TIFF Report: Todd Interviews Midnight Madness Programmer Colin Geddes

With the film festival starting tomorrow it seems like an appropriate time to re-post this interview I did with Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes. This will be familiar reading for those who caught it on the first go-round at The Movie Blog, but there's enough good reading in there to make posting it again worthwhile. Note that this conversation occurred a few weeks before the Madness lineup was announced, and Geddes was strictly forbidden from spilling the beans on any of the upcoming titles ...

CG: Okay. I’m ready.

TB: So, I’m not allowed to ask you anything about this year.

CG: Well, you can but there are really no films that I can let out of the bag yet.

TB: Okay, well let’s start with some history. How long have you been with the festival now?

CG: I’ve been with the festival since 1997 when I was brought on as a co-programmer with Noah Cowan, who’s now the head of our programming department. Noah was the one who started the Midnight Madness program, I believe in 1989.

TB: How’d you end up getting involved? Was that back when you were still doing kung fu screenings at the old porn theater?

CG: Um, yeah, I guess that was around the same time. I’d always been in the audience [ed: at Midnight Madness. Not the porn theater. At least not as far as I know. Just to clear that up.]. The way that I tumbled into it is kind of an interesting story. I originally came from rural Ontario to Toronto for college, to study graphic design, and in my first week in Toronto I stood in line for the very first year of Midnight Madness. In that line … I came from the country and when you live outside of Kingston you can’t really find too many people who can eloquently talk about Italian cannibal movies and spaghetti westerns and stuff like that. So I made some incredible friends in that line up, people that I’m still friends with today. I went to the wedding of two of them and drove down to New York with another guy that I met in the line waiting to see Dario Argento’s Opera. I just started coming back to see more films every year, originally in the Midnight Madness program but then branching out and seeing more stuff in the rest of the festival. After that I graduated from graphic design and I did a ‘zine on Hong Kong and Asian films called Asian Eye. It only lasted two issues. It was more of a film journal than just a ‘zine. Somehow writing about these films that I loved got me some kind of degree of respectability around town and people at the festival started asking me for leads on Asian films that I knew and eventually they came to me and asked me if I’d like to join up and be a co-programmer of the Midnight Madness section. The following year Noah Cowan went on to program more things, the contemporary world section, and gave me the whole Madness program to myself.

TB: Are you involved in any other parts of the festival or just the Midnight Madness?

CG: Primarily Midnight Madness but I do screen other films and if I see something that might not be for Midnight I’ll direct it to the right program or programmer and I do consult on other films, a lot of the other Asian films.

TB: Did you have a hand in the Tsukamoto film [Vital] this year? I know you’ve brought him to Midnight Madness before.

CG: No. That one we knew about. Tsukamoto is a director who has graduated from Midnight Madness, as it were. Noah Cowan first brought Tetsuo: The Iron Man. I remember that screening. It turned out that the print that we got had no English subtitles. Luckily there are only around twenty lines of dialog anyway and it was just a memorable screening. No one expected that film at all. So there’s a director who came back in subsequent years with two other films in Midnight Madness – Tokyo Fist and Tetsuo 2 – but Snake of June, Bullet Ballet and Gemini all screened outside of Midnight Madness. The same thing happened to Peter Jackson, if you look at it that way. He first came Toronto with Braindead, Dead Alive, in Midnight Madness and then graduated to Heavenly Creatures and also Forgotten Silver.

TB: What theater are they using this year now that the Uptown has left us? [ed note: Midnight Madness was traditionally held in an old converted vaudeville theater called The Uptown up to and including last year. The Uptown was shut down for not being wheelchair accessible and collapsed while being dismantled to make room for a condo development, killing one person in a neighboring building and injuring several others.]

CG: This year we’re going to be using the Ryerson Theater. It’s kind of a secret gem. I didn’t even know about this cinema until this year. It’s on the Ryerson campus downtown and has around a thousand, maybe twelve hundred seats.

TB: So it’s around the same size, even.

CG: Yeah. We’re definitely not compromising screen size. It’s still big. It’s just off Yonge Street. It’s still downtown. Because it’s on the campus it’s surrounded by a big, green courtyard where people will be able to congregate before and after the movie.

TB: How does the selection process work? How long are you working this up? How many films would you typically look at?

CG: It’s hard to pinpoint an actual number of films. Luckily for me, this is a major hobby that has become a job so even though officially my contract is only a half year with the film festival I’m researching and tracking films all year long. The biggest thrill is the hunt. I just love keeping tabs on what’s coming up. Even if I didn’t have the film festival gig I’d still be obsessively tracking and looking for these films. All year long I keep a list of films I hear of that are in pre-production, post-production, from all over the world and as spring comes I start slowly contacting the sales agents or producers or directors directly.

TB: Do you get to international festivals to see things? Pusan or places like that?

CG: Yeah, I went to a fabulous festival last year in Korea, just outside of Seoul, called PFAN. It’s happening in just the next week, I think. They had a fabulous selection of films. I got to see House of 1000 Corpses and 28 Days Later with a Korean audience, which was pretty unique. So, yeah, I do get to travel around to festivals every once in a while. There’s another festival I go to in Italy called the Udine Far East Film Festival and I’m able to see a really nice broad cross section of Asian film without having to travel as far as Asia and a lot of sales agents and directors show up to that.

TB: What are the actual criteria for getting a film in? I know you look for as many premieres as you can possibly get.

CG: Yeah. For me the premiering is a big thing. I’ve been able to elevate the profile of the program over the past years because of that. Ideally I’d like to have, if not a North American premiere, at least a Canadian premiere. The Midnight Madness program is different from a lot of the other programs. When you say ‘film festival’ to people sometimes people who aren’t already in the circle of the audience, their eyes will kind of glaze over because they just think of art films. They think pretentious, they think boring. Midnight Madness is the antidote for that. Because I was in the audience for so long I really … I don’t program for myself, I don’t program for the industry, I program for the audience. I know what it’s like to be seeing five films a day and the last one you go to you want to wake up, you want it to give you a jolt and surprise you. So I look for something that delivers some kind of hook within the first fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. Otherwise the audience is just bleary and glazed. You’re there at midnight. You want something fun and you want something exciting.

Occasionally I get submissions from people who don’t understand what the program is like. There’s one director who called me up and was really enthusiastic about this picture that he had and thought it was perfect for Midnight but obviously he hadn’t read the description of previous films in the series. He submitted a courtroom drama. It was kind of sleazy, it had to do with a stripper, but still … it had some b-list actors in it that were kind of fun, but court? No. I couldn’t do it. So that’s kind of my criteria. Something that’ll hook you.

In the beginning I used to try and do it with a list, like, “It’s got to be explosive! It’s got to be action! It’s got to be horror!” But every once in a while I’ll put something in there which is a bit of a curveball, that has a more subliminal hook. Like last year’s film Gozu.

TB: I saw it. I was actually sitting next to the film’s rep and that guy was just shaking his head muttering “This is so messed up” over and over again …

CG: Yeah, when I first saw that I saw it on video and I was thinking, “Oh, I really like this but I think my audience is going to lynch me for making them sit through such a long, slow film.” It’s like a David Lynch surreal trip. I made a decision not to show it even though I love Miike’s films, I really do, and I’ve got a really special relationship with him, but no. Even he, he’s got a good sense of what Midnight Madness is about and he’s seen some stuff that I’ve shown that he thought was a bit slow and he’s questioned me about it. But then I saw it in Korea at that festival PFAN and they screened a print that only had French subtitles but seeing it projected changed my mind completely.

TB: Well that end sequence … sure, he totally stole it but it’s got to be seen to be believed and Von Trier didn’t do it half as well.

CG: Exactly. Exactly. Miike’s a great director who really broke out of the Midnight Madness selection. I’ve got to give proper respect since I first found out about him through the programmers at Fantasia, but in ’97 we were able to bring Miike to Toronto. It was the first time he’d ever been to a North American, or even international, film festival and he had no idea that his films could have an audience outside of Japan.

TB: Which film would that have been?

CG: That was for Fudoh. Richard Corliss from Time Magazine went on to pick it as one of the top films of that year.

TB: Since you want the premieres so much, for those of us trying to figure out what might be there and what might not be would it be a safe bet to say that if it’s at Fantasia this year it won’t be in Midnight Madness?

CG: Probably not. Sometimes we have had stuff which has overlapped. Last year we both had Undead. Every once in a while there’s something where I just really want to bring it for the audience and I will just sort of splurge. Right now I’m just dying to be able to tell you about some of the stuff that I’ve been seeing … what’s good and what’s not so good … I guess we’ll probably have to have another conversation sometime when I can talk about what’s been good.

TB: Sometime when you’ve been unleashed.

CG: Yeah, yeah.

TB: I tried taking that approach and they said no. “Can he tell me what he’s been watching if he doesn’t actually say what’s coming?” “No.”

CG: It’s hard, yeah. And the Midnight Madness titles don’t get officially released until after the final press conference. We don’t like to be overshadowed by everybody else’s films.

TB: You’ve mentioned how the program has broken a couple of directors. Is that something you have in mind when you’re screening things? What might be the next big thing?

CG: Yes and no. It’s always hard to tell. If you talk to me after I’ve locked my films I’m never sure how the audience is going to react because I’ve watched all of these things in seclusion, by myself. Last year was an incredible year. I had no idea that Ong Bak was going to blow everybody’s minds. I guess because I’m so close to martial arts films in the first place when I saw it I thought it was really impressive but I didn’t foresee the impact on the big screen with that audience. Two o’clock in the morning we had a standing ovation of all seven or eight hundred people in the theater. For the director to be able to come fresh off of a plane an hour before the screening, the airline had lost his luggage, and for him to walk into a room filled with that much love was really incredible.

I’m always looking for stuff that is fresh and new. Two years ago I started getting submissions where every other film had to do with virtual technology and reality game shows and reality TV and it was so dead and tired even before it had really started. I’ll always see slasher films, which are nothing new. I’ll always see true to life serial killer films, which is also nothing new. After seeing so much stuff like this I feel like I have a little bit of a moral point not to show some of that stuff. Part of me says it’s just bad karma. To just show misogynistic films of killers going around raping and murdering, it’s not going to get you to a good place anywhere in life.

TB: Do you see any kind of emerging trends in the whole genre thing? It seems like the Asian horror thing is starting to play out now.

CG: Yeah, the Asian horror film is starting to get a little played out. There are still some good shocks there but I think that international audiences aren’t as devoted as Asian audiences to what scares Asians. Right now I have everybody coming and saying, “I’ve got the next Cabin Fever for you.” Which is often not the case. I was talking to Eli Roth and he said, “Geez, I don’t even know if Cabin Fever 2 is going to be the new Cabin Fever.” Trends … I’m trying to think …

TB: Any countries on the rise? Thailand seems to be coming up fast, and they’re pretty diverse.

CG: Yeah, Thailand and Korea are the two to watch out for because they just have a real tactical sophistication about them. The Korean film industry is luckily supported by their government …

TB: Which might not be the case for much longer.

CG: Yeah, that’s the really sad thing. If the quota system is diminished …

TB: I don’t understand why they would even consider dropping that. It’s been so good for the industry. It’s been so good for the country. It makes no sense at all to kill it.

CG: Yeah, but the pressure they’re under is because of America. As soon as the quota system is dropped then they can steamroll in and every multiplex will have Spiderman 2. The same thing happened in Hong Kong. One of my friends was pointing out that when Rob Roy came out it played in maybe two theaters in Hong Kong. Within a six month period Braveheart came out and Braveheart played in something like twenty five theaters. It was a trend that was just starting. It used to be that American films would come in and only play in a few theaters but then Hollywood came in and started flexing its trade muscles and completely decimated the local industry.

I try and keep the program balanced internationally. Right off the bat, when programming, I get sent a lot of American films. And there’s a lot of pressure for me to show those American films. But when my program is only nine films I really feel obligated to show what scares and excites people all around the world and not just America. That’s why I always try to get something new from France, from England, from Korea, from Spain, from wherever.

TB: It seems like it’s been a good while since a new talent came out of Hong Kong. It’s been kind of sad to see it fall apart there.

CG: Yeah, it is. I was so close to that industry and it’s just … it’s dominated by what local audiences want and they’re not interested in martial arts films. It’s become very consumer driven and it’s just a very different market there now.

But there’s always a lot of good stuff coming out of Spain and Latin America. It’s hard to pinpoint where the good stuff is coming from. It’s easy to look over to Asia but there’s a lot of interesting stuff, even French stuff, that never makes it over here.

TB: You mentioned Ong Bak before … are there any others that come to mind as being your best received films? The best screening experiences?

CG: Well last year there was Haute Tension. It really threw everyone threw a loop, nobody saw that coming.

TB: I didn’t catch that one.

CG: Ooh. That one sparked a bidding war. Lions Gate picked it up. Young director, French director, twenty five years old, Alex Aja, he made this intense, bloody fairy tale and has now been signed on by William Morris and is apparently writing the Hills Have Eyes remake. Nobody had heard about that film until it played Toronto, then it went on to Sundance and Lions Gate is planning on doing a limited release of it. That was another big break out film.

TB: What’s the worst received thing you’ve done?

CG: That I’ve played?

TB: You ever offended anybody out of the theater?

CG: Oh yeah, that happens all the time. We always do that. I love offending people. The film Haute Tension, somebody that was in the film festival saw a clip of it playing and just thought that we were morally reprehensible for even showing a film like that. But then you’ve got to stand back with that person and go, “Okay, wait. That film affected you and that film touched you. Think about why it did that, think about how it pushed your buttons and maybe that’s a sign of a good film.”

I love being able to confront audiences. Not with a sledgehammer over their heads but in more subtle ways.

But a film which has been not well received … last year was kind of interesting because there was quite a divide on Underworld. The die-hard audiences, they knew not to go because the film was opening a week later. And that’s the thing … as an audience member, if you’re a devoted cinema lover, when you try to pick the films you’re going to see you try to pick the films that you might not know anything about but you know that you’re never going to have the chance to see on the big screen again. You take that. You don’t go see something that’s a gala that’s going to open a week later. So Underworld last year divided fans. But at the same time the kind of attention that Underworld got was able to shine on the other directors in the program, which I think was a really good thing. So you got some kids out who came to see Kate Beckinsale in this werewolf / vampire film and they said, “Hey wait a minute, they’re showing a Korean science fiction film?” And they’d go and see that.

TB: And that was a great film.

CG: Oh, Save the Green Planet? That’s a completely under rated film. But there’s nothing that people have really taken me to task for, said “Oh, that was a really bad film. How could you?” I’m sure it’s going to happen one day, but so far it hasn’t.

TB: Have there been times when you’ve brought in directors or stars that have bounced you back to the whole fanboy thing? I know if I was bringing in Bruce Campbell it would be very hard to maintain any sort of straight face or serious conversation.

CG: It’s interesting. There is part of me that I have to put in check. When I first met Bruce Campbell we met on this completely professional level. There was no gushing. Not that there was no gushing allowed, but it’s just how Bruce is able to flip back and forth between charming the crowd and being a complete and total professional. I’m usually able to put it in check. The first star that I ever had to look after when I was doing Midnight Madness was for the film Office Killer. So I got to look after Molly Ringwald. And that was a little weird, because I was taking her to go to an ATM by the hotel that she was at and we’re just walking along talking casually and then suddenly it just hit me that this was Molly Ringwald. This was a girl that I grew up with on screen. It was a little odd to realize that I was talking to her one on one as a regular person. Yeah. For my first guest it threw me a little. But she was a sweetheart. There are certain actors that when you meet them you just realize that you have to put away your preconceptions of what they’re going to be like. Actors and directors. The biggest treat is usually when you’re working with an independent film, or a small foreign film, and you get to meet these people. That’s usually the experience that I like the most.

TB: Can you put a date on when the confirmed program announcement is going to be?

CG: You’ll probably need to get back to the press office on that, but it should be late August.