Closer to the Sun

Head Table Guests

John A. Campion, President, The Empire Club of Canada and Partner, Fasken Campbell Godfrey; Jack Darville, Partner, Entertainment, Media and Communications Group, Price Waterhouse; Anne Golden, President, The United Way of Greater Toronto; Philip Drabinsky, Father of guest speaker; Dr. Robert A. Salter, Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children; Marq de Villiers, Editorial Director, Where Magazines International; Rabbi Irvin Brandwein, Beth Sholom Synagogue; Peter Godsoe, Deputy Chairman, President and CEO, The Bank of Nova Scotia; Michael F. Garvey, FCA, Partner, Price Waterhouse and Honorary Treasurer, The Canadian Club of Toronto; Susan Mann, President, York University; Avie Bennett, President and CEO, McClelland & Stewart; Ronald J. Rolls, Q.C., Partner, Fasken Campbell Godfrey; Cohn Wilkinson, The Original Phantom of the Opera; Myron Gottlieb, President, Live Entertainment of Canada; William Thorsell, Editor-in-Chief, The Globe and Mail.

Introduction by Miles S. Nadal, President and CEO, MDC Corporation and Director, The Canadian Club of Toronto.

Thank you, Miles, for your kind introduction. Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, my personal literary odyssey began nearly six years ago at a black-tie reception. You can imagine how disconcerting it was when a leading Canadian publisher walked up to me and said, "Congratulations, Garth. The rights to your life story are being auctioned off tomorrow."

She certainly knew how to grab my attention. I was a pup of only 38. Since I had no inkling that an outline of an unauthorised biography was making the rounds, I was, to say the least, shocked and disturbed. It was 1988 and I was not yet involved in my attempt to buy back Cineplex Odeon Corporation, the company I had co-founded. I immediately announced plans to write my autobiography and this brought the unofficial biography to an abrupt end.

So today, I would like to read to you selections from my book that will provide some insight into my life and career in the motion picture industry and the world of commercial live theatre. In between these passages, I will provide the context that links the events to show you how, in some way, they are all related.

But, as I say in my preface to Closer to the Sun, why tell the story at all?

Why? Because my work is immersed in the magical worlds of theatre and music, and because my life has had its share of drama, comedy, passion, adventure, romance, conflict, resolution, and triumph. It is a story filled with fascinating characters: villains and heroes, traitors and loyalists, liars and cheats, adversaries and enemies, mentors, partners, and great, good friends.

Because I care about my country and want to continue to contribute to it, and because I want to show others that Canada can serve as a wellspring of creativity, if only more Canadians could escape their cultural insecurity.

Because I am certain there are others who will follow me who are equally capable, equally determined, care equally about excellence, and who may learn a lesson or two along the way.

Because I am the impresario of my own destiny, and want to share with others how much of a "rush" it has been.

Our overture begins:

Book (prologue)--I remember one day, in the torrid summer of 1953 when I was only three, running through the sprinklers my father had set up on the lawn, joyous in that innocent way children are joyous, shrieking in childish glee, and then ... sometime later, I remember ... falling down.

"And waking into a nightmare."

How powerful that first memory, though, how clearly imprinted. The water cold as diamonds, glittering in the summer sun, the heat of the afternoon, the green of the lawn, the smell of wet earth; I remember most of all the wonderful freedom to run and run and run.

"And then the virus came, and the doctors, and my life disappeared for a while into a fog of pain and misery. The glittering water from the sprinklers metamorphosed into the glitter of surgical instruments in the unforgiving light of the operating theatre. After that my crippled leg dragged behind me like a useless club, and I ran no more."

Well, I came back from that. I reached deep down and seized back my life, not only from the well-meaning surgeons who kept me in a hospital bed for so many summers during my first twelve years, but from the doubters and naysayers and sceptics and sneerers. I seized control of my life, and after that I refused to let go.

Book--I wakened into the air-conditioned nightmare. It was September 1953, and I opened my eyes to find myself in a cavernous room lined with small, neat, white beds. I could hardly move. There was no one there I knew, no one to say comforting words, no one to hold my hand or hug me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw there was someone in every bed, kids, some of them apparently whole but most just heads tacked onto giant metal cylinders, bodies, if there were any, wrapped in metal, imprisoned, entombed. It terrified me. "What had happened to take their bodies away?"

I lay there for days, for nights, forever it seemed. At least once a night one of the cylinders disappeared, the kid in it wheeled out, never to reappear. What was happening to them? I tried to ask the nurse, but she only shushed me and wouldn't say a word. She, too, looked frightened. Every now and then I heard someone say the word "polio."

Ironically, that summer the first anti-polio vaccine, the Salk, was being field-tested, and the virus for the vaccine was being grown in Toronto's Connaught Laboratories, no more than a few miles from our little Castlefield Avenue home. Too late, much too late for me. ... Within a week, my left leg was severely paralyzed, all the way from the hip to the arch of my foot. ... Walking has always been an effort. A mile is, for me, a marathon. My hip aches; pain is a presence that fills my being.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way!"

Bridge--During my childhood, I was operated on seven times. The operations took place during the summer so I would not miss school. I did not experience the carefree childhood vacations that most children do, which caused me enormous frustration.

Book--Then a sense of loss and sadness would overwhelm me, and I would feel suffocated by the unfairness of it. Sometimes all that emotion would break through and I'd strike out at whatever or whomever was near. Once, when I was six, and my brother Shelley was three, it welled up and overcame me. I got so mad at him that I took my hated brace off and threw it at him as hard as I could. It cut him so badly above the eye that he had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches, and he still bears the scar. I missed his eye by a fraction of an inch.

This incident still troubles me--"I could have blinded my own brother!"

I mentioned it to my parents recently at a Passover seder. My wife (Pearl) and our kids, (Alicia and Marc), were there too, listening intently.

"Do you remember," I asked," when I almost knocked out Shelley's eye when I threw my brace at him?"

"No," my father said, "I forget."

I was astonished. I couldn't believe it--this memory that had been seared into my brain for so long. I abhor violence, I have never been a physical person, have never lifted a finger to my kids or anyone else. ... So I asked, "How could you forget? You were hysterical when I did it."

My father's head sank lower and lower. Finally he said, "I guess I tried to blot it out of my mind, because it hurt me so much."

Bridge--I believe my childhood battles with polio galvanised my spirit and sense of determination. There's a saying that fire can either melt metal or strengthen metal, it depends upon out of what substance the metal is made. Since my sports ambitions were frustrated by polio, I became adept at board games and sports trivia. I also turned to strengthening my mind through such pursuits as learning the Torah.

Eventually, the theatre caught my attention. My attraction began in high school, at North Toronto Collegiate. Book--But it was in Grade 9, when I wandered into a Grade 13 drama group rehearsing Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, that I found myself. I knew right away I wanted to be part of this.

"And no, this is not just hindsight, the chairman of a major theatrical corporation talking. It was a moment of genuine epiphany. I loved it at once. To this day, it's the warmth that excites me. Making theatre is intimate and involving. The smell, the sights, the community of players, the egos, the magical pretence, the chameleon-like nature of theatre, the chance to lose oneself in character and story, everything."

Bridge After high school, I attended the University of Toronto and graduated with a law degree. My interest was entertainment law and I became involved in film production. My first experience with Broadway came with a musical by lyricist Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, the composer of the hit musical, Annie. It was titled A Broadway Musical.

Opening night was December 21, 1978. Following the show, we gathered at the famous Sardi's Restaurant to learn what the critics had to say.

Book--The news was bad. Two of the three late-night TV critics had blasted the show. Then, the (late Canadian director) John Hirsch came up to me and shook my hand as if he were offering condolences. He knew what I didn't know and what my partner, co-producer Norman (Kean), probably did, that in the high-pressure, competitive Broadway environment, there really are no last-minute miracles. A Broadway Musical had been deemed a dog way back when (the director) Gower (Champion), refused billing, and the critics were not prepared to change their minds.

Around midnight, Norman was back on the phone to find out about the Times review. I sat slumped in a chair at the end of a long open closet staring at him through the coat-hangers. I saw his face collapse. He just kept saying, "Yes" tensely into the phone. Then he hung up and said, "Bad."... It took us five minutes to agree sadly, reluctantly, but ineluctably, that we had to close the show immediately. Neither Norman nor I could raise any more money for it.

It was time to go back into the Belasco Room and face our investors. They'd left the theatre believing that we had a very significant hit on our hands. They all thought they'd seen a fabulous musical.

I couldn't keep my voice from breaking as I told them simply that we couldn't go on.

"We've heard nine reviews, and eight of them are unfavourable. There's not one review we can hang our hats on," ... "We have no alternative but to close the show"

It was Larry Heisey, our most generous backer, who had never wavered in his support, who supplied the evening's only light touch. He immediately called for quiet and he said, "I'm sorry for the other Canadian investors who are not here to enjoy this moment of agony. It seems a shame, first, that they'll never get another chance to see the show, and second, that they're not here to share in this glorious failure."

Then, his tone changed, and he looked over at me. How rare it was, he said, for Canadians to try something like this, to dare to try something large and grand, to risk failure in the service of an idea.

I didn't sleep the rest of the night and I flew back to Toronto in a state of shock. But as soon as the next day, I started to revive.

I reached deep down, again, to that place I had found when I was just a kid, that place where the wellspring of my personality is stored. I reached down and I grabbed it. I had a life still, after all, and my wits, and my experience.

Bridge--Then in 1979, one of my mentors, Nat Taylor, and I opened the first Cineplex theatre, an l8-screen multiplex movie house, in the basement of Toronto's Eaton Centre and began an aggressive expansion of our chain across Canada. I also continued producing films, including The Changeling, starring George C. Scott, Tribute, written by Canadian screenwriter and playwright Bernard Slade and starring Jack Lemmon, and The Amateur, which we shot in Eastern Europe, starring John Savage, Marthe Keller and Christopher Plummer. Some times you get so exhausted by all the activity that you do not think rationally. At least, that's my excuse for what followed.

Book--Within days of completing principal photography on The Amateur, a screenplay arrived in our office. It was from Carolco, the Mario Kassar-Andy Vajna partnership that had been our foreign-sales agent for The Silent Partner and The Changeling. By this time, Carolco had become a fully fledged production company and Kassar and Vajna first asked us to co-finance and then to produce, a film for them--"with their money!"--to be called First Blood. The Canadian director Ted Kotcheff was already lined up and Sylvester Stallone was the star.

(My producing partner) Joel (Michaels) and I dutifully read the script, and when we were done, we stared at each other. It was another exploitation theme: this time a war veteran runs amok after he tries to track a Vietnam buddy, only to find the man has died.

"All I see is trouble," I said.

So soon after coming close to freezing to death in Eastern Europe, I just couldn't face risking life and limb on a twelve-week shoot in the wilds of British Columbia. Not to mention the problem of having to deal with the artistic demands of a Hollywood powerhouse like Sly Stallone. Not for that kind of a film.

Carolco offered us a $400,000 producer's fee and generous net-profit points in the movie. Net-profit points are usually called turkey-points in the trade, because only very rarely does a film ever make any net profit after the studio and the stars get what is coming to them out of gross film rentals, but in this case we would have done unbelievably well, because Carolco was also offering us the right to produce any sequels.

But we were weary of exploitation, weary of empty stories, weary in body and mind.

So we passed it up.

Didn't pass up much, did we? Only the chance to produce one of the most phenomenally successful series in the history of motion pictures--Rambo I, It, III and IV.

Total worldwide rental gross for the series topped $1 billion U.S.

"Turning point! Clear turning point, ninety-degree bend in the road of life. ... If 'First Blood' was what the masses were thirsting for, then clearly Joel and I were out of touch."

"I would have made my fortune if I had done 'First Blood.' And in spite of my emotional bond to Canada, I would have had to move to L.A. I would be living in Bel Air today as an independent producer. I would never have been involved any further in the Cineplex saga. I would have missed all that. I would have missed a chance to build a great company. On the other hand, I would also have missed the treachery of my financial partners in Cineplex and the heartbreak of Black Friday (November 27, 1989, when I was forced to resign from Cineplex Odeon Corporation). And I would also have missed what I am doing now."

Bridge--As Cineplex grew, we began opening theatres in more cities, including the Beverley Center Cineplex in Los Angeles. However, the future prospects for success for Cineplex's Canadian operations were threatened by our limited access to Hollywood films. The two major film exhibitors in Canada--Famous Players and Canadian Odeon--controlled these films. Cineplex's financial problems grew and, in the autumn of 1982, the bank threatened to call our loan.

Book--By now, I was calling Don Partridge (the point man at the Combines Investigation office) and (his director) Lawson Hunter, at their homes every night.

"You have to get this action started, you've got to give me some room to breathe, because otherwise we'll be finished in a matter of days. I'm not bluffing. The bank wants this company in receivership right now, and if this happens, then Famous Players and Canadian Odeon will have achieved their objective of killing Cineplex."

On December 16, the TD Bank asked that certain of the company's bridge-financing loans guaranteed by the principal shareholders (that is to say, me, Myron and Nat) be repaid as a first step toward putting Cineplex into formal receivership. This was no time to vamp. My distress calls to Ottawa grew more frequent. Five days later, Don Partridge, bless him, took the final draft of the papers required for the Section 31.2 application to his department's Christmas party where Lawson Hunter signed them. Indeed, 'tis (or 'twas) the season to be jolly.

The official announcement was made on December 22, and the next day it was banner news in The Toronto Star. "Combines action launched on behalf of Cineplex against the major distributors."

The TD Bank was stymied, at least briefly. It was now in an embarrassing position. Should it be seen as putting a Canadian company out of business on the eve of a great battle with the big, bad Americans?

As for me, I was alive.

Bridge--The Combines Action was successful and we entered a new phase of Cineplex's growth.

After acquiring Canadian Odeon, my company, now called Cineplex Odeon, began expanding throughout the United States.

The rivalry with Famous Players in Canada intensified and climaxed in May 1986 when I secured control of Famous Players' flagship theatre in downtown Toronto, the Imperial Six, which is today the site of the restored Pantages Theatre. Famous Players, you see, was in a dispute over the renewal of its long-term lease with an elderly lady who owned half the land on which the theatre stood. I realised that if Cineplex Odeon gained access to the land, we could close the theatre down and Cineplex Odeon Eaton Centre around the corner could pick up as much as $2 million a year in business. I flew to Traverse City, Michigan and, nearby, in a beautiful log cabin fishing lodge on the shores of Lake Michigan, I signed the lease with Mrs. Rakas.

Book--The coup was like a comic opera. At 6 a.m. sharp on Thursday morning, law students from Faskens served notices on George Destounis, the President of Famous Players, and on Larry Pilon, its general counsel, that Cineplex Odeon was taking possession of what was now its half of the Imperial Six.

At the same time, Myron (Gottlieb) and Mark (Hayes, my lawyer) were driving up to the Victoria Street entrance of the Imperial Six at the head of a procession of about twenty cars and trucks carrying security guards, locksmiths, surveyors, carpenters, and plasterers, all equipped with the tools of their trade, plus two-by-fours, plywood and chainlink fencing--a virtual army that filled almost two city blocks. Just before the final assault, Myron, who was enjoying himself immensely, had called together the assembled masses. None of them knew what they were there for, only that had been ordered to meet at an appointed spot just before 6 a.m. Myron unrolled the treasure map, pointed to the northern rectangle of the Imperial Six building, and said, "As of today, this belongs to us." The entire crowd of more than a hundred people, many of whom had been involved with Cineplex in the dark days when Famous Players had tried to crush us, burst into uproarious laughter.

It took our team only twenty minutes to board up the Victoria Street entrance, fence off the link to Yonge Street, put on new locks, and construct a wall of wooden studs and plaster board between Famous Players' portion of the theatre and ours. Cineplex Odeon executives manned newly installed telephones. Notices were posted in the windows saying, "Attention Former Tenant: If you wish to retrieve your chattels, etc...." At about half past six, a panicked and dishevelled Famous Players' theatre manager arrived, took one look at the barricades and the notice, and spent the next hour in the public telephone booth across the street.

Bridge--With Cineplex Odeon's success, I began to appreciate the muscle I was now wielding. Tonight's Academy Award ceremonies bring back memories of the role I played in the success of Oliver Stone's Platoon when, in 1986, it received the Oscar for Best Motion Picture.

Book--When I first ran a print in my screening room, alone at two o'clock in the morning, I had been stunned by the movie's compelling images of men at war and by the melancholy soundtrack, based on Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings that had been used as a dirge at Franklin Roosevelt's funeral. As soon as I could the next morning, I called Arnold Kopelson, the film's producer and my longtime friend (he had sold foreign-territorial rights for my film The Disappearance), and gave him my snap assessment that Platoon would win Best Picture and a host of other Academy Awards. The film was already booked into my Canadian theatres, because Orion, its distributor, automatically placed its films with Cineplex Odeon in Canada. I offered Orion every one of our U.S. flagship theatres, our large single-screen houses like the North Point in San Francisco, the McClurg Court in Chicago, and the Century City in L.A.

But Orion was unsure of the film's potential, and so had set a limited-platform release, calling for the film to open in just a few select cinemas at Christmas, increasing the run in January if warranted. I knew this was a mistake even before the movie opened in December to virtually unanimous raves. Orion's folly was confirmed the day the movie opened at Cineplex Odeon Canada Square in Toronto, where the first day's gross was $11,000.

That night, while most exhibitors were on their way to Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean, I was on the phone to Oliver Stone and Arnold Kopelson, yelling at them, hectoring them, badgering them, demanding that they increase the runs over the Christmas season. The next morning I took part in a conference call with Orion.

Orion resisted. They couldn't place ads in time, they said.

"I'll open the film wherever and whenever you want, so long as it's now," I said. "Give me the prints! I'll open even without saturated advertising from you--the public wants this movie and you must give it to them!"

My persistence paid off. Platoon went wide over Christmas, was heralded on the cover of Time, and became the season's runaway hit.

In March came the Academy Awards.

Arnold asked me the day before the ceremony, "What can I do to say thank you?"

"You can say thank you," I said, "on national TV, when you pick up the Best Picture Award." And that's what he did--in front of a billion or so TV viewers.

Bridge Another wonderful memory was my meeting with Robert Redford. I was impressed by his creativity and how forthright he was.

Book--In April 1987, I got a call from Michael Ovitz, the President of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the superagent who was the Lew Wasserman of the eighties, a smooth-talking, button-down guy who had become the supreme dealmaker in Hollywood, with far and away the most prestigious list of clients. ... Ovitz told me that one of his clients, Robert Redford, wanted to meet me. Redford had been impressed, Ovitz said, with my ideas about financing low-budget films, and he wanted to talk. "Can you call him?" Ovitz asked, "He's at his home in Sundance (in Utah)."

I called Redford that night, and he asked me to fly out and spend the day with him.

I arrived on a perfect spring morning and met him at the Treehouse Cafe, which was part of the Sundance Ski Resort.

"Hi, I'm Bob," said a familiar tousle-headed figure, taking off his sunglasses.

In his blue jeans and cowboy boots, Bob still looked boyish at fifty. He whirled me off in his Jeep on a tour of the property, talking all the while about movies, about what he wanted to accomplish, about people and politics and the environment--a non-stop stream of consciousness. I found myself in complete sympathy with his values...

"...What a relief from the body-obsessed airheads! What a relief from the cynical titans of Hollywood!"

We wound up the day at Bob's stunning French-style chateau, which he had built in the middle of a picturesque 1,000-acre Utah field. As we drove up, the setting sun lit up the mountain tops, and I could see hundreds of deer gliding about in the dappled meadow-land in front of the house.

"There were worse ways to live."

... by the time I got back to Toronto, I thought of him as a friend. A few days later Michael Ovitz called back to confirm that Redford had felt pretty much the same.

As a result, in October 1987, Bob Redford and I announced a joint venture: North Fork (Productions--Redford's new independent production company) would make a minimum of five movies over five years, all with budgets of less than $6 million U.S. and COF would distribute them worldwide. In direct contrast to the usual Hollywood fare, Redford was committed to making films about the cultures and minorities of North America. The first proposed film was A River Runs Through It, about a Scottish Presbyterian family that settled in Montana at the turn of the century, and Redford himself planned to direct it.

Bridge--Although the years of Cineplex Odeon's rapid growth was a heady time, there was a price to be paid. During this time, tensions between me and our majority shareholder, MCA, were increasing. Here is an example of the frustration I experienced, dealing with the "cynical titans" of Hollywood.

Book--Around this time, Norman Jewison and I had become close. Among other things, I was co-chairman of the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies, which he founded. In his office one day, he had told me he was having trouble convincing Columbia and its chairman, my good friend David Puttnam, to greenlight his next project.

"I want to make Moonstruck," he said. "It'll only cost $10 million U.S., it has Cher, and a screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, but I can't seem to get a decision."

"I was taken aback. Only $10 million U.S., with a star like Cher and a screenplay by one of Hollywood's comers? I knew the writer's merit because COF had financed his Five Corners. It was hard to believe.

At around that time (MCA President) Sid Sheinberg had fired Frank Price as head of Paramount and had installed Tom Pollock in his stead. I saw an opening.

"Hold on Norman," I said, "let me read the script and I'll get it to Sheinberg and Pollock. I'm sure they'll make your movie."

"You've got a week," Norman said.

I read the script overnight and then called Sid.

"I can't make a deal now," he said. "My son's getting married, I've got too much on, I can't do it right now." "Sid," I said, "just say yes. Don't think, just do it. You can't lose."

But he wouldn't budge. I called Pollock.

"I can't deal with it now," Pollock said. "I'll be on vacation in Hawaii. No, I can't do it."

In the end, Moonstruck cost $11 million U.S. for U.A./MGM to make--and grossed $200 million U.S. worldwide!

Bridge--About this time, I began to pursue the Canadian rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber's live musical, The Phantom of the Opera. Following up a trip to London to finalise the deal in May of 1988, I headed on to Israel where I was to release a group of Toronto Jews from the entertainment industry, keeping a promise to the United Jewish Appeal. It was my first visit to Israel.

Book--I arrived in Jerusalem at four o'clock in the morning. Back in London drafting was still going on, but for a while my worry and concern were banished in an overwhelming wash of five thousand years of Jewish history. As we drove through the Jerusalem night, with the cool, dry air fresh on my face and the sweet fragrance of flowers, lush, verdant gardens and palm trees in the air, a tear trickled down my cheek. It happens to every Jew, I am told, arriving in Israel for the first time.

My guide, Victor Yagoda, asked me, "Where do you want to go?"

I paused, watching the famous honey-coloured Jerusalem limestone as the car passed the venerable buildings of Old Jerusalem, imprinted with thousands of years of grief and triumph. I shivered, sensing the press of the centuries, the millennia.

"The Wall," I answered.

We travelled through the meandering streets of Jerusalem, past mosques and churches, to the old city and finally to the Wailing Wall, bathed at that dawn hour in a golden light. I was mesmerized, and deeply touched, to see Jews there at that hour of the morning, "davening" in dozens of dialects, in front of that centuries-old symbol of Judaism. All through the next week, I felt pulled between the extremes of one of the deepest emotional experiences of my life and the negotiations for a show I wanted dearly.

Bridge--The next few years were a tumultuous time of extremes, exacerbated by the hostilities arising from Myron Gottlieb and my attempt to buy voting control of Cineplex Odeon. We tried to accomplish this by purchasing 7.06 million shares from the Bronfman group for the tidy sum of $123.6 million. Although MCA owned 49 per cent of Cineplex Odeon's shares, under Investment

Canada rules it was allowed to vote only a third of them. Charles Bronfman and others, through his company Claridge, owned 30 per cent of the non-MCA shares which, combined with my 3.5 per cent and the 3.5 per cent owned by Myron, would have given us "de facto" control of the company.

Book--On Friday night, April 7, Myron called Skip Paul, (MCAs head of a new investment division), in L.A. and left a message on his answering machine.

I don't think I slept much that night.

The next morning I read in The Financial Post that there was speculation I was buying the Bronfman shares. Soon afterwards, Skip was on the phone to Myron. Myron patched Skip into my car and then said, "Skip, we've negotiated a deal to buy the Bronfman stock."

For the first time ever, Skip was speechless. If I hadn't been so nervous, I would have laughed.

Then he said, "Well, I figured you might try to do this over the next month. I told Sid (Sheinberg, President of MCA) this. I wanted us to sit down and discuss it."

More chat, then Skip asked, "Why didn't you tell us?"

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by John A. Campion, President, The Empire Club of Canada and Partner, Fasken Campbell Godfrey.

Hermaphrodite Plays Alone

Creating the self is an art form. Autobiography goes beyond art. The writer not only creates himself in writing, but also in the illusion that we call real life. Autobiography is not only an artistic experience for the author and the object of the creation, namely himself, but also it was truly a quasi-religious experience for both the creator and the created. How can the rest of the world judge this essentially hermaphroditic experience?

Everyone is a potential subject in autobiography--no act or feeling is too intimate or trivial to be a pathway through the wilderness within. The exploration of that internal wilderness has been explored in modern man in the highest form by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions, by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, and Goethe's autobiographical writings using Dr. Faustus.

In 1776, Rousseau wrote the opening sentences of his Confessions:

"I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent and which once completed will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature and the man I shall portray will be myself."

Franklin's biography is the most widely read work of an American after The Declaration of Independence. His is both a chronicle and a credo. It is a success saga; a scenario of a self-made man.

It took Goethe's Dr. Faustus to render the heroic and anti-heroic archetype for the modern era. Faustian has come to mean an infinitely aspiring and always dissatisfied soul.

In paying tribute to Garth Drabinsky and his autobiography, it is not his confessions or his success saga or his infinite aspirations and equally powerful dissatisfactions that fully capture our imaginations. Something else causes us to celebrate his success.

It goes deeper, to the joy and magic that he made possible through Phantom, Joseph, Kiss, Showboat and his other spectacular performances. Western religious tradition, based on Moses' conception of God as a single, all-powerful creator, has been turned on its head, beginning with Beethoven when he first raised the idea that the artist creator was the mystical intermediary between God and man.

Garth Drabinsky, in making possible for the children and adults of Toronto, the songs and mystery of the theatre of such dazzling attractions, has successfully inherited this notion of the artist as intermediary between dust and glory. His role as the artist's handmaiden has opened a pathway to that mystical other world.

It is for all the pleasure in our hearts that his creations bring that we celebrate his great contribution. On your behalf, I express our appreciation to Garth Drabinsky, President and Chief Executive Officer, Live Entertainment of Canada Inc. for being with us today.