Every year as part of their Festival of Fear, Rue Morgue screens an iconic horror movie accompanied by a special guest. This year, we were treated to a screening of what may be the perfect vampire film, Near Dark, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, with Lance Henriksen (who plays Jesse Hooker) in attendance.
Near Dark is one of those movies that, forgive the cliché, truly improves with age, much like the vampires it portrays. It is even more relevant now than it was when it was originally released in 1987. Back then it was not exactly box office gold, although it has grown in both critical and cult status since.
Having just witnessed Lance Henriksen on screen as the somewhat terrifying Jesse Hooker, it’s a bit of a shock to see him ascend the stage with short grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He shows off his forearm tattoos in an attempt to look tough and then breaks into a grin and laughter at the attempt.
When emcee Richard Crouse starts asking questions, we hear Henriksen’s unmistakable, deep, gravelly voice and there is no doubt that the man before us is the same who has inhabited so many iconic, and frequently chilling, characters: Bishop in Aliens, Ed Harley in Pumpkinhead, and Frank Black in the much-cherished TV series Millennium
Lance Henriksen is a natural and gifted storyteller, though the word “raconteur” seems far more appropriate. Crouse pulls selected quotes and stories from Henriksen’s recently published biography Not Bad For A Human and asks him to elaborate on them, which he does at length, frequently spinning off into tangents, such as when Crouse asks him about a commercial voice-over gig he turned down early in his career. The pay was $50,000 but Henriksen claims he didn’t want to do multiple takes because he just didn’t want to hear his own voice that much. He interrupts himself and stands up to tell another story about his life, then looks over at Crouse: “I’ll just rattle on for a second.” The crowd laughs.
Although film fans may find Lance Henriksen creepy on screen, he’s utterly charming and witty in person. Still, there is that edge, like when he lowers his voice an octave to emphasize a point, or responds with a deadpan expression before smiling and laughing. Or when towards the end of the night, a patron got up to exit and Henriksen pointed him out: “”Don’t leave. I’m coming up to the best shit yet. God, I hate it when people walk out. Anything I can do for you? Would you like some wine?” The crowd cracks up and Crouse tries to assuage his fears: “I think he’s coming back.” Henriksen turns to call his bluff: “No, he’s not, you’re lying to me.” Crouse: “I’ve never lied to you before, and I won’t start now.” It’s like some sort of dark-humored stand up routine with Crouse as the unwitting straight man.
Where was I? Oh yes, Lance Henriksen’s stories . . . even though he tells a lot of them, he’s no gossip hound; he doesn’t name names, saying that he has “no axes to grind.” In fact, he admits, “everything that happens for real, I put in a movie.” As the discussion of Near Dark eventually reveals, he always creates a background reality for his characters.
It is not just his training as a Method actor that prompts this; it’s Henriksen’s self-identification as a “primitive.” “You know in your heart if you’re a primitive or not,” he states. He tells us that he goes to great lengths to convince himself that he has the intelligence, strength, and creativity to play a certain role because he has neither education nor trust. “The script only gives you the narrative and the words; they don’t tell you how to do it,” he reminds the audience. He needs that information to play the character so he’s not “just acting.”
Many of us were surprised by the revelation that despite his appearance in over 150 movies since the early ’70s (and years of theater, including Broadway productions), Lance Henriksen did not learn to read or write until he was 30 years old. “Why do you have to do something that you have no need for at the time?” he queries, then pauses. “That’s my agent [in the audience] laughing.” He continues, “Nobody ever asks an artist, ‘Why did you cut your ear off?’ No one asks, they just ARE.” In fact, Henriksen started off designing theater sets. He’s also created giant mural paintings and has been making pottery for decades now. “There are people who think in pictures,” he says, “and people who think in words . . .” Henriksen says he just wanted to BE the characters.
And although he did graduate from the Actors Studio (in his thirties), Crouse wants to know if the years Henriksen spent on the road were another kind of acting school. “I’ve worked with as many people as are in this room . . . and every one of them gave me something. I’m influenced by mentors on all levels.”
Could one of those mentors have been James Cameron? Henriksen tells the tale of a “very sophisticated writer” who interviewed him and asked how James Cameron has changed since Titanic and Avatar (Henriksen appeared in Cameron’s much-lambasted Piranha II in 1981). “Jim Cameron was Jim Cameron when I met him. He’s the same guy; he’s just got more money and more opportunity to express himself [now].” Henriksen continues: “We were back in Jamaica with a $300,000 budget [filming Piranha II] and [Cameron]’s up in his hotel room making rubber fish because they didn’t give us enough money . . . and then [we were] in the parking lot making models and stuff to blow up.” However, he is quick to add that, “he paid me to do that. I wasn’t his friend. Yet.” Then he laughs.
Crouse tells the story of how Canadian director David Cronenberg was offered to direct Flashdance and turned it down saying it would’ve been a huge failure. What if Henriksen had played the title role in The Terminator as James Cameron originally envisioned? “It would have been a huge failure,” quips Henriksen. “Arnold [Schwarzenegger] was a big bulldozer; he was perfect for the role. If you’re gonna have a giant . . . anything to do with hydraulics, Arnold’s perfect.” He pauses. “Look at what he did as a governor.” The audience bursts into laughter.
He goes off on a brief tangent about California being the most taxed state on the planet but when Crouse asks him why he stays there, he doesn’t miss a beat: “Arnold.” And the audience erupts into laughter again. Henriksen shows more of his dark side when he refuses to talk about politics, saying he gets “vicious.” Based on his Sea Shepherd T-shirt, though, I’d actually love to hear more of his political views.
A film Henriksen actually did appear in, though just barely, was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “I was the fart-catcher,” he tells everyone, then elaborates: “You know the guy with the big part who goes (here he adopts a phony ‘actor’ voice and points out into the distance), ‘So, is that the sun setting?’” Then he mimes holding something up with his arms and puts on a goofy smile and subservient posture: “And I go, ‘Oh shit, yeah!’ And I catch the fart. ‘Oh, that’s a great line, and you’re so great’.” He blows a raspberry. “Oh, now I caught it.”
But there’s more to the story. “I was making scale plus ten for six months which is a lot of money, and I learned how to fly. My rationale was this character would know how to fly.” He laughs. “It’s a good excuse, even for the IRS.” He drops into a “serious” voice: “My character needed to know how to fly.” Then he adds, “I was going to jump out of the plane in a parachute and Spielberg sent people over there and said, ‘Lanc,e you’ve gone way over the limit. You know, flying is okay, but jumping out of a plane . . . you know, we might need you’.” Beat. “They never did . . . but they thought they might.”
So what about Near Dark? Henriksen praises director Kathryn Bigelow as “matriarchal,” detailing the tale of seeing her at an early screening of her 2008 film The Hurt Locker. “It was years and years ago that we did [Near Dark] and she still looked the same. I asked her, ‘Are you a vampire?’ and she just smiled. And I said, Ohhhh shit . . . ”
Henriksen and fellow actor Bill Paxton (who played Severen in the movie) were “obsessed” with where their characters came from. Henriksen explained the backstory he developed for Jesse Hooker: he was in the Southern Navy hundreds of years prior and after losing a battle at sea, he and the survivors drifted through the marshes until harpies started feeding on the dying. He didn’t call Jesse, Severen, or the other characters “vampires,” because “you can’t play a vampire; you only play a nocturnal nomad that is thinning the herd. . . ” At another point he says, “I hate Twilight, man” and the crowd applauds and cheers. Yet he praises 30 Days of Night, saying, “it tested my masculinity.”
Back to Near Dark: before they started filming, Henriksen picked up a hitchhiker who, at about 220 pounds, was much bigger than he was. “I said to him (adopts creepy Jesse Hooker voice), ‘Roll me a cigarette’.” So he rolls the cigarette and he gives it to me, but it looked like shit so I threw it out the window, ‘What the fuck is that?’
“And he’s looking at me like (warbly voice), ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Try it again. Put some mood music on.’ I’m ordering him all over the fucking place. . . . And I said, ‘What kinda music is that? It’s shit, turn that shit off.’ I take one puff and I go (spits), ‘Oh fuck this.’ He’s so nervous because of my staring at him . . . like he was a meal . . . ‘I wonder if I should take his face, his ear, what do I do? Do I rip his throat out?’ You know all those thoughts were going through my head, but in an artistic way.” Everyone laughs hysterically.
When they finally approached some lights, the hitchhiker pointed them out and said, “That’s where I get out. That’s where I’m going.” So they pulled over and there was no one around. Feeling bad, Henriksen asked him why he was hitchhiking and he replied, “Well, I’m broke.” Henriksen: “I took all the money I had in my left pocket (I had more in my right pocket) and gave him the money . . . I felt so guilty, for torturing this bastard for probably 70 miles, 70 miles of real Jesse Hooker horseshit. And so that was my voyage to go to work.”
At the end of the night, Lance Henriksen addressed us all and said, “I’m grateful that you saw [Near Dark] and enjoyed it. Let’s leave each other wanting.” Based on his discussion of a potential Near Dark prequel in comic form, we are definitely wanting more. According to him, Dark Horse asked him to write a comic after several comic artists contributed illustrations to Not Bad For A Human. Since he and Bill Paxton started writing a prequel script “the minute we finished shooting” Near Dark because they were “so enamored with each other and the movie,” this could be excellent. Henriksen says he has asked Kathryn Bigelow for her blessing.
I’ve tried to give a taste of what it was like to watch and listen to Lance Henriksen tell stories, but it’s hard to capture it in words on a computer screen, so there is much I’ve omitted. You can watch some clips of the event on YouTube here (thank you Vandelay77!), but I’m going to guess it’s also worth it to check out Not Bad For A Human.
The evening could be summed up, however, by Richard Crouse’s opening quote from the book, which was Henriksen’s assessment of his decision to turn down that $50,000 voice over job. “They probably thought, ‘This guy is an eccentric fuck.’ And they were right.”
Oscar voters aren’t easy to please. Even Harry Potter, Hollywood’s famous boy wizard, has failed to cast his spell over these gatekeepers to win an Academy Award.
Fans hope to see that change with the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the epic finale to the highest-earning movie franchise in Hollywood history.
“I’m just like any other Potter fan,” said Tracy Cameron, a 28-year-old teaching assistant in St. Catharines, Ont.
Like millions of Potter fans, Cameron grew up on J.K. Rowling’s books about a lonely young wizard who comes into his own. She also reread Rowling’s books many times.
Like other fans, Cameron worried that Warner Bros.’ film franchise would fail to capture the magic of Rowling’s saga. Those worries faded after Cameron saw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” the film that launched the Potter series in 2001.
“The films exceeded all my expectations,” said Cameron.
“I just don’t understand why the Oscars haven’t given these movies their due.”
Cameron isn’t the only one pondering that mystery.
In January 2011, veteran actor Richard Griffiths, who played Harry’s uncle Vernon Dursley, told reporters that he believed “something is going on.”
Other than a few nods in the technical, costume, and music categories, the Oscars have never given the Potter movies a crack at the Academy’s acting, directing and best picture prizes.
“It’s sad it’s only technical awards and not artistic ones it has received,” the 63-year-old Griffiths said earlier this year.
“It’s the biggest movie phenomenon on the planet. I remember when ‘ET’ was the highest earning movie all time — $870 million. With Harry Potter, you’re talking “$6 billion,” said the Tony and Laurence Olivier Award-winner.
The Oscar snub is perplexing.
To date the Potter franchise has earned US$6.3 billion worldwide.
It’s proven that a children’s fantasy could hold its own against adult franchises like “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars.”
The instant recognition of the Potter films’ first, memorable musical notes was seconded only by “Jaws.”
The Potter movies also helped put Harry’s iconic glasses into Hollywood’s history books, giving them as much cultural significance as Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from the “Wizard of Oz.”
Yet, Oscar voters remained unimpressed.
That’s not surprising, says Canada AM movie critic, Richard Crouse.
‘Deathly Hallows 2′ no lucky charm
“Historically, these kinds of kids’ or genre films have never been big Oscar winners. Voters have never felt they were deserving of an Academy Award,” said Crouse.
“It’s not to say that ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ isn’t worthy of an Oscar nomination. But I don’t think we’ll see any acting or directing nods this year for the Potter gang,” said Crouse.
But “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” could surprise everyone in 2012. In fact, the sentimentality over the end of the Potter era in Hollywood could influence Oscar voters in favourable ways.
“It’s possible, but it’s going to be an uphill battle,” Gregg Kilday, the film editor for The Hollywood Reporter, told CTVNews.ca.
“The early reviews for ‘Deathly Hallows 2′ have been solid. But I doubt that we’ll be seeing David Yates nab a nomination for best director in 2012,” said Kilday.
“Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and other established directors could be vying for Oscar gold next year. Yates doesn’t have the reputation to take these guys on,” he said.
It’s also unlikely that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint will score any nominations in the best acting categories.
“The problem with the Potter films is that they came into being with a group of young actors who never had the stature to grab Oscar voters,” said Kilday.
As well, the older stars showcased in the Potter franchise, including Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and the late Richard Harris, were never on screen long enough to grab voters’ attention.
“If any actors stand a chance for an Oscar nomination in 2012 it’ll be Alan Rickman and Ralph Fiennes,” said Kilday.
“They’ll have to muster up a lot of magic to pull it off,” Kilday said, with a laugh.
“But these guys have the acting chops and the Hollywood stature to stand a fighting chance.”
Lakeshore Arts, along with Fifth Ground Entertainment, is gearing up to host its first ever short film festival, an exciting new event that’s sure to give Etobicoke a new place on the map of the Toronto art scene.
LakeShorts International Short Film Festival is set to launch Saturday at the Assembly Hall, and will feature the talents of filmmakers both locally and internationally, said Susan Nagy, executive director of Lakeshore Arts.
Nagy said the idea spawned from a previous Lakeshore Arts program, My Neighbour’s An Artist, which showcased a film screening of local Etobicoke actors, directors and filmmakers.
“One of the things filmmakers of short films find challenging is there’s not a lot of opportunities to get their films showcased,” Nagy said, “…And there really was nothing in South Etobicoke of that calibre.”
One of the artists whose film was shown was directed by local actress and LakeShorts festival director, Michelle Nolden, who thought the event went so well that Etobicoke should have a short film festival of its own.
Nolden said LakeShorts will feature 13 short films chosen from more than 110 film submissions that came from local artists to filmmakers all over the world including Iran, Spain and Korea.
“There’s funny stuff. There’s thought provoking films. There are some really poignant films. It’s a real different and diverse programming,” she said.
Five jurors, including Nagy and Nolden, selected the chosen 13 that include ‘Sis’ from the U.K., ‘It’s Just Gary’ from Australia and ‘Seven Layer Dip’ from the U.S., to name a few.
Nolden said the films are an eclectic mix of art films, drama and comedies, and each film in the festival is interesting in a different way.
Nagy said it was a challenging process to pick the final 13 films because there were so many great ones to choose from, but they are excited about the ones that were chosen and think people will be too.
“There definitely is something for everyone,” she said. “I think they’ll be a lot of chatter like, ‘What film was your favourite, what did you think,’ and I think people will really enjoy the experience and are going to be surprised and pumped that they saw this in South Etobicoke.”
The event will be hosted by film critic Richard Crouse and once you walk down the blue carpet, people are welcome to take a picture with Crouse in front of the film festival poster.
“It’s a real film festival experience,” Nolden said. “You walk down a blue carpet and we have a videographer and photographer. There’s wine and finger food, so it will really feel like a gala experience.”
The event is being catered by Cafe du Lac, and 20 local sponsors in total are participating making it a real community event.
Nagy said LakeShorts is a win-win situation for the artists and the community because it’s a great way to create new networks and attract new audiences to Etobicoke community arts scene.
Both Nagy and Nolden said they hope this inaugural event is one of many to come and becomes an annual event for South Etobicoke. They also hope to eventually extend the event to an entire weekend.
LakeShorts takes place on Saturday, May 7, at 6:30 p.m. at The Assembly Hall, 1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Dr. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online at www.lakeshorts.ca
Guelph native Neve Campbell had a busy day in Toronto today promoting the latest installment of Wes Craven’s wildly successful Scream Franchise, Scream 4 (stylized as Scre4m). To date, all three of its predecessors combined have earned $145 million worldwide at the Box Office.
Campbell’s stop-offs today included a last-minute appearance on CTV’s The Marilyn Denis Show, CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulous Tonight, Entertainment Tonight Canada and also Print Media including a Slasher-themed Photo Shoot with Eye Magazine. And that doesn’t even include all the Media who queued-up early for a spot on the Red Carpet at Scotiabank Theatre this evening. Luckily, I was able to get Campbell to stop for a second to pose for a Photo before she was whisked away to the madness… and she was lovely!
Although I am to hold off on my Review for Scre4m until its release date, April 15, 2011, I will say that I had an amazing time enjoying Craven’s brand of campy Horror. I literally was screaming at parts and laughing out loud at others – sometimes together simultaneously.
Campbell introduced the Film quickly in a gorgeous Alexander McQueen number – a fitting tribute the late London-based designer and Fashion Child of the City where she now resides. She returned right as the Credits rolled after enjoying a quick Dinner at Blowfish, then appearing on-stage in a brief Q&A with Toronto’s favourite resident Film Guru Richard Crouse.
The Actress told the audience that to this day her favourite Horror Film still is The Changeling, which she discovered at the age of 13. Despite having much experience filming movies of the genre, Campbell says “I’m still a Suck. I am terrible at watching Horror Movies”. In fact, she only saw her first Craven Film after her Scream Co-Star Jada Pinkett Smith bought her a stack of his DVDs while they were filming the second installment of the Series.
Despite one audience member professing his love for her in calling her a Legend, Campbell sees things on a more humble scale admitting: “To me, it’s honestly about Corn Syrup on my face while filming, Plastic Masks and being chased around by a Prop Guy”.
On filming with longtime Co-stars/former Couple David Arquette and Courtney Cox, she feels that her bond with them was tighter this time around. When they had first filmed Scream back in the mid-90s, they had little time to spend together considering that both Cox and Campbell had been busy with their respective TV series. With the new generation of Actors who are introduced in Scre4m like Hayden Panettiere and Emma Roberts, Campbell recalls joking to Cox during their Readings, “We could be their Mothers!”.
On the rise of Social Media, Campbell revealed that times have changed since working on Scream 3 back in 2000 in that this time around they had a dedicated team of individuals who would consistently monitor what others were saying about Scre4m online, making efforts to thwart ideas of what the Movie was all about. Also, despite a new Twitter account surfacing recently alleging to belong to Campbell (@MissNeve), the Actress confirmed today that this is an Impostor and that she has not yet caught on to Twitter. And to think I clicked FOLLOW!
If there’s one thing you can count on at the Victoria Film Festival, it’s food, glorious food — on and off screen.
This year is no exception, starting with Friday night’s opening gala presentation at Empire Capitol 6 — a film that gives new meaning to the term “frozen food.”
It’s The Chef of the South Polar, Japanese director Shuichi Okita’s stunningly photographed portrait of life in Dome Fuji, an isolated Antarctic research station where Jun Nishimura, a gourmet chef, dishes up a mouth-watering variety of culinary creations to boost the morale of scientific researchers battling homesickness, isolation and sub-zero temperatures.
The South Pole theme will be reflected post-screening at the Atrium, 800 Yates St. The lobby is being transformed into a sparkling ice castle with a faux glacier and bar sculpted out of ice. Expect music by Lady Gaga-influenced local DJ Veela (a.k.a. Victoria Burnett), food by local restaurants such as Bon Rouge, Pescatores and Sips Artisan Bistro, as well as Driftwood Brewery’s Reel Beer and other festival-specific cocktails and surprises.
Okita’s visual feast continues a long tradition of putting foodie flicks on the festival menu. So will Saturday’s Canadian Opening Gala presentation — the world première of Food Security: It’s in your Hands, Duncan-based director Nick Versteeg’s new documentary (7 p.m., Odeon).
Versteeg’s film encourages viewers to change how we think about farming and food by relating his own experiences growing food on his hobby farm the Laughing Geese, with input from experts on topics from soil to the fate of bees.
Festival-goers have long hungered for such films, says festival director Kathy Kay.
“Outside of film festivals, you don’t often get a chance to see them,” Kay says. “It’s always a good opportunity. Victoria in particular has such a foodie culture, so we always have our eyes peeled.”
As for the festival itself, it’s going on a bit of a diet this year thanks to arts cutbacks. The festival program guide is smaller than usual, with expanded descriptions going online; and fewer guests are being brought in.
“That’s been key. We’re lean and mean,” laughs Kay, who is mounting this year’s festival on a $646,000 budget. “We get money from the Victoria Foundation which has helped offset our problems, and we generated $130,000 from our box office.”
This year’s guests include Bruce McDonald (Trigger, Hardcore Logo 2), Ron Mann (In the Wake of the Flood), Larry Weinstein (Politics Is Cruel) and Don McKellar (Twitch City), with CTV film critic Richard Crouse returning to emcee Springboard.
Speakers at that popular opening-weekend industry event include Angie Burns, vice-president of publicity and promotions for Maple Pictures, Telefilm Canada’s John Dippong, independent production pioneer Pat Ferns, and Tom Alexander, Mongrel Media’s director of theatrical releasing. This year’s Springboard highlights include Ferns’s Friday pitching workshop, and The Great Convergence: Film, TV and the Internet, a Sunday master class conducted by Rainbow Media’s Harold Gronenthal.
Success lies in the ability to be as resourceful as possible, notes Kay. They’re hoping that reducing the size of the program guide but printing more copies will boost box-office revenues and continue the festival’s trend of rising attendance each year.
More than 160 films from 23 countries will be shown during the 10-day showcase, including a generous slate of Canadian and homegrown fare. It includes the première of Victoria filmmaker Jim Knox’s feature debut Cascadia, and shorts by locals Apeman Struthers (Down to the Sea on Drugs, Part One), Maureen Bradley (Pants on Fire) and Alice Faye Hopewell (Dearest).
Popular programs such as Sips ‘n’ Cinema, Dinner and More Than a Movie — featuring erotic fare at the Superior — and Converge, where viewers take to the streets to watch short films in offbeat venues, will also be back.
New initiatives include Contemplating Victoria (see sidebar), and a Grindhouse double-bill.
It opens with Machete Maidens Unleashed, Australian director Mark Hartley’s documentary recalling how directors of shlock and exploitation flicks in the 1970s shot them in the Philippines because of its exotic locations and cheap labour.
It will be followed by The Big Bird Cage, Jack Hill’s steamy 1972 “women in prison” exploitation flick starring Pam Grier as a buxom revolutionary who, with the help of a nymphomanic inmate (Anitra Ford), engineers a prison breakout to provide “babes” to satisfy the itches of mercenaries who work for her sleazy guerrilla-leader boyfriend (Sid Haig).
And don’t forget about those two Oscar-nominated films booked at the 11th hour to fill the Saturday night time slot that was to have been filled by horror meister George A. Romero before he announced he’d have to cancel for personal reasons.
The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet’s adaptation of the Jacques Tati classic, screens at 6:45 p.m., followed at 9:15 by Alejandro Inarritu’s Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem as a man coming to terms with his imperfect life while wandering through Barcelona.
Bieber with members of his entourage, at the Royal York Hotel on Tuesday.
Justin Bieber was in town Tuesday, promoting the soon-to-be-released movie about his life—all sixteen years of it. There was a press conference yesterday afternoon in the ballroom at the Royal York Hotel. Torontoist was invited, of course.
The ballroom at the Royal York would be a pretty lavish backdrop for a state dinner, let alone a publicity stunt. There are painted ceilings in there, and chandeliers. The dour, stylishly dressed writer seated next to us theorized that Bieber’s handlers had simply over-prepared, in case of an unexpectedly large turnout. But Bieber is famous on such a galactic scale, at the moment, that his publicists probably could have pulled the same or better number of media outlets if they’d held the presser in a public washroom.
Though even the public washrooms at the Royal York are really nice.
Bieber was late, and the assembled crowd of journalists began to get restless. A paper placard with his name on it was perched (somewhat needlessly, what with the galactic fame) on top of a red-velvet-fringed table on a dais at the head of the room. A reporter for TVO Kids was the first to succumb to the temptation to get her picture taken with the placard, which would have been maybe a slight breach of decorum had she not been ten years old. Then Steve Murray from the Post did the same, but he’s a satirist, and so not always taking himself seriously is kind of his job. Then half-a-dozen other reporters, none of them children or satirists, did likewise.
So yes: Even Justin Bieber’s name, printed on a folded piece of paper, has more personal charisma than most of humanity.
The first indication that His Biebness had entered the building was the arrival of his security retinue: a cadre of men built like refrigerators, wearing suits and Secret-Service-style earpieces. (They might have been employed by the hotel.)
Then, almost forty-five minutes after the scheduled start of the presser, Justin Bieber took his seat on the dais, alongside a few members of his entourage (his security guy, his stylist) and Jon Chu, who directed the Bieber movie.
Up close, the first thing that impresses itself upon one about Bieber is how small and very authentically kidlike he is. Next to the full-grown adults on the dais, he looked like a doll. And yet he had a way of taking control of the entire situation.
“Hey, where my fans at?” said Bieber. “We have so much room in here. Why don’t we bring them in here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes more sense.”
Perhaps twenty adolescent girls filed in from the hallway and took some of the seats that weren’t occupied by members of the press.
“I’m not really good at press conferences,” he continued. “I’m not really sure how this works. If you guys could inform me how this works, that would be great.”
Fans react to Bieber’s answers during the Q-and-A session.
CTV’s Richard Crouse, who was moderating the press conference, asked Bieber when it first dawned on him that he was “really famous.”
“Um, I don’t know. I still don’t really notice it. I’m still just, like, a regular teenage boy,” said the guy with a security detail and, now, a personal cheering section of twelve-to-fourteen-year-old girls. “And I mean, my fans have been here since day one, and I wouldn’t be here without them.”
The twenty girls let up a unison “Woo!”
Crouse asked if Bieber still cleans his room. “I do clean my room,” said Bieber. At another point, he spoke about living in geared-to-income housing in Stratford. But that was years ago. Like, at least two.
Bieber had a way of projecting an appealing humility. It may have been false, but the point is that he knows he needs that image—knows that it’s a defence against backlash and a key component of his appeal to the core Bieber demographic.
And he seems to know his demographic.
Talking about the movie, he said to the assembled reporters: “Some of you are probably a little surprised you liked it, right? Be honest.”
Then he singled out the dour, stylish writer sitting next to us. It was as though he’d read the room already, and had picked out the one person most likely to be hostile to the project.
“You liked it, right?” asked Bieber.
“Yeah, I enjoyed it,” said the writer.
Bieber cut him off: “You enjoyed it. It’s a good movie whether you like me or you hate me.”
Twenty minutes into the conference Bieber interrupted a lineup of journalists waiting at a microphone for their turns to ask him questions, and gave the cheering section a chance to pose one of their own. He called on a girl. She took the mic and laid out her query: “Will you marry me?”
“We get that question at least once a day,” said Bieber. “The answer is: never say never.”
Never Say Never is the title of the movie. And so in one breath he’d reassured a fan that he wasn’t beyond her reach, romantically—that he was just an ordinary teenage guy—and had also plugged the 3D theatrical extravaganza that he stars in.
The conundrum of Bieber’s fame is that, to keep it, he has to be at least nominally ordinary, otherwise the legions of fans who’ve turned him into the hottest shit on all the internets might no longer consider him boyfriend material. He needs to oscillate between extremes of celebrity and banality so quickly that all we see is a blur. The fact that he was able to do this in a room stacked with skeptical adults made him seem uncommonly smart.
Toronto’s renewed winter wallop has a super fan in Canadian superstar Justin Bieber.
“Are you sure it’s gonna be a snow day?” the 16-year-old pop phenomenon from Stratford, Ont., asked excitedly Tuesday, when a fan gave him a weather report during a combo news conference and love-in at the Fairmont Royal York hotel.
“All the kids aren’t going to have school? That’s so awesome! Maybe I’ll be stuck here. That’ll be cool!”
But not even a “Snowpocalypse” could stop the Bieber Blitzkrieg, which moved through Toronto Tuesday with awesome force and to the squeal of screaming tweens, also making stops at MuchMusic and the AMC Yonge-Dundas theatres.
Bieber was in town to talk up his new 3-D movie, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, which opens Feb. 11. He also chatted about his four Juno nominations, announced Tuesday, and the mostly ups and occasional downs of a skyrocketing professional singing career that is less than two years old.
Dressed in a grey hoodie, jeans and colour-coordinated high-top sneakers, Bieber claimed to be a rookie at press conferences. But he worked the room like a pro, handling questions that were lobbed at him like marshmallows and insisting that his fans get equal time with the press.
“Hey, where are my fans at? . . . What’s the point if my fans aren’t in here?”
Bieber told emcee Richard Crouse the impact of sudden fame still hasn’t hit him, even though he’s sold million of records, with hit singles that include “Baby” and “One Time.” He has 6.3 million Twitter followers, 16.5 million Facebook friends and has been viewed one billion times on YouTube, where his rise to the top began.
Bieber is estimated to have earned $100 million, according to Vanity Fair, whose cover he graces this month (with a Rolling Stone front to come). “I still don’t really notice it,” Bieber said.
“I’m still just a regular teenage boy, living my dream, having a lot of fun.”
He’s delighted about his Juno noms, but said he’ll be unable to attend the March 27 awards ceremony due to tour commitments overseas.
He knows that not everybody is a true “Belieber” or succumbing to Bieber Fever: “There’s gonna be haters, no matter what. People want to see you succeed, and then once you’re there, they want to bring you down. It’s a weird world, but that’s how it is. There are people who aren’t gonna like me.”
He’s hoping that Never Say Never, a combo biopic and concert movie that culminates with his sold-out performance last autumn at New York’s Madison Square Garden, will win over any doubters.
“If they watch this movie, and they really get to see that I’m just a nice person . . . a lot of people think I’m just like some factory machine and people just put me together like a product. But I worked really hard to get here, and there are so many people who have helped me.”
He was flanked by some of them on the podium: Never Say Never director Jon M. Chu, and Bieber entourage members Ryan Good, Kenny Hamilton and Allison Kaye, who treated him like an adored kid brother.
And what’s not to love about a charmer who makes “adorable” sound like faint praise, and who candidly admits that the scene in the movie where his granny tells him to clean his room is true?
“Yeah, I clean my room. That day I was kinda just rushed out, and I forgot. but I do clean my room. Especially when I’m home at my grandma’s house. When she tells me to do something I’m like, ‘Okay, grandma!’”
At a fan’s request, Bieber rhymed off his favourite junk food with the seriousness of a courtroom brief.
“A year ago, I was all about Sour Patch Kids. Those are the greatest things. But then my fans kept bringing them to every show. Now, if I eat another Sour Patch kid, I’m probably going to throw up.”
His sweet tooth craves a new treat:
“In Canada, they’re Bigfoots, in America, they’re Swedish Fish. But you know, Canada is better, obviously. Ketchup chips are good. I love them.”
He’s been travelling so much, he hasn’t been home to Stratford as much as he would like. Here’s what he misses about home:
“I miss Tim Horton’s. I miss Timmy’s. I miss my ice caps. I miss my friends and family. I miss my dog Sam.”
He obviously doesn’t miss Gordon Pinsent, the Canadian acting icon who had his own YouTube hit a few weeks back, doing a spoof reading from Bieber’s autobiography, First Step 2 Forever: My Story. Bieber said he hadn’t seen the video, and apparently didn’t even know who Pinsent is.
Getting serious for a second, he denied a fan’s gush that he’s flawless (“I’m not perfect”) and he knows his career isn’t going to always be this wonderful.
But he refuses to dwell on negative thoughts.
“You can’t just think that someone is going to do something wrong, because if you think like that, you’re not going to be happy in your life.
“You have to always expect people to do the right thing, but at the same time, you have to guard yourself and make sure you’re letting the right people in.”
Bieber also doesn’t have time to think about marriage, although star-struck fans constantly pop the question — as one young girl did on Tuesday.
“Will you marry me?” she shyly asked.
“We get that question at least once a day!” Bieber replied.
Justin Bieber during a press conference for his documentary film “Never Say Never” in Toronto on February 1. (CP Images)
Justin Bieber kept the crowd waiting at the Royal York Hotel on Tuesday afternoon, but when he did show up – well, the afternoon wasn’t just for the reporters in the room, anyway.
“Whassup?” calls out the 16-year-old Canadian pop sensation – his hair a little looser than constantly photographed; his face starting to firm toward adulthood – as he appears from the wings and takes his seat 45 minutes later than scheduled for about 50 reporters and photographers. “Hey! Where are my fans at? Are those fans out there? There’s a lot of fans out there, right? But there’s, like, so much room in here.”
“Should we bring ’em in here?” someone calls out.
“You should bring ’em in,” Bieber – keeping the wardrobe simple today with a modest grey hoodie – concurs. “Yeah, yeah, yeah – that makes more sense. I love you guys behind the cameras and stuff. That’s cool, right? But what’s the point if my fans aren’t here.”
Playing up the “Rocky” theme while a score of teenage girls comes in through a lobby door, Bieber points out toward them: “Everyone give it up for my faaaaans!”
The small and tidy phenom from equally small and tidy Stratford, Ontario, is making a home-ground whistle stop on the promotional push before his 3D half-concert/half-documentary feature, “Never Say Never”, hits the cinemas big-time on February 11. Flanked on a Royal York ballroom stage riser by the closest-knit of his team – stylist Ryan Good and strapping security chief Kenny Hamilton to his right; general manager Allison Kaye and Toronto journalist and moderator Richard Crouse to his left – Bieber had been setting off squeals since just before his press conference was scheduled to begin, at 2 p.m.
Reporters looking to bookend their TV reports take turns before Bieber’s arrival by occupying the space marked for him and giddily running through intros. “Have a great Bieber day!” gushes one talking head; another pumps up the adrenaline for his thought-to-be-imminent arrival with rapid-fire effusion before being prompted, in a stunt, to get out of the chair.
“…Awkward…!” she zings. Um… yeah. But, in its own sidelong way, gleefully par for the course.
“I’m not really good at press conferences,” Bieber says at the outset. “I haven’t really done a lot of them. So, I don’t really know how this works. You guys can inform me about how this works. That would be great.”
Crouse leads into an upbeat and fast-moving 25 minutes that feature a few questions about the making of “Never Say Never” – which not only chronicles the 10 days before a long-anticipated (and somewhat nerve-racking) sellout show at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, but fills in the details of Bieber’s less grandiose background – and a lot of questions of a more “16” magazine variety.
The answers pretty much tell the level of the questions:
– “I think that Twitter’s such a good thing because I’m able to just be, like, interactive with my fans. I’m able to talk to them. They feel like they’re a part of me, which is really important.”
– “I’ve gotta say at first, like, a year ago, I was, like, all about Sour Patch Kids, right? They were the greatest things. But then my fans – they started bringing them to every show. Everything I was at. So, I kept eating them. Now, it’s like if I eat another Sour Patch Kid, I’m probably gonna just throw up. Now, I really like – well, in Canada, they’re Bigfoots. In America, they’re Swedish Fish. Canada’s better, obviously. Ketchup chips are good. I love them.”
– “I never wore long johns. Just sweatpants or something.”
– “I miss Tim Horton’s. I miss Timmy’s. I miss my Ice Cap. I miss seeing my friends and family. I miss my dog, Sam.”
– “Shout out to YouTube!”
The whole world of Bieber’s though, with his adoptive entertainment family keeping him company on stage and keeping him moving throughout “Never Say Never”… it can’t help but bring up the big question: Who does he trust?
“For sure,” he answers. “There’s so many people that are just new in my life. You can’t just think that someone’s going to do something wrong – because if you think like that, you’re not going to be happy in your life. You always have to expect people to do the right thing, but at the same thing you have to guard yourself and make sure you’re letting the right people in.
“All these past two years, these people have become like my family – just travelling with them every day. We’re going to fight like family and we’re going to have good times like family. Overall, at the end of the day, they’re here to make sure that I just become a good person, overall.”
“Never Say Never”, beyond showing singing and dancing sequences from last year’s My World tour, fills in the legendary blanks of Bieber’s seeming rise from nowhere. The famed YouTube clips of Bieber busking outside the Avon Theatre in Stratford and sweetly singing Ne-Yo songs as a wee neophyte on a local stage are included, but there are a few more digs deeper from the home vaults: Bieber bundled up to shovel snow, Bieber entering the Stratford Star talent contest (and finishing second), and some astounding footage of eight-year-old Bieber holding his own as a jazz drummer in a band with full-grown musicians.
There are the expected appearances by celebrities, mentors and peers. Producer LA Reid speaks of how he knew he’d heard “the Macaulay Culkin of music” when he was alerted by Scooter Braun, the aspiring (and relatively inexperienced) Atlanta manager who nabbed Bieber on YouTube faith alone. Usher, who famously took Bieber under his wing, is on-stage and off-, duetting live while also admonishing the young star for balking at health drinks designed to preserve his vocal cords.
“You’re not gonna be 16 forever,” Usher warns, like an older brother, as Bieber holds his nose backstage and downs a special concoction that he complains “tastes like dinosaur pee.”
There is talk of the famed hair, and of his allegiance to his mother Pattie Mallette and the rest of his Canadian family. But, mostly, “Never Say Never” is about the fans – be they the screaming girls in braces outside Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and Ottawa’s Scotiabank Place, or even the 40-somethings at the Royal York press conference who can’t keep their crazed enthusiasm dimmed.
“There’s gonna be haters, no matter what,” Bieber admits at the conference. “People wanna see you succeed, and then once you’re there, they want to bring you down. It’s a weird world. But that’s how it is.
“There’s people who aren’t gonna like me, and that’s just – if they watch this movie and they really get to see that I’m just a nice person, and I’m not like… A lot of people think I’m just a factory machine, and people just put me together out of recycled product. Well, I really worked hard to get here. There’s so many people that helped me.”
And, with that in mind, Bieber invites one of the fans at the press conference to ask him a question. A young girl in a purple hoodie can’t get it out fast enough.
“Will you marry me?” she asks.
“We get that question at least once a day, too,” Bieber responds. “The answer is – you know – never say never, right?”
The nominees for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards were announced Tuesday and as far as nominations go, The King’s Speech reigned supreme.
Oscar Nominees Colin Firth And Helena Bonham Carter is “The King’s Speech”
The film, which chronicles King George VI’s struggle to overcome a speech impediment, scored 12 nominations including Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture.
The Coen Brothers’ western remake True Grit scored 10 nominations, while the mind-bending thriller Inception and the Facebook biopic The Social Network garnered eight nominations each.
Other films nominees in the Best Picture category are The Kids Are All Right, Toy Story 3, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Fighter and Winter’s Bone.
Canadian filmakers will also be in the mix in the Best Foreign Language Film category as Quebecois director Denis Veilleneuve’s film Incendies was one of five films chosen for the prize.
Film critic Richard Crouse of CTV’s Canada A.M. said while he’s pleased with the Academy’s choice of nominees overall, there were a few glaring omissions, particularly in the Best Director category.
“I wonder how movies like Inception and 127 Hours get made because apparently they’re not made by the best director of the year,” Crouse told thedailyplanet.com.
“Danny Boyle and Christopher Nolan, although their movies were nominated, didn’t get a Best Director nomination and I think that’s kind of an oversight,” Crouse said.
“I know it’s a narrow field; they’re only five nominees in each category except for Best Picture, but I would’ve expected those names to appear somewhere.”
But Crouse said he was glad that one particular film was surprisingly, and rightfully, recognized by the Academy.
“I was very pleased to see Winter’s Bone was nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence,” Crouse said.
“It’s a breakout role for her. Not a lot of people saw the movie but she was fantastic in the film, and I’m just pleased that people were paying attention enough to get that one nominated,” Crouse said.
Crouse made his choice on who will take the Oscar for Best Picture.
“I think Best Picture is very likely going to be The Social Network; Best Director would be David Fincher,” Crouse said.
Crouse also predicted that the chances of Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, and Melissa Leo taking home Oscar gold are very high and he has already predicted a lock for the Best Supporting Actor category.
“Frankly, in the Best Supporting Actor category, if your name isn’t Christian Bale this year, you’re not going to win,” Crouse said.
Every year as part of their Festival of Fear, Rue Morgue screens an iconic horror movie accompanied by a special guest. This year, we were treated to a screening of what may be the perfect vampire film, Near Dark, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, with Lance Henriksen (who plays Jesse Hooker) in attendance.
