Page Two

What I really want to focus on in this column is the outstanding, world-class Toronto International Film Festival, which I recently attended for the first time. More expansive and inclusive than most festivals, it offers an extraordinary range of films while also focusing on categories too often ignored, as well as being unusually open and accessible to average filmgoers. Unfortunately, there's only limited space here, but I'll offer more online.

The Austin City Council should be so embarrassed by its pathetic performance on the budget. The city faces a serious shortfall not just this year, but for several to come -- which will cost jobs and pay raises, and force service cuts. Given these circumstances, the council should have followed Mayor Will Wynn's lead by unanimously approving City Manager Toby Futrell's budget proposal, except adding additional cuts. This would have not only served the city, but would have also provided a powerful symbol of tough-minded leadership willing to make the most difficult decisions, no matter how unpopular. Ludicrously, they went in exactly the opposite direction, affirming to all that their priorities, as always, remain favorite causes and special-interest allies, served by an agenda of temporary fixes, casual capitulation, short-term gratification, and oiling squeaky wheels. Rather than face the future, the council members just faced one another, playing patty-cake rather than making policy.

Texas' Ken-doll governor, Rick Perry, takes the stance that there are no serious social, fiscal, environmental, or political problems facing the state; this position lends new resonance to the term "vacuous." Obviously, I'm not going to agree with much Perry has to say regardless, but he communicates with only the blandest of sound bites, his form as discouraging as his content: A fourth-grade teacher simplifying ideas for first-graders offers more complexity. The governor is as open in his disinterest in leading as he is that the only constituencies he serves are the Republican Party and a small group of special-interest lobbyists, the citizens of Texas be damned.

Visiting Toronto brought the United States' foreign and domestic policy into too-sharp and horrifying relief. Since simplistic talk-radio characterizations are shaping right-wing perceptions, I want to make it clear that I've never been an America-hating leftist. The species exists but is a very small minority of liberals/progressives, magnified by ratings-seeking demagogues into a traitorous stealth army to encourage the notion that Americans are this country's worst enemies. By this logic, Americans hating Americans will solve all and any of our country's problems. Ironically, this labeling of those with whom the right disagrees is the most openly anti-democratic, anti-American attack on the country's founding principles, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, in our lifetimes.

I've always been very proud of this country, thinking its brilliant range of virtues are underrated while criticisms, both legitimate and ridiculous, are emphasized and exaggerated. Yet during my week in Toronto, in every discussion on our current policies, foreign and domestic, I found myself growing ever more agitated as, rather than dispute statements, I added information. I couldn't help but more clearly detail how arrogant, contemptuous, self-righteous, and ultimately self-destructive our government's positions are.

A few years back my dear friend Michael Hollett, publisher and editor of Now, Toronto's weekly, and I came close to forever destroying our friendship in an escalating, screaming argument over my defense of the U.S.-supported bombings of Serbia by NATO. This time I kept raising my voice again, but always to offer details of partisan outrages and anti-democratic actions. I thought it looked impossibly nuts from within this country, but from the outside the irrationality and vindictiveness (both petty and grand) defy rational comprehension.

Just one, and only one, example: When France, Russia, and Germany cautioned this country on the speed and presumptions of our predetermined invasion of Iraq, we bitterly reminded them that to the U.S., "ally" means "obedient and subservient," not "sovereign" or "partner." When they proved to be right, we were too busy contemptuously feigning forgiveness to even notice. Now that Bush has decided we need their money and help, without apology, input, or even respect, we're again demanding they blindly accede to our decisions. Basically, we're saying they are obligated to help us maintain order and rebuild Iraq -- even though they cautioned against the invasion, predicting that exactly what has happened would happen -- because all and any of our actions are so pure, it obligates them to listen to us. As demented as this seems here, imagine how it plays outside our borders.

Enough despair; let's head back to the amazing Toronto International Film Festival. Cannes is accessible in a number of ways, but it plays to the international film-community elite. Telluride is film-centric, but it isn't a poor person's event, and its offerings are brilliantly but narrowly curated. Sundance is superimposed on Park City -- a week before or a week after, the only film activity is a fourplex showing the latest Hollywood studio releases. If you're a local and not willing to either buy a registration or get up very early, you're not going to see any movies. Those last two American festivals offer an exciting but limited sampling of international films. In the past decade, Toronto has emerged as one of the very top film festivals in the world, this year offering 336 films, well over 200 of them features. Programs included major Hollywood studio releases with appropriate stars in attendance, the majority of important upcoming American independent films, a broad range of new Canadian films, and a Canadian retrospective of silent actress and filmmaker Nell Shipman. There were programs of new Brazilian films, international documentaries, films from Africa, as well as a breathtaking world-cinema selection. Which doesn't mention the Discovery section, the innovative Visions celebration, or the Masters tribute to great directors. Now, if you have an expensive sponsor or festival badge, you're getting into an astonishing range of films. But you can also order single tickets in advance or take your chances on the rush line for last-minute tickets. The best odds for getting in that last way are at some of the most talked-about, major screenings, because they're in the biggest theatres. The Toronto Film Festival is awe-inspiring: well-run, with enough films to program a two-screen arthouse for half a decade. The only downside is you know you're not going to get to see it all. The greeting here, in dozens of languages, isn't hello, it's, "What have you seen; what are you seeing next?"

As this was my first time I spent a lot more time observing than going to films, but next time -- and that'll be next year -- I'm taking the plunge.

I'll post my Toronto diary on the Chronicle Web site soon and hope to offer more in this column. Roughly and briefly: Gus Van Sant's Elephant was the most unexpected wonder I saw -- a film I thought I wasn't liking for the first three-quarters that ended up knocking me out. Richard Linklater's School of Rock is more entertainingly fun than even I expected, with Jack Black outrageously funny. Mario Van Peebles' How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass was a complex evocation of his father (Melvin Van Peebles) making the classic Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song -- a historical tone poem to the beginnings of blaxploitation and his best directorial effort by far. Ron Mann's Go Further, which I had seen about 40 minutes of at Ron's office awhile back, was something different, a refreshing documentary essay that overflows with joy, ideas, and humanity without being the least pedantic. It premiered at SXSW, but I find it impossible to watch films when I'm working. Finally, Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart was even greater than we remembered, a celebration of love, romance, and film. Coppola withdrew the commercially disastrous film from circulation only a couple of weeks after it was released in 1982; the financial fallout caused him to lose his studio. Having only seen it on video, I found it exhilarating to finally watch the film on the big screen. If only for a few days, Toronto was a celebration.