Check out the online version of Brooke’s magazine piece for this month’s Where Toronto. She profiled Toronto fashion designers, and did a great job. We’re using the proceeds to fund a four day jaunt to Virginia beginning on Saturday.
Author: James McNally
Snow In April
In another April Fool’s joke, it is now snowing heavily in Toronto. I remember complaining a few weeks ago that it was snowing in March. What’s next? Snow in May?
Surrealist Humour
Today I was taking the subway and at the main Yonge-Bloor station, I saw a blind man carrying a saw. Yes, a blind man, with a white cane in one hand, and a saw in the other. I can’t figure out if it was some elaborate April Fool’s joke or a piece of Surrealist performance art. And I’ve been trying to tease out the joke from that whole situation all day. Hit “Comment” and give me your one-liners.
SxSW Reflections
Some of my rambling and incoherent SxSW reflections here.
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was born in 1906 in what is now Poland. He came to America in 1934 to work on a screenplay for a film that would never be made. Not surprising, since Billy barely spoke English. Forced to leave the country since he didn’t have a job, he went to the border town of Mexicali, where after sweet talking a consular official, he was readmitted to the United States as a resident alien. He went on to write and direct some of the most intelligent and funny films ever made in Hollywood. A short list of highlights:
- Double Indemnity (1944)
- The Lost Weekend (1945)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950)
- Sabrina (1954)
- The Seven Year Itch (1955)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- The Apartment (1960)
- The Front Page (1974)
He was wonderfully direct and unpretentious. On the subject of “arty” European films: “I could clean up in the film festivals if I took $25,000 and made a picture about the sex life of fishermen in Sardinia—as long as it had a certain morbid message and was slightly out of focus.” I’ll miss Billy Wilder, even though he hadn’t made a film for many years. He was sharp-witted until the end. I’m disappointed that he wasn’t dragged into a recording booth over the past few years and made to record commentaries on all of his films that have been released on DVD. I received a biography of Wilder for Christmas that I’m currently reading. It’s called On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder. And I just discovered there’s another book, called Conversations with Wilder, by Cameron Crowe. Do yourself a favour and rent one of Billy Wilder’s films this weekend.