Hey there guys. As most of you know, one of the world’s biggest and most important film festival’s is going on right now in Toronto. As a matter of fact, most news outlets and film websites have correspondents here right now covering the event. As most of you also know, I basically live in Toronto (just 45 minutes away in the great steel city known as Hamilton). With that being the case, a lot of people have been asking me (understandably) why the biggest film festival in the world isn’t being covered at all by the best movie website in the world (please note tongue firmly planted in cheek)?
So why am I not giving any coverage to the film festival? Well… a couple of reasons:
1) Everyone on the planet is covering the damn thing. if you want some excellent TIFF coverage, you can check out Cinematical, or Firstshowing, or Slashfilm… they’re all doing a great job.
2) I have found that most people generally don’t care about reading reviews to movies that aren’t close to being released yet. People are much more interested in reading a review to a movie they have the option of running out to see this weekend if they choose. There are exceptions obviously, some people eat up all the reviews they can… or if there is a highly anticipated movie (like Dark Knight) people would read that regardless of when the film was coming out… but GENERALLY, readers don’t jump on reviews to movies they haven’t heard of and don’t even come out for months yet. So why bother driving to Toronto, sitting for 2 hours, driving back, and then spending an hour doing a review that most people aren’t interested in yet?
3) Personal bitterness. Yup, I’m not too big to admit it. 3 years ago I applied to the TIFF for press credentials for The Movie Blog. They turned me down. The next year, when TMB was much bigger, I was basically offered press credentials…. I basically said “no thanks” and haven’t covered it since.
4) I’m a blog, not a news site… so I’m not really into “covering” anything. Even at Comic Con I skipped most… ok ALL the roundtable interviews and a lot of presentations too. I’m more into the EXPERIENCE of these events, and then relating those experiences on here. So “reporting” from the Film Festival just really isn’t my thing.
5) Expense. The Toronto Film Festival is one of the most expensive ones out there. Just a regular screening of the cheapest movie is $20 a ticket. Bigger screenings can run up to about $50 per ticket. So since I’m not really interested in having Press Credentials… I’m CERTAINLY not interested in pooping out a crisp 50 to hand over for one frigging movie. Does that ticket come with a bottle of Smirnoff?
6) Parties! If I’m going to take an evening out to drive into Toronto (and driving in that city is just mad right now) then I’d much rather hit a Festival party than pay $50 for a ticket to sit in a theater watching a movie most people haven’t heard of yet and wouldn’t read my review even if I posted it. The parties have been good. :)
So there you have it. Those are the reasons I don’t “cover” the Toronto Film Festival. And it’s not just one or two of them… but rather the combination of all of them tegether really. Don’t get me wrong… it’s a GREAT festival… but for all the aforementioned reasons, i just don’t write much about it here.
