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Perfect Pie (2002)

The Perfect Pie World Premiere - Ground Control In Attendance

The world premiere of Tom's movie Perfect Pie was at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. I was lucky enough to get tickets, even though it meant standing for four hours (four hours!) on a Toronto street, chatting to Canadians who were shocked that anyone would want to spend that amount of time waiting just to see a Canadian film. For the record, I actually got tickets to five Canadian films, the others being Flower and Garnet, The Baroness and the Pig, The Marsh, and Teknolust. Oh, and I also saw the excellent yet disturbing French film Irreversible.

For those of you wondering what exactly happens at a world premiere, this was my first and I spent a good ten minutes wondering as well, until it all slowly became apparent. You sit down, scared to move unless you disrupt some Very Important Proceedings, and then wait for half an hour whilst the actors, producers, director, writer and general people who may or may not have anything to do with the film have animated arguments about where to sit and whether they want popcorn. Then some poor bloke from the TIFF drags said actors, writer and director up onstage and introduces them. Cue hijinks with spotlight. Then five-minute long handing out of popcorn to all the actors who turned up late. Everyone wonders if there is a movie in all of this, or whether the ticket was just to see Tom McCamus munch his way through an oversized popcorn box. We watch the film. Question and answer session which seems to prove that most of the audience either knows everything about the past 90 minutes, or doesn't know enough even to formulate a question. TIFF staff tell us all to get lost.

I go and attack Tom: cue discussion of the play (which Chick was in), of flights to Scotland, and finally "Tom, you know that Mutant X episode when you're in the cage with the rats? Did you actually do that?" Tom's expression had to be seen to be believed. But yes he did. I don't think he enjoyed it much. And the film? "Mmm, it was good!" said Tom through a mouthful of popcorn. I won't disagree with that.