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David Weaver TIFF blog

Gauging Toronto audiences

Friday, September 12, 2008 | 04:49 PM ET

David Weaver is an old pro when it comes to the Toronto International Film Festival. The director behind Moon Palace (2000), Century Hotel (2001) and Siblings (2004) has attended the festival on several occasions, and knows the territory. This year, he came in support of Toronto Stories, a collaborative, four-part study of his native city shot with three other directors: Sudz Sutherland, Aaron Woodley and Sook-Yin Lee. Weaver blogged for CBCNews.ca throughout the festival, reporting on audience reactions, business deals, bizarre celebrity encounters and the general mayhem that is TIFF.

Whenever I’m at a festival screening of one of my films, I always return a few minutes before the end. That way, I can take the temperature of the room and know if I’m going to be in for a rough ride for the Q&A. (Worst question ever asked: “What made you think you could be a filmmaker?” Response: “The same thing that made you think you could ask that question.”) But for Toronto Stories, I had another reason for returning before the credits: I simply love the last shot of the movie. It shows the skyline of Toronto at dawn as Gil Bellows’ homeless character disappears off into obscurity. We begged a supplier for the biggest crane we could possibly get, and I tried to compose a shot that would summarize the whole movie in a single frame, a shot that would show the city at its most singular and impressive.

Watching that shot with a Toronto audience was nothing less than the culmination of making the film for me. And hearing the applause that followed was even better. Steve Gravestock moderated a Q&A afterwards with myself, Aaron Woodley and Sook-Yin Lee. Most of the questions flirted with the very ideas that inspired the movie – like why are we so unwilling in this country to celebrate our own, be it the films we make or the cities we live in?

I refused to answer, on the grounds that I might never work in this town again.

Once the Q&A was over, I felt the slight deflation that comes with the undeniable realization that the movie is done, done, done. No more fiddling with the colour timing or harassing the long-suffering Matt Harald into yet another tweak of the sound design. And certainly no more shivering in the frigid Toronto night at 4 AM so I can ask Gil Bellows to fall just one more time into that rancid puddle to get the shot exactly the way I imagined it.

Yes, you’re right, how could such happiness ever be found again? Well, you see, I have this script and all I need is a few million dollars…

Before I start down that road again, there’s the Toronto Stories after-party. Suzanne Cheriton, associate producer of the film and the woman who will become my wife in a scant three weeks, arranged an incredible bash at Union Station. Why Union Station? Not only is it the location of the first scene in my segment of Toronto Stories, but it also fulfilled the only other requirement of a festival venue: it seems like an exceedingly unlikely place to have a party.

If you had told me when I was growing up in this town and dreaming of becoming a filmmaker that one day we’d shut down half of the city’s largest transportation hub and project giant stills from the movie on its venerable walls – well, I’d have thought that extremely unlikely, to say the least. But I looked up, and there they were.

The other wonderful thing about festival parties is that for that one night, no one wants to ruin the vibe. Tomorrow will bring all the negative reviews, struggles to find some little remnant of media attention in a sea of Hollywood blockbusters and, hardest of all, box office numbers. For tonight, though, it felt like Toronto Stories lay at the centre of the cinematic universe. And that’s all right with me.

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