Who's zoomin' who?

Terrorism made September 11th a date none of us can forget. For entirely different reasons this year, residents of Toronto have incentive to set digital reminders or circle the date on calendars.

That day is the end of registration for the job of Mayor of Hogtown, the entirely unflattering nickname that has stuck to this sprawling, metropolis. Actual Election Day is October 27th.

Incumbent Mayor, Rob Ford has, during his tenure, acquired a prodigious level of international media notoriety, solidifying his status as head hog. His campaign for re-election is fueled by an unlikely anti-hero aura, eclipsing any moral authority of civic oath, which threatens to undermine all opposition as well.

Themes of understanding, rehabilitation and redemption are invoked by Ford Nation spin-doctors. Team Rob posits that no individual is entirely infallible, and this man's foibles are his own, providing they don't impede execution of official duties.

To court like-minded support, he's aligned his aspirations to an iconic constituent whose travails are comparable.

"Big" Ben Johnson surely knows this territory more than most.

September 24th 1988 is another one of those dates we easily recall. Our hearts thumped at the sight of our likely-lad humbling Carl Lewis, and an elite Olympic sprint field, before the world.

Shame, scandal and steroids summarily rescinded Ben's gold medal, and his world records, but couldn't disqualify his sport-celebrity, albeit tainted, due to the giddy high of glory.

 

Energy put into what has to be seen as cheating, realised a goal in Seoul, and what was done couldn't be comprehensively undone.

Indeed, just as our bellicose burgermeister seeks a second term at City Hall, so too is Ben afforded another chance. Personal ambition and a public unwilling to pass up a thrill, continue to offer opportunity. In a previous manifestation of this phenomenon I fell into the vat of adrenaline, excitedly running behind Ben in a field full of horses, when that comeback trail passed through an episode of Neon Rider. 

Featuring a redemptive storyline, the show was titled "Phoenix."

Come to think of it, that's a word the Mayor's camp could use, in acknowledgement of the damage Mr. Ford's behaviour has done to his career, and signal an intention to transcend. But strategy seems to be more-of-the-same, which could sink the ship.

Still, with tabloid mentality in the mix, plebiscites can be unpredictable, so we watch as the thick-skinned Ford forges on. What's entirely possible is that celebrity survives the vote and revives at some point, in another form. On reality TV perhaps?

A spot on "The Biggest Loser" or "Hog Dynasty" anyone?

Ben Johnson meanwhile (nobody's fool if you take my word for it) maintains profile and lines up for a prominent personal trainer challenge to add to his Maradona and Ghaddafi credits. 

 

This is a counter-intuitive, unholy alliance - but, to borrow from Aretha Franklin's 1985 disco hit ... who's zoomin' who? 

A Bigga Ford.

By now you might have heard of the delightful Tessanne Chin. She's that Jamaican songstress and media-darling who recently swept all before her on the way to triumph on "The Voice" USA. Charming, centred, adroit and demure, our Tess rode da riddims of her native wordsong into the hearts and souls of millions.

Well, for every Tessanne, it seems there's an anti-Tessanne.

In a turn of events, closely resembling a Maury Povich premise, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has become the latest flashpoint Jamaican dialectician. Boombastic epithets, viral memes and all.

A nuh Missis Chin likkle girl dis ... it's the bumboclaat antithesis.

Loyal bro, Doug, stumps for Rob's political survival just like sis Tami pulls for Tessi's rising star. Comparisons end there. Y'see, Tessanne is a goodaz gyal, while our Mayor makes uncool copy and has running beef wit' da local sheriff - Police Chief Bill Blair.

"Babylon newspaper seh so, I and I seh so, so what more the people want to reveal?," mused the Rasta prophet. Now, if everyone's commenting on the same thing, it's that much harder to be original.
Enter those easy-to-reach cultural signifiers for Jamaica, add a dash of reticence to appear culturally adrift - cue tricolour Marley memes.

As Rob rhymes with Bob - bobsled down this linguistic luge with me. Paraphrasing Rastafari dread style and pattern is its own cottage industry. Broadsheets, blogs and twitter parody accounts, like @MayorRobMarley, leap enthusiastically at typical Marley-brand imagery to feed Toronto City Hall's Tuff Gong-show.

 

 

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." (Proverbs 20:1).

 

Rob Ford's synapses, inebriated and along for the ride, default to bad words in the face of Bacchanal. Not unusual by itself, until incongruity rears its ugly head in a too-cute performance of base guff, communicating on more levels than he likely understands.

And the hits just keep on coming. Wheel up selecta!

  

 Jamaican language is a dynamic mix-up-mix-up of English and Patwa. Perpetually evolving. It is confident and coolly captivating in cadence. Together with its kin, Reggae, we have a contagious combo. Only the uptight are genuinely immune, but the case of  Mr. Mayor shows signs of advanced Yardie-mylitis.

 

Despite being as good a bloodclaat Ja-fake-an mimic as rassclaat Snoop Lion, Natty Rob is no Mystic Man like Peter Tosh, who once scandalized polite society by releasing a song entitled ... yes, "Oh Bumboclaat!"

 

 

My Tessanne Chin references are admittedly a tad gratuitous, but the piece was desperately seeking beautification, y'nahmean?

 

In realworld Jamaica, politicians often flex like rockstars, and cops too. I crack up - no pun intended - visualizing the unseemly outcome if this played out on the public scene there. Rob Ford clashing with a top cop and cussing him all kine a claat! 

 

If, after a storied career, he wasn't approaching retirement I'd have just the match-up. Robamuffin vs. Legendary Supercop (and coincidental namesake), Cornwall "Bigga" Ford. Then again, they're both facing impending retirement, so why not?

 

#Readytorumble meets #Mannersanddiscipline Uptown.

Ringside sell off.

  

Kingston Paradise in Toronto.

St. Jago de la Vega and Kingston had not yet met in their prophesized sprawling merger. Growing up in Jamaica, my cardiology would routinely spike on the commute between bucolic and bustle. To the extent that even now, there's nothing better for my heart than a hit of citypulse.
 
My latest sortie saw me emerge from a summers-end Muskoka sequestration. A few probing enquiries, and I headed for Hogtown's TIFF 2013. In this era we're still speaking about that cavalcade of prestigious cinematic unveilings, and the familiar frenzy of the red carpet.

But now, also, parallel fledgling festivals aligned with it.

The Caribbean Tales Film Festival occurs on the fringes of this frisson. The timing is advantageous to showcase the maturing output of Caribbean related filmwork, adding its own diasporic glam to the scene with contiguous scheduling and spicy spectacle. Shorts, docs, features, workshops and symposia.

TIFF Artistic Director, media-master, mogul, mullah Cameron Bailey, himself of Barbadian heritage, makes a natural patron and ally for the eight year-old CTFF, incepted and run by Frances-Anne Solomon, a proud Trinidadian film-maker.

Having missed sold-out TIFF screenings of Steve McQueen's acclaimed "12 Years a Slave," which ended up a clear winner of the top accolades, I had to re-focus. I was drawn out by a desire to see how my Jamaican friend, Mary Wells fared with her movie "Kingston Paradise," making its world premiere.

Five years prior we had pored over early footage as she shaped a working edit. At the time, final cut seemed ... remote.

In the tradition of Damian Marley's anthemic song "Welcome To Jamrock," Mary's cinema verité visuals of this island paradise bely the Iberostar propaganda of Tourist Board commercials.

And make no mistake, this isn't gratuitous invitation to indulge in ghetto-voyeurism or re-hash Jamaican political tribalism.

At core, this is about a couple's struggle for self-betterment. A capitalist's dream in a setting where there's little capital to go 'round. Driving taxi in this town requires more than a hackney permit. Chris "Johnny" Daley energetically portrays Rocksy. He hustles condoms and phone-cards but is readily seduced by a Syrian businessman's conspicuously crisp Mitsubishi Evolution.

Hollywood might've required a grand heist, but JAH-llywood finds gold in a petty auto-thief, complete with bumbling sidekick.

Camille Small, as Rosie, is Rocksy's main squeeze, complicit in methodology but not end-game. She's an art-lover and supporter of "woman work" who is not deferential to agressive testosterone. Unlike some of her predecessors in Jamaican cinema, Camille manages to infuse Rosie's pulchritude with an eloquent subtlety.

Everyone's heard of Trenchtown. Well, there are several comparable "garrisons" on the Kingston city grid. Mary credits gratitude to the people of Southside, which is in East Kingston.

 

Here, shambles of a once-grand downtown show systemic neglect, and every available space is adapted to accomodate the population therein. Supporting players are shrewdly utilised to rivetingly depict the day-to-day business of survival.

In the mechanics yard, gappy Clovie ("I thief but I never go jail") and pretty-boy Maltado deserve mention. So too does the ambiguous, dare I say, androgeny of the marginal players. During a prolonged de rigeur cop chase sequence one delivers, sans dialogue, haven for our hero, and the other nails what may be the most stylish onscreen come-uppance I can remember.

Wisely, Mary avoids padding the dialogue with cliche epithets and common themology. My Spidey-sense is that there was imput from her actors to this end. The result is believable dialogue which, of necessity, benefits from subtitling in service of the colloquial narrative. This allows the viewer to digest the all-consuming socio-economic reality at his/her own pace.

In Kingston, there's no avoiding this.

 

Perry Henzell's "The Harder They Come" (1972) will always serve as a blueprint. To this day THTC one-line take-aways pepper popular culture. Kingston Paradise has its share of those too, with at least one standout deadpan delivery certain to mash up movie-houses from Kingston to Toronto. 

 

Then of course there's the music. Award winning composer John Welsman, an honorary Caribbean if there ever was one, dials up the decibels. Combining original score and contemporary vocal tracks, this Canadian demonstrates a clear understanding of Jamaica's bass imperative.

The first thing Mary asked me after the well-received screening, which led to the all-important CTFF 2013 audience choice award, was - what do I think of the film's commercial prospects?

Well, after driving around Kingston with her, not too long ago, I do know she could use a new car.

I predict here and now, she won't have to steal one.

... of buttless chaps and a band called Vag ...

... sexy is in the eyes of the beholder, and who doesn't fancy a bit of sexy? ... the thing is, one man's meat is another man's poison, to co-opt a phrase that conjures a graphic image (in this context), even as it flirts with sexism and moral judgement in its polemic ...

... a Caribbean upbringing can make you familiar with public enactments of overt sexuality, notwithstanding restrictive colonisation of the collective mind via instilled religious text ... if you've attended explicit Jamaican dancehall street-events, or sweaty Trini Soca carnivals, you can attest:  public fora where carnal expression asserts license to step out and override long established standards of Judeo-Christian moral propriety ...

... correspondingly, such contrast is also observed in Canada, a Commonwealth pillar with a cold, staid rep - it's demonstrably apparent around increasingly outre Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) populations flourishing in Canadian cities, in particular, those hosting annual festivals dubbed PRIDE ...










... well, clearly, some men have as much pride in their buttocks as some women have in their breasts, if I'm to guage by the range of al fresco body parts on display during unavoidable PRIDE celebrations in Toronto (that is unless you're mayor Rob Ford, who's sure to be awol for the fun) ... in fairness, urban nudity may be as much about personal liberation as exhibitionism, but one can't be sure of motive, thereby stoking opinion, pro and con ...

... the relative anonimity of an outdoor street-festival, in a mixed crowd, swollen by thrill-seeking out-of-towners and local looky-loos, supports a carefree approach to romping revelry, so it shouldn't be at all surprising to find the full gamut of expression, in search of what amounts to hedonistic un-selfconsciousness ...















... a band of putative pussies, calling themselves Vag Halen, cranking out rock covers, was on one side of a stand of unisex port-a-potties ... on the other side was a parking-lot session blaring hip-hop and gruff dancehall (uh huh, dancehall - as in triple-threat Beenie, Bounty and Buju, a newly-out Diana King and the somewhat gayly-named Terror Fabulous) ...

... this suggests that a not-so-silent detente in sexual politics, a sort of gradual gay glasnost, is actually possible at a grass-roots level, if our drift to judgement is left to Jah. Even conceding that, on some level, we can all be given to subjective prejudice ...

... it's been a couple dozen years since I was first exposed to this culture by a secure lesbian cousin ... proximity to related events in Vancouver, L.A. and Sydney hadn't enticed me back, so this time I noted certain significant developments ... cliches remain, evident in droves, but the crowds today tend to be augmented by families and observers who can see the specter of "queer" without feeling hatred, rancor or threat ... to say that this occasion was inclusive, if a tad raunchy, would be an understatement ...

... piggy-backing, as PRIDE does, with Canada Day's exultant, flying Maple Leaf ensigns, ubiquitous beavers and mooses, helps to compound a general theme of celebration ... still, the most prevalent personal identifiers were rainbow-hued hairstyles, tats, tits, tit-tats and tiaras, with the occasional mustachioed cowboy dude swinging his lasso at submissive lasses for good measure ...

... in the bigger window of a wider world, notable homo-promo avowals by the likes of media-personalities Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon have become expected, if not commonplace, affecting neither their respective credibilities, such as they are, nor the proverbial price of rice in China ... much less, corrupting our impressionable youth at home or abroad ...

... talented, emergent R&B poet/singer Frank Ocean, who has made similar revelations, may actually raise his stock by doing so proactively ... Generation Next will always look back at the seductive sixties sexual revolution and Haight-Ashbury's hippie, free-love-in-the-park sensibility as a template to dress up or down as it chooses ... after all, is "choice" not the key to freedom? ...

 

... United States President Barack Obama's recent ballsy pronouncement, in regard to his personal views on same-sex marriage, is unlikely to stem opposition to this type of union, due to dominant heterosexual perspective ... however, the more these concepts get an airing, in America, Canada or the Caribbean, is the less shocking they become, just as images of topless women, references to vaginas, penises and natural body-functions, are, in time, likely to make fewer people blanch or blush ...

... the aural, and the oral ...

... seems I've been down this route before ... I'm talking about a mighty highway that may as well have been main-street, for it's utter familiarity ... Canada's roadways tend to be consistently maintained, at a high standard, even berms and sidewalks are usually groomed ... aesthetic homogeneity making for safer driving conditions is the governing wisdom, and while that may be so, monotony and sheer distances involved in traversing Canadian landscape can give an active mind too much room to venture-off into a world of contemplation, or distraction ...

... lately, I'm spending more time commuting in and around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) ... yesterday, after tuning out several Mario Lanzas, one or two Sarah Harmers, Weezy, April Wine and Rush (not the band, but Limbaugh frothing from a Buffalo, NY station), I settled on eclectic CBC Radio2 for audio companionship, winning-out by virtue of a forward reggae groove designed to ensnare an ackeelover ...

... complacency with my listening choice was shattered by the unmistakable sound of Mick Jagger's voice in the mix, plenty Dave "Eurythmics" Stewart, Joss Stone and Ras Damian Marley's trademark Gong-flava adding to the surrealism ... wellwhaddyaknow, there's a new supergroup blowin' through the air and its first release is the groovy "Miracle Worker" exuding the sweet aroma of a phat Jamaican joint ... SuperHeavy ...

... alas, that was the only reggae I heard on this ride, still, it's good to know Robert Plant continues to make cool music, as suggested by "Angel Dance", his recent Los Lobos cover that rocked me for a mile or three ... any random graze over the music scene brings a freedom from delineation, non-binding as that may be ... and anyway, I find reggae in everything with a heartbeat ...

... between newsbreaks focusing on the Kandahar Karzai killing and traffic-updates regarding a fatal accident impeding flow in both directions, it was trippy to hear Andre 3000 being touted to play Jimi Hendrix in an upcoming biopic,  followed by some Outkast to link vibes old and new, and leave tragedy behind ...

... just then, as if some perverse puppeteer conspired to remind me of the traffic, an abortive overtaker brakes sharply into my lane ... one rearward guilty glance in a wing-mirror betrayed contrition on an attractive face, when she regained her nerve she pulled out and was gone, leaving me only the memory of a provocative license plate, BJEY 247 ... barely had I begun that first flushed fantasy, when BLEW 905 zoomed by in the fast lane and I was left wondering if there was a theme convention somewhere downline...

... discretion on behalf of the presumably innocent means I must admit to slight alteration of the vehicle registration digits, but the experience is otherwise as told, complete with aural stimulation and oral innuendo ... then, they throw this out there, J.Lo is now single - stop!, too much! ... our highways and biways may be orderly and clean-as-a-whistle but with merest imagination there's sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll all over dem streets, and it could cause another ... mishap ...

... were succubi to overcome me on the road, necessitating any sort of legal plea, I imagine that basing my moving-violation case on solicitous license plates would backfire, so I'd be more likely to plead "not guilty yer 'onor!", citing public radio as my defense ...

... "blame it on the CBC!"...

... my kingdom for a newspaper ...

... aah, the curse of the conflicted ... it's a strange feeling to be pining for Canada in February, and doubly incongruent to do it from sunny Caribbean shores, but it's been a long time since a full edition of the Globe And Mail broadsheet landed on my seaside lap ... so try to look past the gentle surf and beckoning turquoise with me, to see this single-day time capsule from my removed island vantage ...

... there I read, warm in my geographic region-of-origin, wistful over that frozen-but-thawing adopted homeland and generally rapt at current events through yankee-eye-view media out of the influential U.S. confederation 'twixt right-here and up-there ... synchronicity with Canada is elusive despite television, fibre-optic cables and wireless internet signals delivering the world to me, but it's pleasantly surprising to approach it via the tactile immediacy of a traditional print format ...

... yeah, I know it's just a newspaper but it's as if the Globe editors did my web-surfing for me ... page one News spoke to a stereotype, or reflected a truth, depending on your interpretation, by reporting on the concussive prerogative that is hockey at home ... inside, the Editorial opined on the persistent immigration discourse, unsurprisingly perhaps, since this is a nation where a full third of the population was born elsewhere ... Op-Ed gave equal ink to domestic and foreign, reflecting a Maple Leaf penchant for collective equanimity ...

... advertising provides a familiar constant, with full-margin plugs for Dodge Caravans or a new Toyota Corolla, and the "field tested" alternate Canadian national emblem, "Rootsy LaBeaver" (my coinage - bilingual pronunciations encouraged), anchors the full-color back page ...

... de rigeur anticipation of a newlywed Royal Couple offsets palpably mid-Atlantic coverage of Arab popular uprisings and gives way to Books, Berlin Filmfest and Bieber in the Arts section ... before the extra-crisp white stock of the Life pullout offers up opulence and a snowy snapshot that teases the winter polarity dormant in my sense memory ...

... from here, Canada sits like a reassuring beret on the head of a rakish sentry ... swag and intemperance can manifest above the US/Canada border too, but y'know 'ow it go, perception precedes truth in most cases ... just like the Caribbean is supposedly about sand, coconuts and snorkeling instructors who also DJ, so too is The Great White North pegged as a land of glaciers, polite mounties and the migratory Canada Goose ...

... this newspaper confirms some truth about Canada but other realities spilleth over ... continuing, Toronto sports reporters tell of mega-gates for Mixed Martial Arts events, a b-ball boo-bird return for ex-Raptor Chris Bosh and a detailed half-page report on Europe's Arsenal vs Barcelona soccer fixture to feed my footie fetish ... the closing of Spadina's Magder fur outlet, champion of Ontario Sunday shopping, was a local footnote signalling a passage of time rather than doomsday, if the tone of "structural realignment" in the Business section is anything to go by ...

... I'm going to presume there wasn't much news fit to print west of the Alberta oil sands and leave that void for another day, or whenever a Vancouver Sun falls on my head ... meanwhile, in this part of the world scarce newspapers serve on as incubatory wrapping for ripening mangoes and papayas ... the subtext is implicit, Canada can be cold and icy but also nurturing at heart ...

... Battlescar Ontario ...

... sometimes in the combustive high drama of geo-political theatre you get a damp squib ... but this latest production of Summit G20 turned out to be a big deal ... a sort of coming out for Toronto, Ontario and Canada as a political stooge ... I mean ... stage ... a pretty ideal spot for a convention, eh, with its focal financial and shopping districts, two-line subway and that orderly, grid-like streetplan ...

... as we've seen, one of the problems in staging events with lofty agendas ... the South African World Cup, Vancouver's Olympics ... or a G20 summit ... is the actual cost and the not-always-obvious returns on the investment to the people who make up the local social infrastructure ... then there are those terms of fiscal inexactitude like ..."a billion dollars" ... that get tossed around as if rounding a figure to the nearest hundred-million is clarifying ... (can we get a G20 for two G8's and save ourselves 4G?) ...

... certainly one could see where the ... bulbous ... security budget from T-dot to Huntsville was deployed ... there were threats from all quarters ... real and perceived it matters not ... 'cos due dilligence is non-negotiable when anyone throws a party for such a high-profile gathering of guests ...

... the security forces seem to have worked close to the blueprint in tackling these threats ... but this remains troubling justification for the disproportionate hyper-expenditure it took to do so ...

... to those who watch these things, it has become de rigeur for summits of this kind to draw attention from public watchdogs, legitimately-motivated torch or cross-bearers and antagonistic contrarians ... it is within that latter group that you'll find the instigators and perpetrators of wanton destruction ... who by their actions seek to leave their mark in anti-social ways often to their own detriment and no-one's net gain ... like this angst-ridden saboteur who might have done better to stay away entirely ...













... inside the convention centre some global bargaining took place between football matches ... round-table, bi-lateral, in-camera, al fresco talks were held ... hands was shook (where's the fist-bump gone?) ... with the World Press Corps there to disseminate it all ...

... outside, shock-and-awe was droppin' on some anarchist ass and throngs got to hang close enough to say they were there when the rubber bullets flew ... I had just left town when the flex went down but they hit my Starbucks on Queen Street at John ... true to form the broken window instantly became art ...















.. if this all sounds cynical you shoulda heard me when I mentally flipped the script back to football and subbed Obama for Palin during the summary presidential Q&A ... every question was a potential Deep Water Horizon and had a trickier follow-up ... in other words ... Palin kryptonite ...

... nuff said ... when I stopped cringing I flushed that thought down the commode and moved on to contemplate the sheer enormity of the job the POTUS has on his hands ... engaged hotspots are ever-active and the U.S. is literally bleeding oil at the mouth of the Mississipi ... personally I'm thinkin' Barack should regulate that money-smile ... he's clearly familiar with the nuanced Jamaican phrase ... 'kin teet' ... (interptation; "skin teeth" - to smile, perhaps even obsequiously or disingenuously) ... it's handy in such crowds ...

... aaand when the smoke clears there are documents glittering in smiling promise but clouded by clause and condition ... agreements in principle at best ... leaving me to wonder if world leaders were to deal with the serious stuff in less distractingly overt fora ... develop a collaborative, Skype-type, HD cyber-summit to take care of the show-biz angle ... could they re-allocate funds for future gigs? ... I'm jus' sayin' ...

... in the run-up to the World Cup there were premonitions of crime and social unrest ... or hooliganism (which has not materialised despite an officiating faux pas or two) ... that this Ontario summit should be the scene of such babylonian behaviour while South Africa has held together is an irony which will please Pretoria but may mortify the Maple Leaf ...

... welcome to Parkdale! ...

... I've had opportunities to be part of many different types of projects in my time as an actor ... I can attribute much of that blessing to a combination of good fortune, genetics and effort ...

... oftentimes I'm questioned as to whether I fear the dreaded "typecasting"... my responses alternate between the flippant "bring it on!," or a post-Jerry Maguire "show me the money!," and the quizzical, mild annoyance of a "whaddyamean, which type are you referring to?" ... I've come to believe this is related to my personal flava, hybrid accent and mannerisms ...

... y'see, my personal blend of youth and age, public and private schooling, urban and rural upbringings, "dread" and "baldhead" influences, Jamaican and Canadian world citizenships, isn't usually the character description in the casting breakdowns, yet happily, I've managed to play a few variations on this theme ...

... and then there are the rare, though not entirely unique, instances when a role gets crafted toward the mongrel in me ...









... the initial phone call was innocuous enough ...

... my friend Michele and her filmmaker cousin Frances-Anne had a really talented cast, a concept and a plan, plus the fortitude to combine them ... they proposed adding me to play the central character Gene Wright, a well-meaning social worker with challenges and shortcomings of his own ...

... the open aperture beckoned, and before long I was deep in development-workshops on the grittier end of Queen Street West, a place with notable population history and not enough to show for it ... welcome to Parkdale and long days spent brainstorming, improvising scenarios and bonding into a tight unit ... a workably representative cross-section of contemporary black Toronto ...







... collectively we evolved a living script ... the contribution from each player inhabits the textured nuances of the final product ...

... veteran turns from the remarkable Leonie Forbes, a versatile Jamaican treasure who had previously played my grandma in Soul Survivor (1995), and Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall - an avuncular Trini-icon, grounded the film in bridge-building territory by commanding respect up and down the English-speaking Caribbean and its extensive diaspora ...

... younger cast members, particularly the rising talent of Michael Miller, gave everything of themselves to infuse the piece with G.T.A. street-realism and anchor the story firmly in the context of urban North America ...





... the workshopping and rehearsal journey was rewarded by a sell-off, limited-run stage-production lauded for its intelligent use of minimal material resources ...

... the rich, sincere, non-sensational storytelling, around issues the Caribbean-Canadian family are only too familiar with, ensures the humanizing of every character and makes A Winter Tale compelling insight for broader audiences ...

... having engaged with focus-groups, community screening-forums, university and school groups of various ages, far-flung film festival folks, regular-release houses and even a non-West Indian audience at a police-sponsored showing in a charming Calgary, Alberta rep-house, I'm convinced Frances-Anne Solomon's direction accomplished its intent ... namely, a story reflective of social conscience and relevance, eschewing much of the self-consciousness sometimes found in this vein ...













... from this actor's p.o.v. there's no downside to socially-relevant credits on a resume ... I experienced a singularly organic process in making this film, binding camaraderie, splashy-bashy openings in Toronto, New York, Port Of Spain, St. John's, Antigua, and the particularly sweet irony of seeing my own largeness on the screen at the Carib Theatre in Kingston, Jamaica where I'd watched so many double-bills as a yout' ...

... A Winter Tale ... http://www.awintertale.ca/ ... has won some honors and much acclaim along the way, and if the award of recognition I was given at last year's Caribbean Tales Film Festival for my work is the result of some kind of typecasting, then so be it ... whosoever will may come ...