother subscribe but i can't even get my mom to subscribe you know what i mean like this is a big deal to some people now i think my parents listen to it on the web they just they click yeah they can click it here and it's like yeah which does work yeah if that works for you's great. But it means they're not taking it with them. Yeah, I don't know. I subscribe to, I must have subscribed, I must have like 20 subscriptions at least that I listen to regularly. And, you know, the Thrilling Adventure Hour just finished and that makes me sad inside because that was my favorite thing in the world. But they, most of the people from that show now have podcasts.

So I'm following them. And I really enjoy it. I walk the dog. I'm outside a lot. Why not put something in my brain that isn't music? Yeah, I bike to some podcasts. I mean, I listen to music, but I also go and walk to a podcast

because you can stop and start it and pick up the rhythms. John Hodgman has done remarkable things with Judge John Hodgman on the Maximum Fun Network jesse thorn's doing great work the earwolf stuff that scott ackerman has produced is just endless delight i really love actually uh that there's a podcast out there called i was there too with matt gorley where he interviews people who were supporting players in famous movies which is a genius idea and sort of the anti-me and in of its concept. And he just, he did an episode for Halloween with PJ souls on Halloween and it was just

phenomenal. His Steven Tobolowsky on groundhog day, um, Jeanette Goldstein, who was in aliens T2 and Titanic to talk about her relationship with, uh, James Cameron as a filmmaker. He's doing incredible work and I'm immensely jealous of him because he gets

to talk to all these people. But if I was in New York or LA, I'd be gorging on the available talent there as well, which isn't to say Toronto doesn't have a lot. We are bursting, but you know, I've been chasing Ennis Esmer for, God, since before the show started, he was one of the first people I reached out to and we still haven't been able to get an hour together. That's just how busy he is. He's in demand. Here's a question for my brother, Steve, the aforementioned brother who subscribes. You can ask him, okay, how do you feel about studios taking less risks

and moving to franchises and sequels? So everything seems to be a sequel or a reboot or a remake now. So the question is, will the next Tarantinos be able to find his or her way? What's your thoughts on that? I think Tarantino is an excellent example, actually, because he's somebody who's never really, his, his vision is, exists within an established genre. He started with the heist movie and then he made Pulp Fiction. They're

all recognizable tropes. So he had an advantage there because he's working in a story form that people already understand. That's happening now with no money. Like people are making these incredibly tiny movies and they're doing that. They're just, there's a film called The Mend by a director named John, I want to say Magary, I've probably been pronouncing it wrong because I've never heard it spoken because that's how little coverage the film got. But it opened here in Toronto, played a week at the Carlton. It's amazing.

It's a little drama about two brothers. Josh Lucas plays one of the brothers and they're just these screw ups in Harlem. brothers josh lucas plays one of the brothers and they're just these screw-ups in in harlem and it's about it's basically if cronenberg's dead ringers hadn't been about drug addicted gynecologists that they were just two idiot brothers but it has the same sort of tone and the same understanding of the characters that blew me away like nothing else i've seen this year and it's a tiny little movie and it's on itunes and nowhere else because it's long since out of theaters, The Mend, M-E-N-D. That's the kind of thing that we're going to see more of. We're going to see people like Alex Ross Perry making Listen Up Philip and Queen of Earth.

And he's working with movie stars. Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men is in both of those. Kristen Ritter and Jonathan Pryce and Jason Schwartzman are in Listen Up Philip as well. And he just got hired to write the new Winnie the Pooh. This guy, which makes no sense at all. But that's like, that tells me that just as with Marvel, they're looking for interesting people. So these franchises are being guided at the very least, they're being guided by people who understand the value of talent. And that makes me feel good about the franchises.

I had a phone call last week with Christian Ritter, who's in Jessica Jones, the new Marvel series that starts on Netflix on Friday, and she said, I said, I never thought you'd be in something like this, because I never thought they'd think of you, and I never thought you'd take it. And she said, yeah, that's why I did it. Because it makes no sense. But then they've let her develop the character and work with her, and

she's really excited about what she can do. She's the one from Breaking Bad? She was in Breaking Bad, and Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23, and Veronica Mars. She was in Big Eyes what she can do. She's the one from Breaking Bad? She was in Breaking Bad and Don't Trust the Bee in Apartment 23 and Veronica Mars. She was in Big Eyes last year. She's a remarkable talent. And every time she shows up in a movie, I am happy because it means that the casting director was paying attention. It's like seeing Judy Greer show up as the mom in everything this summer. Yeah.

People want to work with Judy Greer. That's the takeaway. Not that, oh, she's playing a mom again. It's like, yeah, no one knows who she is. This is how you let people know. She isn't everything. This immense talent exists. And then now she's the mom from Tomorrowland and Jurassic World and Ant-Man

and shut up. That's who she is. Let her do some other work. She's been doing this fantastic sitcom called Married, which Hodgman's in also and just got canceled, unfortunately. But the two seasons of that are an amazing domestic dramedy with her and Nat Faxon and she does the best work of her career. So if Ant-Man and Tomorrowland,

two minutes in those movies, get her noticed and get people to go see married, it's all been worth it. Yeah. I mean, she was on Arrested Development. That's right. That's all.

Yeah. That's, that's my show right there. Yeah. They're all great. Everybody from that, right? Yeah.

You want to chase them down. That's right. That's right. That's right. Man, you were awesome. I asked for an hour. We're like at 95 minutes. That's right. That's right. That's right. Man, you were awesome. I asked for an hour. We're like at 95 minutes.

Oh, my God. And I have a lot of... I mean, you're going to have to come back at some point. I got time. You want to throw this at me? I don't have time. That's the problem. That's the problem.

The other Wilner, I had to get him back a second time. I can do it again. Sure. We can double up. Yeah, we can pick up. But last question would be about the... Your tweets are often very political. Like, you're very engaged in the Toronto political scene.

I suppose, yeah. And we just came off, what, four years of Rob Ford. Yep. So how did we survive? I think as, how can I put this in a way that doesn't sound insulting to people who voted for Tory? I think it is really, you know what, if Rob Ford and Stephen Harper,

if Rob Ford and Stephen Harper and George W. Bush prove anything in the last 10 years of politics, it is that it is really, really hard to cow a populace that people will vote for a conservative

if the iconography is simple enough, if the message is basic enough, and if the person doing the messaging is simple enough not to get tripped up. Like Bush and Ford, Ford's people just ran Karl Rove's George Bush campaign from 2000. They kept him away from interviews. They had him say the same thing over and over and over again. They had his family out all the time to show us how great he was.

And it worked. And it didn't work a second time. It worked a second time with Bush, arguably. You know, he beat Kerry legitimately in 2004. Ford, between the cancer and everything else, it was not going to happen a second time. And Tory won because he ran on the same strategy, which was just say nice things,

tell people that you're responsible, don't say that much about your personality or your policies because he doesn't really have anything. Tory is a guy who goes where the wind blows, basically. That's his whole thing. He's Mayor Shruggy. He just keeps saying, I don't know. Every time he gives a press conference, watch him. He does it. He puts his arms out and goes, well, I'm sure we can arrive at some kind.

He doesn't have any ideas. He's stalling until the next meeting. That's his thing. And it works. He's really, really good at it. It worked for him when he was running the PCs, and it works for him as the mayor of toronto because he looks like the mayor he's the guy who would be playing the mayor in a disaster movie right where you know he calls the heroes in but you always remember that guy that mayor that president he never actually does anything himself he just knows who to talk to that's how tori sells himself i'm connected i will fix it let me get my guys on it and and he's not rob Ford. Or Doug. Right. Who, you know, I'm delighted to find out just how much of his own money he spent to prove that he was

unelectable last year, because goddammit. I think it is absolutely fascinating. The pathology of the Fords is going to be a million thesis papers someday. Thesis papers? How do you say it? They are uniquely unqualified to the thing they most want to do, which is be in charge. And that more than anything, that and the lying and the covering up, I just, I had enough. I wrote a couple of pieces for now. The first one was going to be a blog post. I ended up writing this 2000 word blog post the weekend that the drunk driving stuff was happening on the Danforth when it was very, very clear that Rob had driven there drunk,

but that no one, because the level of denial was such that if you couldn't prove, this was the argument they were using, well, he may have driven there sober and then drunk in his car, and then he was shit-faced. Can I swear on the show?

Yeah, you can swear. Sorry about that. And he was that drunk when he got out of his car because, oh no, it requires you to consciously ignore everything you know about Rob Ford, which is that he's drunk all the time, or he was, presumably he's better now. And it required you to ignore the fact that it takes time for alcohol to kick in. It was

impossible, but they managed to sell that. His people were actively protecting him to the level, and there was enough goodwill, and that's the problem with Toronto too, where really we don't want a mess. We don't want things to be this bad we would really prefer it if everything was a little bit nicer and you know you'd rather look the other way and not have to deal with the fact that the person you elected mayor is a walking disaster a human disaster um and the more stuff that emerges now like the toey book it's just it's vile it's absolutely unconscionable that his people would protect him because he was going to hurt someone. I'm still, that was what I wrote. That was the thing that I wrote first, is that he's going to kill

someone. He will kill himself, or he'll hit someone with his car because he drives drunk, and he pretends he doesn't, and everybody's fine with it. And now we find out the police were picking him up, like they were taking him home, but they weren't driving him home. They were escorting him home, which is worse. And at no point did anybody, it never

got called out. It was one of those things where it's just like, you know, there's a tiger outside. We should probably just hide in the basement until it goes away. And that's what we did with our mayor. And now, for whatever reason, you know, I don't think he's going to make it. Unfortunately, the latest disclosure of these new tumors, it doesn't sound good. In a situation where he was going to run again in 2018, I think it would be, if he's alive, if he's running, I think it would be an act of profound cruelty for his family to let him run, but that's not how they see it. And obviously, you know, people are going

to say that it's all about Ford's narcissism and that the idea that they're the next political generation, no matter what, it just proves that if you have enough money, you can make people believe anything because people want your money. And they've managed to build a world where no one questions these things. And at no point does anybody say, you know, maybe Robbie shouldn't be doing this because he's not good at it and it's bad for him. He wants it. He can have it. He's a six-year-old child. Give me that. Give me that. So there you go. That's how we ended up with him running. I hope it would be, you know, it would be so great if he makes it because his kid, like he, he talks all the time about how losing his father was the worst thing that ever happened to him. I don't want his children to grow up without a parent. I can't imagine what that household is

like based on what we hear, but it's still better than watching a parent die. And that's why, you know, I wanted him to not be mayor because that was driving all the substance abuse, clearly. Although maybe, who knows, maybe he was doing that anyway, whatever it was. My argument has always been that he shouldn't be mayor because he should be in rehab and he should be clean and he should live. And hopefully he's halfway to that. I mean, he's supposed to be clean. I hope he still is. And I hope he makes it through this. I just don't think he should be a politician because he's singularly awful at it. He is.

And when you consider that a mayor's most important job might be to gain consensus, you know, because you're only one vote. Well, yeah, except you're only one vote. Oh, in council. Right, right, right. But you steer, you know, you drive. But he was absolutely horrific at that.

Oh, yeah. No, he couldn't organize anything. He could strong, like the first year where they were strong-arming people because you can say you have a mandate. And then it just really became obvious after about 13, 14 months that he had no real authority and no power. And Doug would have been even worse because Doug doesn't even pretend to be interested in consensus. Tory's fine because Tory wants everybody to like him. So he will do whatever it takes to be liked. We'll just, we'll see what, you know,

hopefully this will mean that there will be a genuine progressive challenge in 2018 and someone else can come in and start to put right the things that Tori isn't doing. It's not that, you know. So you have no fear though, that, that if there is a strong challenger, there's no fear because we don't have, we have, it's first past the post. So if you have a strong challenger my fear with olivia chow was uh and i liked olivia chow yeah i wanted olivia chow to be mayor but the fear and i think a lot of people share this is that a vote for olivia chow you now split the same vote between tory

and chow and then coming up the middle of 30 whatever percent would have been doug yeah right but you know if everybody who said they wanted to vote for Olivia Chow had voted for Olivia Chow, she would have won in a landslide. It's just this common, you know, you convince yourself otherwise.

But you basically have a discussion with yourself, what do you want more, Olivia Chow to be your mayor or Doug Ford not to be your mayor?

But it's still a magical thing. And this is why we need to change the whole process. Oh, I agree. I think rank balloting would be fantastic. I don't think it'll ever happen because people realize, the why we need to change the whole process. Oh, I agree. I think rank balloting would be fantastic.

I don't think it'll ever happen because people realize, the people who make the decision are the ones who realize, oh, well, you mean someone can vote me out. I don't want that. Once you become a politician, you do everything you can to stay one. Yeah, power corrupts all. It's not even corruption, right? It's just a good gig.

It is a good gig. I mean, you can want to be. But do you have any political aspirations yourself? Like no desire to run for city council or something one day? I'm unelectable. I don't think that's true. No, I have no interest in, I'm barely managing to be the vice president of the Toronto Film Critics Association. No, I have no, I have no taste for dealing with people or crowds. I spoke at the first Safe Toronto rally, which I still can't believe I did. They invited me to do that. And it was, it was, it was incredible.

It was a thrill. And I was pretty sure I was going to throw up out my nose as soon as it was over. No, I, uh, I am not politically, I'm politically active. I'm not politically, uh, aspirant. I really appreciate that you came over and chatted me up for what looks like about an hour and 45 minutes. That's pretty awesome. I'm sorry we ran long.

My apologies to the local news. Wow, really? That didn't feel like it. Did you learn anything from the podcast perspective? Are you going to change anything of your podcast? Or it's good for you to see how somebody else does it and it's stored in the back of your head? I'm going to learn something from this. I'm not totally sure what it is yet.

I'll figure it out in a moment. I want to go on a tour. I just want to see everybody's home podcast studio. Just do a tour of the city and just visit people's basements, how they record. Well, I have been on a few other shows. I did Matthew Price's

Let's Scare Matthew Price to Death. And that was, again, an engineered situation where he had someone working the levels and professional mics. And then I've done the Do-Over, which is a similar setup to this with five or six microphones and six people gathered around and an engineered situation where he had someone working the levels and professional mics. And then I've done the do-over, which is a similar setup to this with five or six microphones and six people gathered around

and someone working the levels. And then there's this, which is you doing it all. And then there's me where it's just like, yeah, whatever. Let's see what happens when I press the levelator button

and get all the sound. I think I'm a... I prefer to be a charming amateur. Me too. I don't know about the charming, though. I'm working on it. I'm working on too. I don't know about the charming though. I'm working on it. And that brings us to the end of our 140 second show.

You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike and Norm is verified, verified on Twitter. I'm working on it at Norm Wilner at Norm is that other guy who doesn't write his own tweets either. I'm pretty sure he's never, I bet you he's never written a tweet. Actually, he's never sent a tweet in his life. He knows who Drake is.

I think that's important. Maybe. See you all next week. Thanks for having me.