Movie inspired by Rob Ford crack video

[spaminator]

Movie inspired by Rob Ford crack video

By Joe Warmington, Toronto Sun
First posted: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 09:50 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 10:59 PM EST
Rob Ford probably would have laughed his head off. But not everybody is laughing.
The movie poster for the movie, Filth City, shows a Rob Ford look-a-like, named Mayor Hogg, smoking a pipe under a banner which says: “The crime rate is high, so is the mayor.”
Inspired by the former mayor’s crack scandal, it’s a new Canadian-produced movie, which will premier March 25 at the Scotiabank Theatre. The movie trailer boasts it was “inspired by true” events and has a classic line: “There’s a video of the mayor smoking crack.”
It’s an exaggerated story line with guns and shootings but the part about a crack video on a cellphone certainly is not make believe.
His widow doubts Ford, who died of cancer, would have cared.
“I don’t think so,” said Renata Ford Tuesday night after a trailer of Filth City appeared. “There were so many videos out there that were not good that I doubt this one would make a difference.”
What could ever top the “crack smoking” video? But she was not surprised at the outrage expressed by Rob’s brother, former city councillor Doug Ford.
“He is always so protective of Rob. That’s Doug.”
Doug Ford told the Toronto Sun the movie was made by “scumbags” who are “taking advantage of someone who was ill for profit” and “who misrepresented who Rob was and what did happen.”
(WARNING: Language advisory)
Councillor Michael Ford, who followed in both Rob and Doug’s footsteps in Ward 2, called the movie “sickening.”
Doug’s point was while Rob had personal demons, he also did overcome them and “I am very proud of him.”
He encouraged people to not support the movie.
While Renata appreciates Doug’s reaction, she won’t get upset over the trivial. “It has been very hard,” she said of dealing with her husband’s March 2016 death.
Still, she’ll make sure her kids, Stephanie and Dougie, don’t see the movie.
Even if they see it, Renata added, “it will not influence their love for their father.”
An image taken from the trailer for Filthy City. (YOUTUBE)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVOzM0QNCMk
Movie inspired by Rob Ford crack video | WARMINGTON | Toronto & GTA | News | Tor

 

[mentalfloss]

That is EXACTLY how it fukking went down.

 

[spaminator]

So-called 'Rob Ford movie' not a documentary

By Jim Slotek, Postmedia Network
First posted: Friday, March 24, 2017 10:39 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, March 24, 2017 10:56 PM EDT
As I’ve been told by many a filmmaker, usually defensively, “it’s not meant to be a documentary.”
That’s Filth City, the so-called “Rob Ford movie” that closes the Canadian Film Fest Saturday at the Scotiabank Theatre. A first feature by director Andy King, it’s an over-the-top grindhouse crime-comedy that, between scenes, even copies the “scratched film” gimmick of the Tarantino/Rodriguez co-feature Grindhouse.
And I side with Renata Ford, who said her late husband would probably get a laugh out of this acid-trip of a film in which the Ford-inspired York Mayor Tom Hogg (Pat Thornton) handles automatic weapons and presides over a drug-lord’s cache of open cocaine like a Great White Scarface.
There’s gunplay. There are bumbling gangs shooting each other over the almost mythical crack video. The cops are on crack and on the take. The mayor’s bodyguard is sleeping with a woman who’s his boss’s worst enemy.
And hovering over everything is the stench of a garbage strike — which, in real life, you may remember, happened during the tenure of Rob Ford’s predecessor David Miller.
Again, not a documentary. Mayor Hogg is not even the protagonist of this movie. But, as they would do on Law & Order, Rob Ford’s real-life crack video is the “MacGuffin,” the ancillary real-life event that makes a lot of wildly made-up stuff happen.
(The hero is a spectacularly inept cop named Kapowski, played by the film’s co-writer Danny Polishchuk. Kapowski kicks things off by accidentally causing the shooting death of a gang member who’s in possession of the video. When s---gets real, as they say, he’s aided by a drug-addicted ex-cop/computer hacker, played by Kevin Soldo.
Of course, it’s not Renata’s shrug, but brother Doug Ford’s rage that’s made headlines. And Filth City would otherwise be another under-the-radar Canadian film if Doug hadn’t publicly ranted about it.
And with that, director/co-writer King shares an epiphany with the late mayor. There really is no such thing as bad publicity.
People in Germany don’t remember “Der Crack Burgermeister” with a chuckle because of his promise to halt the gravy train. When a character plainly meant to be Rob Ford in Sharknado 2 was impaled by a flying shark, it wasn’t a tribute to Ford’s war on bicycle lanes. And he didn’t end up on Jimmy Kimmel because of his promise to build subways.
A year after his death, Rob Ford still gets attention, something he always courted, even in the worst way.
As a film, Filth City is about what you’d expect on a $500,000 budget and all-but-donated effort from working Canadian actors — many of them in the comedy community. These include Thornton, recently of CBC’s Sunnyside, and Kenny Hotz (of CBC’s Kenny vs. Spenny). Hotz plays a police chief who parrots anything the mayor says (again, an invention, if you recall Ford’s actual relationship with chief Bill Blair).
There’s convincing gunfire. I’m sure there’d have been car chases if they could afford it. And the plot itself is overladen with subplot such that it seems to forget where it’s going at times (it feels at least 20 minutes too long).
There are some very funny gags, and others that are too on the nose (Mayor Hogg of Hoggtown? Guys with names like Gerry Popadick or Det. Zitt?).
Still, Filth City is cheesy fun, not least because of Thornton’s all-in mayoral portrayal. I suspect you don’t do that good a job without secretly having a soft spot for the lug.
jslotek@postmedia.com
Filth City closes out the Canadian Film Festival on Saturday, March 25, 2017. (SUPPLIED IMAGE)

So-called 'Rob Ford movie' not a documentary | SLOTEK | Movies | Entertainment |

Ford Nation blasts Filth City star

By Jim Slotek, Postmedia Network
First posted: Friday, March 24, 2017 10:57 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, March 24, 2017 11:11 PM EDT
Pat Thornton has dealt with hecklers before — but usually in person.
“This weekend was full of interesting death threats on Twitter,” says the comic actor who plays fictional crack-smoking mayor Tom Hogg in Filth City, the crime comedy that closes out the Canadian Film Fest at the Scotia Saturday. (By coincidence, Thornton’s half hour special on The Comedy Network also airs the same night).
“They’d say things like, ‘I can’t believe anybody would make fun of Rob Ford. You’re so crass and mean.’ And then they’d say I should be dead because I’m a fat slob.”
“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute! You love that guy, and you think I should be dead because I’m fat.’”
What puzzles him is that Filth City wasn’t exactly a stealth mission.
It was shot, mainly in Hamilton, in 2015, while the former mayor was still alive.
“The movie got a lot of press in Hamilton,” Thornton says. “Press releases went out that the movie was in production. But the only attention we got was from Hamilton at that time.”
And then, a year-and-a-half after his 10-day shoot, Rob’s brother Doug got a look at a trailer for the over-the-top comedy and called the filmmakers, “scumbags.”
“Certainly these guys (director Andy King and writer Danny Polishchuk), my friends who hired me to do this movie, wanted to do something a little provocative,” says Thornton.
“They wanted to use that hook and have it resemble something the city went through, and get people to watch a Canadian movie. Because it’s almost impossible to get people to watch a Canadian movie.
“But we never expected to get this kind of heat. And it’s just because Doug Ford’s mad about it.”
“The thing is, the character that’s loosely based on Rob Ford is very likable. He’s a bad-***. He wins the election. I think he would have liked it and I think the people who like him would like it.”
“But they’ll probably stay too mad to see it,” he says with a laugh.
Thornton was available for the heightened-reality crime story because of the cancellation of Sunnyside, the CBC comedy series where he ironically played, among other characters, “Mayor Fred.”
And he says he made it clear he wasn’t interested in anything that could be interpreted as The Rob Ford Story.”
“It’s like Law & Order, y’know ripped from the headlines and then they told their own story. It was a great opportunity. I knew right away I was going to be able to do stuff that I’d never done before. I’d be able to be a little dramatic, be a little bit of a villain.”
“I’d do all the stuff that nobody would ever hire me for before — or maybe never again,” he quips.
“But it had to be a comedy. If it were a straight movie, it would have been too soon, too close to the bone. But this is something other than that.”
“I wasn’t at all interested in doing an impression. So Andy had me watch a bunch of James Cagney movies, particularly White Heat.”
“And he’s like, ‘What we really like about the way (Cagney) played stuff is he was like a raw nerve. There was no thinking. He just sort of exploded.’ The idea was this would be an interesting quality for a character at the center of a crime comedy.”
If Thornton regrets anything, it’s the timing (Wednesday was the anniversary of Ford’s death).
“I know the timing of this festival is unfortunate for the Ford family. I understand that. That obviously wasn’t anything the filmmakers had control over.”
“But Toronto was on the map because of him. He was a genuinely likable, charming guy. Probably too much of a mess to be an effective mayor. But I understand why people love him.”
jslotek@postmedia.com
Ford Nation blasts Filth City star | SLOTEK | Movies | Entertainment | Toronto S