For the love…
Tuesday morning, first day of ticket sales for the Toronto International Film Festival. I woke up, have my leisure morning breakfast and figured that I’d stop by the ticket venue before going to the office. Their website was “experiencing delays”, and my day wasn’t going to be busy anyhow. Synecdoche, New York, a Charlie Kaufman film, one of the buzz flick this year, is sure to sell out early, or so we thought. And then there are a few other films we’d want to check out… and a documentary by some friends of ours from Thailand.
10:15 am, I get to the Roy (one of the ticket venues in the city) and the line of people is curved throughout the plaza. There’s a giant white board in front of the ticket tent listing all the movies, all 300+ of them, and a lot of the names have a little yellow sticker with the words “Off Sale” next to them.
“What does ‘Off Sale’ mean?” I heard myself wonder out loud, sounding like a TIFF newbie that I am.
“Sold out, basically — you could try online or do a rush ticket at the day of the viewing”
“oh”
Shit. All the ones I’ve marked, except for the documentaries, are ‘off sale’. Great.
So I go stand in line, the long line will give me plenty of time to choose other movies. Calendar in hand, I stake out my spot and start going through the list. There was something weird in the calendar though… they have these page numbers that don’t exist in the booklet next to the title. Common sense will tell you that the description of the movies are on those pages, wherever they are. An older lady walk up to the line, and after getting a confirmation that I was the last one in line, she laughed at herself and said “I told work I was gonna be gone for 10 minutes!”.
“Where did you get that thick catalogue?” I inquired about the booklet she had in her hand… surely that was the book containing those mysterious pages with the movie description.
“Oh you have to buy it, it’s like 33 dollars”
Jeez. The book that tells you about the movies cost more than the movie tickets themselves.
She was generous enough to let me look through it. I had a quick glance at some of the movies I reselected just to make sure they don’t sound completely wacky. But of course, they don’t. That’s the point of the book.
Anyways, 1.5 hours later and my calendar book is getting all worn out from being flipped back and forth. The sun is beating down on the plaza and where the volunteers had decided to form the line, there were no shades whatsoever. I’m sweating in my clothes and so are all these other people who had left their office for this ‘quick’ errand. We managed to make jokes and small talks, discuss about the films and how rush lines work, etc.
At $20 per ticket plus service fees, choosing just a handful out of a list of 300+ films could get expensive rather quickly. Any “gala” or premium movies are not making my list (since those are $40 per ticket). I narrowed down my choices to 4 films, we need 2 tickets for each. This was gonna be more money than I spent at any other movie events, but they’re international films, art films that may never see distribution… and it’s the Toronto Film Fest! It’s North American version of Cannes, second to Sundance! AND I didn’t stand in this line in the hot sun for two hours for nothing.
With my Mastercard in hand, I worked out all the schedule in my list and got ready for my turn at the cashier. Then I see a little make-shift sign, black Arial letters in 72 pt on an A4 paper:
“Visa only”
Great. Nothing spells defeat more than standing two hours in the sun to realize you did it for nothing at all.
I still worked my way up to the cashier to figure out what I could possibly buy with cash. Just enough for 2 tickets. All the movies I carefully selected while in line were still available, but I couldn’t buy them. Why didn’t I just bring cash? Why don’t I have a Visa card? Oh, corporate sponsor, I freakin hate you!!
I paid for the two tickets to Citizen Juling, my friends’ film, a long 4 hour documentary about Thailand and its bizarre politics — most likely to not be sold out, but it was the first one on my calendar.
“If you come at 7am, the line should be shorter and quicker” said the cashier girl, all smiles.
7am? 7 in the morning is when I’m still sleeping! Shorter? I would think there would be no line at 7am! But what do I know.
I guess now I have something to wake up for tomorrow.
oh malheur – c’est dommage.
michele on 3 September 2008the tiff is a renowned clusterf*ck. one would wish they’d get with the century and do everything online. good luck with getting your tix.