Hollywood North

It's festival week in Toronto, and Torontonians are flushed with a sense of relevance. Brads and Angies and Judes and Toms have descended en masse. The Barenaked Ladies played outside the office window this morning. (My Executive Director was heard to express some surprise that they were men and not ladies.) Shop windows are festooned with film spools and director's chairs and any possible item that might inspire mortals to think the establishment is somehow connected to the proceedings. Lips and tits shine with the fresh squeaky gloss of collagen and silicone top-ups. Hummers and limos prowl the street like hungry prehistoric ghouls. I work in festival central, aka Yorkville, so it's barely a surprise that I'm having odd flashbacks to life in L.A., but even at home, in sleepy old Roncesvalles, often deemed too far from the downtown core for the hipsters to tarry, even there, lights and cameras stand poised to immortalize the frock-clad heft of John Travolta in Hairspray, the movie of the musical of the movie. My noblest posture, in the face of all this, is indignant irritation. "Who cares?" I ask of anyone who will/must listen. Movies are, in the vast majority, trash; their creators and purveyors for the most part overpaid hacks. "Restore my streetcar route! Give film back to the people!" I chant, pumping the air socialistically with fist. This, as I said, is my noblest posture. Careful observers will notice my least noble posture as I walk out at lunch to buy some food, my eyes swivelling greedily to catch one cherished glimpse of a famous face.