Richard Crouse

Kris Kristofferson, 73, developed a nasty chest cold on a “wild ride” to Victoria, where he’s being honoured with the film festival’s inaugural IN award in recognition of independence, innovation and inspiration.

Kris Kristofferson, 73, developed a nasty chest cold on a “wild ride” to Victoria, where he’s being honoured with the film festival’s inaugural IN award in recognition of independence, innovation and inspiration.
Photograph by: Debra Brash, Times Colonist, Times Colonist

A legendary actor, singer and songwriter who got his start sweeping floors at Columbia Records displayed traits often associated with a different profession — mail delivery — before landing here for his Victoria Film Festival appearance last night.

Kris Kristofferson had to brave ice, snow and freezing temperatures that gripped North Carolina and Tennessee, where he performed concerts on the weekend to promote his solo album Closer to the Bone.

“Oh, it’s been a wild ride, but I’m glad to be here,” said the smiling, gravelly voiced Grammy Award-winner.

Road conditions were so treacherous that before flying here from Nashville, Kristofferson and his wife and manager, Lisa Meyers, had to drive north from North Carolina through Virginia to reach Tennessee because of a “weather bonk,” they said.

“We’ve been living on the tour bus going really, really slow and we’re just lucky we made it,” Meyers said.

Along the way, Kristofferson, 73, developed a nasty chest cold but, ever the trouper, he wasn’t about to let that stop him from accepting the festival’s inaugural IN award in recognition of independence, innovation and inspiration.

“We’ve been here before,” recalled Kristofferson, clad in black jeans and a matching T-shirt and fleece jacket as he sipped coffee in the Fairmont Empress hotel’s Harbourside room. “It’s such a beautiful place.”

Despite being under the weather, he took part in a Q&A at Empire Capitol 6 last night and was interviewed by Canada AM film critic Richard Crouse.

If someone were to ask him to name a movie he would make over again, Kristofferson said it would be Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

“It was like being in hillbilly heaven,” he recalled. “But there was so much energy wasted on that because [director] Sam Peckinpah was feuding with the people at MGM and they were kind of doing him dirty.”

Shooting in Durango, Mexico, was “a thrill and a challenge,” he recalled, adding that Peckinpah was his own worst enemy.

“I don’t think Sam understood the potential. He thought the studio had pressured him into hiring a big star like Bob Dylan, but Bob was unique,” said Kristofferson, recalling that Dylan called him, unsure whether he should make his film debut as Alias.

“I said, ‘Man, do it. This is a lot of fun,’ and it was,” Kristofferson recalled. “I thought Bob did a great job. He’d been doing it onstage for a long time. I think Sam could have exploited that better, but what was great was the music he brought to it.”

Kristofferson is also often asked how he felt about his status as a superstar sex symbol.

“I don’t think anybody would be really comfortable with that, but it kept getting me work, whatever it was,” he said.

After flying back to California, the troubadour will resume his solo tour Feb. 16 in Missouri, followed by concerts with Merle Haggard in Texas, Oklahoma and other states.

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You can thank Chris Landreth for getting to see Ways on Wheels at the Odeon tonight.

It was the Toronto-based animator’s Oscar-winning short Ryan that inspired Ken Galloway to become a filmmaker.

“I was living in Tokyo, working as a muralist and an English teacher and hanging out at an artists’ collective bar,” recalled Galloway, whose short focuses on a quadriplegic artist and how he used his disability to turn his life around.

He made the film after doing four years of research for a book about Canadian graffiti. He interviewed 250 graffiti writers during a cross-country odyssey of hitchhiking, “couch surfing” and hopping freight trains.

“It was 3 in the morning and Ryan shows up on the screen,” he recalled. “I saw the NFB logo between beers and I was blown away by what I saw. I said, ‘I can’t just keep working as an English teacher. It’s time to make a change.’ ”

Three weeks later he applied to Sheridan College and “somehow talked my way in” to its film program.

Galloway was shocked and delighted to learn that Landreth was a festival guest. “I approached him and said, ‘You’re the reason I started making films,’ ” Galloway said. “He indulged me. It’s been a blast.”