Candy is a short film that I wrote, directed, produced and acted in. It is eight minutes and 34 seconds. I began writing Candy after seeing A Most Dangerous Method in September 2011 -- art as communication. The Candy script continued to evolve right up to and including the two shoot days in November 2012. Post-production finished February 23, 2013, when it was screened privately at Camera Bar, on Queen Street, in Toronto, for cast, crew, friends and family. I am beyond thrilled for Candy to have its World Premiere at TIFF 2013!
How far back do I go, as far as musings on my film Candy go? Well, I suppose to the time I was sitting at my fold out inlet table in the beautiful Edwardian Palmerston Blvd kitchen I use to have.
Writing the first draft of Candy in a few minutes flat after going to the premiere of my father's film, A Dangerous Method. Film is, after all, the new version of that.
This turn of the century instead of Freud's development of Psychoanalysis and Surrealism it is something new. This new film process is the Dangerous Method now...Candy yum.
Lou Reed and walking on the wild side with Candy Darling, gender bending Pop Culture, Warhol and the blowjob.
Not to forget the poetry and the life of a poem and a poet and the mental institution, Frances and Tom and Viv and all of that, madness and creative illness. The painting is important too...
Van Gogh, surrealism, representation, and finally abstraction, the adaptation of the poem into the life he lives, his personality in the urban city abstracted beyond repair, perhaps.
Self-fulfilling prophecy? Life imitating art? Which came first the chicken or the egg? Does it just keep repeating, cycling over and over again?
And don't forget about addiction! One must never forget about addiction, cocaine and cigarettes, the meds, the street life, the bag lady, living on the street, the poet and the hustler muse.
Art and the artist.
Candy screens in Programme 3 at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Monday, September 9 at 10 p.m. and on Tuesday, September 10 at 2:45 p.m. Tickets go on sale September 1. For more info, you can go to the film's Facebook page.
