I’ve never written or even spoken about this before, but some people know the whole story, some know parts and, well, some know pieces and think they know it. But with all the news out of Toronto over the last weeks—as well as other news that dovetailed into it all -- well, I figured this was my one and only chance to do it with any relevance.
To begin: 20 years ago this week, I had a picture picked not just for the Toronto Film Festival (the largest and, internationally, at least, the most important in terms of the industry) but selected as the Closing Night Gala Premiere. Sort of like saying you won Sundance or Cannes -- in those days Toronto (then called the “Festival of Festivals” because, as the largest festival in the world, it brought together at the start of the Award season, the best of the world’s fests) wasn’t yet the showcase it has become.
That alone would be nice, but interestingly, I read Monday in the New York Times how Columbia Pictures had turned Toronto into its personal “bitch” (sorry for the language) to promote its upcoming line of dramas. Similarly, later in the week, I had to read a Times story about Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello’s old producer, and his new album. I don’t know what it’s called. It was his first album, “Pure Pop for Now People” that changed my life, literally.
Here’s the story: When I got out of school in the ’70s, I had a high-school girlfriend who I had, with some breaks, been going out with throughout college. Unfortunately, she thought that when we graduated we’d get married and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, without getting into details, I had other plans -- and they didn’t include (as Sinatra sang) “first comes, love, then marriage, then a baby carriage...”
No, having come from a small orchard community in upstate New York, thanks to college I’d been exposed to a bigger world … and never would I look back. That didn’t mean I didn’t love my high-school girlfriend; it just meant that I wasn’t ready for kids. Whoever really is?
Anyway, we break up, I get a job at Newsweek in New York and, three years later, get a wedding invitation from my old girlfriend to one of my high school friends. Now, since college, I’d moved so many times that, who knows with all the crossed out forwarding addresses, it probably took that invite six weeks to get to me through the mail. Anyway, turns out they were getting married that Saturday -- so I told my bosses at Newsweek, ran down to rent a car from Avis in the Newsweek Building at 49th and Madison in Manhattan and start driving upstate.
As in the movie, I didn’t get there in time to stop it, but I did get there in time for a dance. And as I left ti druve back to the city, the last song I heard the band play was that song from Lowe’s “Pure Pop” album, “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll).”
