I’m loyal. That’s right, like a good dog who won’t leave your side even if you’re sinking in piranha infested quicksand surrounded by dozens of Ernest Borgnine clone cannibals waiting to rape you sideways should you manage to free yourself and all you got left on your iPod to listen to as you contemplate which demise is worse is Celine Dion’s horrible cover of Eric Carmen’s horrible All By Myself. Yup, that kind of loyal, beyotch. I don’t like tossing out shoes that have taken me on journeys, I still love me some Billy Joel even though he hasn’t released an album in a decade and I’m stilling hanging on to DVD. I’m also a loyal fan of Kevin Smith and a loyal visitor to Ottawa’s Mayfair theatre. Tonight the two become one and I don’t even need to double bag it!
Despite growing up closer to Ottawa then New Jersey, I discovered Kevin’s work first. My younger brother Al and I spent many nights watching movies, generally of the horror variety. We’d head on over to the nearing video store with our allowances earned for doing absolutely nothing (thanks ma’!) and walk out with Freddy and Jason and Michael Meyers and whatever the fuck those alien slug things were from Night of the Creeps.
Just before I entered film school Al asked me I had seen Clerks. “Clerks,” says I, “sounds like a stupid name for a horror movie but I’ll give it a go.” Based on Al’s suggestion, much trusted, I purchased it flat out, a blind buy as they say. I already had the plot mapped out in my head: The scene is a 7-11 located in the darkness on the edge of town. Suddenly the night lights up behind the store. The clerk goes out to investigate. There is nothing there. He returns to is humdrum job. This is when he notices all the bottles on the shelf have fallen, their contents spilled to the floor mingling with littered Doritos and M&Ms. He stares in horror as the junk food goop moves towards him, closer and closer until it finally engulfs him before he can scream. When the sludge clears the clerk stands, eyes red, grinning. He breaks the glass of the ice cream freezer, hold up a shared in his bloody hand and walks out into the night. Evil has a price and it will be paid to the…CLERKS!!!
Well, as you know, Clerks wasn’t a horror movie and whereas my plot has me blogging in stained underwear (what, I haven’t had time!), Smith’s launched him into what was indie-cool 90s. I admit, I was late to the ViewAskew party. This was 2000 and Smith already had three flicks under his belt. I, like many others before me and after me, watched Clerks with a single notion growing beneath the flesh, under the sinew and bone as the hilarious exploits of Dante and Randall played out on my tiny TV: “Fuck, I can do that!”
Inspired, I dived into my film school work and graduate with honours and, after languishing in Toronto film hell for a few years realized, “fuuuuck, maybe I can’t do that.” My great envisioned film career never got off the ground, like so many others, and I set off to find my way on other paths. Kev’s flicks stuck with me, though. I remember seeing Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in theatres. I went twice. Sorry I couldn’t push it over that opening weekend high gross, Kev. No free poster for me. Whenever I was feeling low I’d stick in Dogma or Mallrats and laugh away some of the bullshit we allow the cloud our minds every now and again. When my mother passed away two years ago I drowned my sorrows in Evenings with Kevin Smith even seeing the dude live in Vancouver where he coerced a man to get naked on stage. Discovering S.I.R. shortly after it launched took my appreciation for Smith to another level. I couldn’t believe he was essentially giving the chat and wit that made up those Evening With DVDs for free. Hell and Mewes, Jason “fucking” Mewes was along for the ride…EVERY DAY! I felt, now, the want to give something back and the original bus news site was born. I figured, shit, these people provide so much free entertainment daily the least I could do was copy and past some bus stories from the web into a blog. Soon, inspired again by Kevin and Co., I started work on my own podcast with my friend Mike which eventually became the Unused Mewes News show all the while heading some important advice: “go where the puck is going to be”.
When I returned from the West coast after my mother’s passing I settled in Ottawa, closer to family. I discovered Ottawa’s Mayfair theatre from an advertisement saying members get free flicks every last Saturday of the month. Checking the theatre out online I discovered that the place played old horror movies cult flicks and cinema classics! I dropped my $10 on a membership that first midnight Saturday Sinema and watched a film about a giant alligator eating up Chicago. People were screaming at the screen, tossing barbs at bad dialogue and applauding the film. I’d never seen an audience applaud a movie screen before (this happens quite a bit, actually at the Mayfair). I was hooked!
The Mayfair is the oldest theatre in Ottawa. When you walk inside it kind of resembles The Muppet Theatre. It was opened in 1932 by Fred Robertson, a general store owner (dare I say clerk?). The original Mayfair included a cigarette shop, restaurant and even a barber shop. Oldottawasouth.ca states: “The exterior walls were brick, plush carpeting covered the floors and terrazzo tiles graced the entrance lobby. The projection equipment was the latest available and its vacuum tubes and photoelectric cells were touted by the local press. Entering the building is like a flashback to 1932, because so little about the decor has changed.”
This is true. When you walk into the Mayfair you are walking into the past. As the curtain pulls away from the screen you wonder just how many film greats have washed over that canvass all perpetuated by the flickering later from the projector above you. Back in the 30s you could see Brigitte Helm and Joseph Schildkraut in The Blue Danube for only 15 cents. Double bills began early on and remain a staple of the theatre to this day. The theatre fell into a bit of ill repute in the 1970s and became a porn theatre but, hell, the oldest porn theatre in old Ottawa South still ain’t too shabby.
In the early 80s the theatre edged away from blue movies under new ownership. The theatre reintroduced the cheap double bills and made headlines in 1983 when police threatened to shut the place down for showing Videodrome as the flick was labeled too obscene. The theatre was renovated in 1986 to include wider seats and was again changed ownership in the early 90s.
In 2008 the community and film fans were shocked to hear the theatre would be closing its doors after so many years in operation. They rallied to protect the building the city would go on to declare it a heritage site ensuring no wrecking balls would be coming to tear it down any time soon. The theatre would also be saved by, once again, new owners. This time it came from people with a vested interest in cinema: local filmmakers. Lee Demabre, director of the Canadian cult classic Jesus Christ Vampire along with Ian Driscoll and film conservationist Paul Gordon and film scholar John Yemen had signed a 10 year lease on the Mayfair and that the theatre would not close and continue playing second run screenings, cult movies and classics. Double bills would, of course, continue and midnight screenings of the more wacky fare were introduced. Family matinees, screenings where dogs were allowed in the theatre and even old silent movies with live bands playing new scores all would make the Mayfair the number one voted theatre in the city one year after it re-opened. Of course, you gotta’ toss in monthly screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the new cult phenomenon The Room. The theatre would actually bring in B-movie icons like George Hardy (Troll 2) and Tommy Wiseau.
With all the great that is this place of course I’d want to be part of it in more ways then just an audience member. I started submitting poster art advertising the month’s flicks to their Facebook page and soon found myself helping out with the guides, looking up images monthly to forward on over to the designer. The theatre become my second home and I am there many nights each month. I’ve seen crazy sex crazed dolls, killer tiers, done the Time Warp in drag, had a friend groped by Tommy Wiseau, watched Woody Allen and Hitchcock and Chaplin, death by bear and shark and, mostly, some of the worst movies ever put on celluiode and I kept coming back. You can tell Demabre loves film. He often gives speeches before a screening promoting the preservation. Knowledgeable staff hand out prizes, members watch the Oscars for free on the big screen, the crowds continue to be amazing (especially when intoxicated) and the theatre opens its doors to kids to give them a tour of the projection booth and actually see a piece of film, a medium that may be dying out, folks.
And so, in a few hours, some loyalties will merge. The Mayfair and Kevin Smith and horror movies! Please excuse me while I clean out my already stained underwear!
