For the first time in twenty-two years, I returned to Toronto to attend the much vaunted Toronto International Film Festival. I experienced something more than a film lover’s TIFF. I was heartbroken – stabbed in the chest - by the cynical disregard for viewers’ pleasure.
This is a festival where you can’t just saunter into a movie theatre with a ticket in your hand expecting to take your seat. They make you wait round the block – and I do mean round the block. If you are an old person having to stand on your feet for a couple of hours – and rush-liners had to do exactly that – this is no fun. It turns cinema-going into an endurance sport. I kept expecting a game show commentator to poke a microphone at those would-be patrons about to wilt.
The queues don’t just go around the block. They go around local businesses. The managers of a local bank near the Visa Screening Room on Yonge Street sent out armed guards – armed guards – to make sure their entrance wasn’t blocked. You don’t want to mess with those guys.
Just because you’ve paid over $30 (Canadian) doesn’t mean you’re going to get an unrestricted view of the screen. I found myself in the Roy Thomson Hall staring at an iron bar cutting across Nate Parker’s face throughout the whole of The Birth of a Nation.
What’s more, even if you buying a ticket for a non-sold out screening on the day as I did for Alice Lowe’s Prevenge, five minutes before the performance, you have to pay a booking fee of $2 per ticket. You don’t even get a receipt for it. For all I know, the box office staff could be pocketing those $2 coins. I’d like to see their tax returns.
The rush line for non-ticket holders is supposed to be admitted ten minutes before the scheduled start time. On three occasions, at screenings of American Pastoral, Nocturnal Animals and La La Land, we had to wait until after the movie start time, running to the box office, getting our $20 or voucher ready before facing an old guy selling tickets who ought to have retired last century. Then we had to get the ticket scanned, five yards from the box office to verify it was genuine. I just bought it! Then we were told not to run to the auditorium, ten minutes after the scheduled start time. Don’t run? You kept us waiting. Then the only seats available were of restricted view. You had to run around the theatre, feeding off scraps, not able to sit in seats still being saved for the media or important people ten minutes after the movie’s start time.
They don’t know how to run a festival.
My family and I saw on average one movie a day. Not four-a-day as at Haugesund or Prague. Just one - because it was too much effort!
We got to Thursday and had to choose between The Headhunter’s Calling and a movie at the local Cineplex.
Cineplex – and The Light Between Oceans - won.
Admittedly, there are free screenings and going to see Something Wild on film with a Q and A with Jonathan Demme was a pleasure. But it was too little too late.
There was also free coffee (courtesy of a well-known chain) but even that didn’t make up for the unfriendliness of the experience.
Complaining about the restricted view I endured, a salaried employee said ‘the next time you come...‘
Why would there be a next time?
In a local branch of Tim Horton’s (other coffee chains are available), a woman told me about the premiere she attended – The Magnificent Seven – at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
She had a balcony seat – and the screen was a postage stamp.
‘There was too much shooting,’ she complained. She went to the rest room – and never came back.
I’m sure that for press whose publications pay for an $800 pass, the experience is more fun. For the film festival tourist it is not.
I have attended a number of film festivals in the last twelve months. Here they are rated for ease of movie enjoyment:
1. Haugesund, Norway (August)
2. Berlin, Germany (February)
3. Vienna, Austria (October)
4. Prague, Czech Republic (March)
5. Tribeca, New York, USA (April)
6. ... Toronto, Canada (September)
Of course, I’m the first to admit, I’m very old...
