I have finally started to pack!

Posted on October 4, 2009 | 1 comment

Post #7

Estimated Days to Departure from Saskatoon: 22

Days to Departure from Western Canada: 41

I just returned from a very busy one-week visit to see relatives and friends in Alberta. One of the things I did before I left was to get a quote on the cost of having a moving-and-storage company collect my belongings, store them, and then bring them to me in Toronto when I find an apartment to live in. The cost was going be prohibitive: probably more than the actual belongings are worth. So as I was driving along highways in Alberta and Saskatchewan last week, I was thinking about Move09-Oct4alternatives—and talking about alternatives with my clever younger son, who was with me on the road for part of the trip. He can analyze problems and come up with solutions like nobody’s business. And now I have a modified plan.

I am going to get rid of everything I don’t need. I bought the furniture I have here because I didn’t have any furniture at the time, and I never was too happy with it, so I’m going to sell it. The only stuff I am going to keep is what pertains to me and my memories—my books (and bookshelves, of course. Bookshelves are always expensive and hard to find), my paintings and other art, some dishes, as well as stuff like pots and pans that people always need.  There are also boxes and boxes of manuscripts here, and other papers that I want to keep forever. I’ll take my television. My computers. The clothes I really like. The rest of my belongings will be sold or go to the Salvation Army. (The plants and a few other things like spices and house-cleaning products I am going to offer to local friends. They/you are welcome to say “No thanks!”)

I am delighted with this decision as it means I can sort and whittle down, something I love to do. (Time permitting, of course. It’s not like I have time to sort all my papers again or anything. I did that once about 10 years ago, and am planning to do it again in my 14th decade.)

While I am sorting, I am going to put everything I will need for my three weeks in Alberta and/or will need in the first few months in Toronto into one room, and the rest into the other rooms. And I am going to get a quote on moving whatever I don’t need immediately into a storage unit here. (I rented the unit itself yesterday.)

When I get to Toronto and find an apartment, I will replace the items I have just sold. I will get a new couch, chair, table, bed. (As many of you are aware, I know how to get what I want at auctions. :)) With the option to replace the basics when I get to Toronto, I will be able to function there (earn a living, write fiction, etc.) until I have time to think about getting a moving van that can bring the things I will have here in Saskatoon, plus the belongings I already have in storage in Edmonton (mostly my aunt’s things that I put there when she moved into continuing care). At that point, I may even look on-line for someone who is moving from Edmonton to Toronto and wants to share the cost of a mover. Even including everything in Edmonton and Saskatoon, I don’t have a lot of stuff.

At least this gives me options, and doesn’t require so much cash up front.

Somewhere I once read that the key to success in attaining a goal is being able to adjust your course of action when the original plan clearly isn’t going to work. My goal is to get to Toronto. My plan to hire a mover to get me there in one smooth transfer didn’t work. But now I have another plan for attaining my goal, one that gives me the advantage of an excuse to buy “new” (used) furnishings—things that I prefer over what I have now. So I am ahead of the game, and I am back in business.  And I am excited about and focused on the move.

(Anybody want to buy a couch—practically new?)

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The search for a mover who is not a shaker

Posted on September 20, 2009 | 2 comments

Post #6

Tomorrow I have an interview with a mover who is going to give me an estimate. My move is going to be complicated, and the cost is a concern to me, so it’ll be good to begin to get a sense of what I am facing.

The complications start with the fact that I need to put most of my belongings into storage for a couple of months or more until I get settled in Toronto, and then I need to have the belongings moved to my new place without my having to come back to Saskatoon to supervise. This means, ideally, that I will have a mover who also offers storage facilities, rather than having to find  a separate storage unit. (To add even more complications to the mix,  I still have a storage unit half full of stuff in Edmonton, but I’m not sure I can bear to think about that at the moment… even though the frame for my bed is one of the things that is in Edmonton. I’ve been living without a bed frame and without a dresser for four years now – I guess I can survive for a bit longer.)

I have moved often enough to know that you can get really, really bad movers and really, really expensive movers, and that bad movers can be expensive. (I have had some really bad and some really expensive moves.) The best option, if there is any way to manage it, is to use a mover you’ve used before, and liked. (The next-best option is to ask your friends who they used and to find a reliable mover that way. The worst option is to try to find the least expensive and most reliable mover yourself by starting from scratch with the phone book or on-line listings. I have almost always had a problem when I’ve had to start from scratch. I suppose one could try to find kudos or complaints on the Internet to expand one’s knowledge about individual movers, but it would still be a crapshoot, and a lot of work.)

I am fortunate in regard to the aforementioned options at the moment. I’ve used two movers in Saskatchewan and I did not like the first one at all (they were expensive and made me feel like I’d been ripped off) but the second one was great (and I got the name from a friend, by the way)—they were careful, quick and reasonable (quick is important when you are paying by the hour, and careful is important when you don’t want anything broken–because movers rarely pay for anything they break).

Therefore, tomorrow I am talking to the mover I used last time, and liked. This company has storage facilities and although it is a small Saskatoon-based company, it will be able to move me across the country—and even collect the things from the storage unit in Edmonton if I do decide to do it all at the same time. In addition, the manager wants to come to see what we are talking about in terms of square footage of belongings before he gives me a quote, and I find that reassuring.

My plan is to get a complete quote from this company for everything I might need, broken down on paper into modules (i.e., cost to move stuff to storage, cost for storage for two/three months, cost of moving from storage in Saskatoon to Toronto, additional cost to pick stuff up from storage unit in Edmonton and add it to what I am packing up here before coming to Toronto).  And then I will phone a few other moving companies and storage companies and get cost comparisons. If the company I like is in the ballpark, they will get the job.

I do have one card to play that will reduce my costs, I hope: I am flexible. I intend to move out of this apartment on a day that is mid-week and several days before the end of the month. I also hope to be flexible at the other end. I’d like to be able to wait until the moving company has another move to Toronto (or even try to make an arrangement with someone else who is moving to Toronto, even from Vancouver or Edmonton via Saskatoon. I’ll check Craigslist etc.) and combine my move with theirs. So even though I know this is going to be expensive one way or the other, I hope to make it as inexpensive as possible… if you get my drift.

A thought about giving notice – I have told the landlord I am moving at the end of October. I will provide them with official notice on September 30, but they asked me if I would give them as much notice as possible. In the past doing this has never served me well, and I have a feeling it’s not going to serve me well this time, either. I’d advise anyone else not to do what I always seem to do. Just give notice on the day you’re supposed to give it. As soon as you are moving, you are no longer a cherished tenant. You immediately become an impediment to all kinds of things the landlord wants to get done before the next tenant moves in. I am an idiot not to have learned this from my own experience.

The move is becoming more real, and I am beginning to wonder if I will get everything done in time. This is a normal part of the moving process, but it is still making me crazy and I have noticed in the past few days that my temper is even shorter than usual. I will draw a few deep breaths, cross at least one inessential off my to-do list, and try to fit a run in tomorrow somehow. All those things will help.

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A break in a lifetime of box-collection blues

Posted on September 13, 2009 | 2 comments

Post #5

I had a great experience yesterday. After procrastinating for hours and hours on Friday, for reasons I shall explain below, at about 10 a.m. on Saturday morning I screwed up my courage and went into the Saskatchewan Liquor Store at 8th St. near Circle Drive and asked one of the cashiers if she had any boxes I could use for my upcoming move. Liquor-store boxes are definitely the best kind of boxes for moving books, of which I have too many, and often for dishes and other things as well: a box that is sturdy enough to hold 8 to 12 bottles of wine or alcohol and small enough that you can still lift it when it is full is a perfect size for many things.

The cashier asked me how many boxes I wanted. I was hoping I might get at least five, and maybe six, but I told her I’d love to have as many as I could get in my car, or as many as they could spare. She told me to drive around to the back of the store and they would see what they could do.

When I arrived at the shipping door out back, a man was waiting there for me with about four good solid boxes. He asked if I was moving, and I said I was. He said, “I’ll give you the bigger ones then.” He proceeded to choose excellent packing boxes for me, and I kept putting them into the vehicle I’d rented until it was full. When I drove away, I was one happy camper.

This whole experience was a huge contrast to my box-collection efforts during previous moves. In Edmonton, there often seemed to be a regulation about how many boxes one person could take from a liquor store—do not ask me why. I generally was permitted about five, and had to go to another liquor store to get five more, and another for five more, etc.

In addition to setting limits, liquor-store employees seemed to greet requests for boxes with expressions of condescension if not actual rudeness. Again I cannot explain this. Perhaps the cashiers felt that a more dignified person would get her boxes from a more dignified place than a liquor store: perhaps, for example, a truly civilized person would buy boxes at a box store. (Are there box stores? I have no idea. But if there are, I’m sure they charge good money for the boxes, which seems ridiculous. Boxes are essentially wrappers for other products. They ought to be recycled.) Perhaps the liquor-store employees felt that moving itself was an undignified activity. Or perhaps they felt inconvenienced by the request – although I’m not sure why they would, as it is customary for the box-collector to be the one who does all the carrying in these situations. (I never had this problem when I wanted FULL boxes of liquor, by the way, only empty ones.)

After experiencing this negative reception several times, I reached a point where I found it difficult to walk into a liquor store and ask for boxes: I knew that the response would be preceded by a deep sigh and delivered in a tone that might be appropriate if the employee had needed to tell me exactly the same thing every single day for weeks: “We only have boxes on Wednesdays. They are left out back of the store in the lane,” or “The empty boxes are over there.  You are welcome to have four.”

In Alberta, rather than face indignity, I sometimes tried going to grocery stores instead. But grocery-store boxes are often flimsy and many have holes in them to allow the fruits and vegetables that originally came in them to breathe. Banana boxes just don’t make it when you are trying to pack a house. I could think of no other kinds of stores that would have boxes in the numbers and dimensions that I needed. (I have recently discovered that some moving companies will provide boxes that are sturdy and a good size, but they generally charge for them and/or require you to return them. As many of my boxes are going to be in storage for a while and then end up in Toronto, returning them–at least this time– is not an option.) So, tail between my legs, I’d go back to begging from liquor stores.

During one horrifically complex move in Alberta, I decided that what I needed to do was to save all the boxes from one move so I would have them for the next move. You need a whole lot of extra space to be able to pull this off, but I was determined. I folded all the boxes flat after I’d unpacked them, and I put them all away. Several months later I had another good idea—which was to lend my boxes to other people who were moving. Unfortunately, the first person to whom I lent my cache threw them into her back yard as she emptied them, where they were all turned to mush by an out-of-season snow storm.

So for one reason and another, mainly involving not having enough space to store boxes where I am now, I’m back again to collecting from scratch. And so far this time it is going unexpectedly well. But if it seemed to the kind folks at the 8th St. liquor store in Saskatoon that I was a bit over the top in my gratitude yesterday… well, I did have my reasons.

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In which my mind wanders to security deposits and the securing of boxes

Posted on September 9, 2009 | 3 comments

Post #4

Yesterday I worried about my security deposit. (For those of you who haven’t rented since the 1970s and are not landlords yourselves, this used to be called the “damage deposit.”)

I’ve caused no wear and tear to my current apartment that could be described as anything but “normal,” and I’ve always got my security deposits back in full from places I’ve rented in the past (although I’ve also always worried about whether I would or not). But in this case, something happened between the time I signed the first lease and when I signed the second: the ownership of the building changed, and the new owners decided that they didn’t want people putting nails in walls to hang their pictures on, and they didn’t want people putting adhesive things on the walls to hang their pictures from. This seems to be a trend of some sort, as a correspondent from Toronto who is a renter mentioned the other day that they aren’t allowed to hang pictures on their walls.

This floors me. (Walls me?) I have no idea how you can possibly consider any dwelling a home if you can’t hang pictures. Those hanging on my walls now include some that have been in the rooms where I’ve lived since childhood, others that were gifts, a few that I purchased myself. All are as vested with memories as are any of the books on my shelves. I can’t imagine what I’ll do if the place in Toronto has a similar restriction — but the penalty for contravention is hefty. It involves paying to repaint the entire apartment at a cost that is is even greater than the amount of the damage deposit–which is almost a full month’s rent.

Before I signed the second lease, I pointed out that since i had moved in under the previous lease and therefore had already put lots of holes in the walls so I could hang my pictures, I could not comply with the new clause in the new lease. I crossed it out. I initialled it. Yesterday I noticed that despite a verbal agreement to do so, the landlord’s agent did not initial that clause before mailing me my copy. Hence the worry. Since I’m already at odds with the landlord’s agent because my air conditioner hasn’t worked all summer, and am requesting a discount on my October rent as a result, I am a bit tentative about raising another issue before the first one has been decided. But I guess I’ll need to follow up on that.

On a more constructive note, yesterday I booked a rental car for one day this weekend so I can start accumulating boxes and do a few other errands in preparation for The Pack.

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A place to stay — and a place to run

Posted on September 7, 2009 | 4 comments

Post #3

Last week, I sent friends and relatives on my email contact list an announcement of my impending move, and a link to this new blog. That list includes several people I’ve known since childhood. A family friend I haven’t seen in at least 40 years responded almost immediately to invite me to stay in her basement bed- and bath-room suite in North Toronto while I am looking for a place to rent. I have now accepted her kind offer with deep gratitude. (Thank you again, Pat!)

I had intended that this week I would start to look for a furnished suite that I could rent for a few weeks while I was looking for a permanent address. I’d had a look at Craigslist and a few other on-line sites that advertise furnished suites that are available on a weekly or monthly basis. I was going to follow up on those more seriously, and put a notice onto a few of my on-line forums to see if anyone wanted to sublet for a month or so. However, to have now had that part of my to-do list eliminated before I even really started on it is simply wonderful, and the fact that Pat is centrally located and close to public transit is icing on the cake.

One of the first things I did after I accepted Pat’s invitation was to figure out how far she was from the Toronto Running Room stores and/or the Y. I was delighted to discover that there is a Running Room less than a kilometre from her house. The Running Room stores all have “run clubs” that go out on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, with different groups doing different paces. Everyone at every stage and speed is welcome. (Increasingly these stores now offer walking clubs as well for those who are not into running.) These and similar outlets are great resources for finding safe running trails in unfamiliar cities.

I am not an athlete. I’ve never been one—I skated in winter and swam in summer as a kid, but that was about it. Just after my second son was born I took an aerobics class, and ever since then I’ve been a recreational-level fitness fanatic (although admittedly an inconsistent and often inactive one. Sometimes my weekly exercise consists only of admiring people on television who are cycling or running). Running (or, more precisely, “jogging” in my case) is my favourite activity. Even my slow pace is enough to get the endorphins firing after twenty minutes or half an hour and the fresh air and small calorie burns are bonuses. Even at nearly 60, running is still a pretty good activity for me—especially when I do it.

One of the biggest drawbacks to living on the frozen prairie is that there always comes a point in the winter when running outside is not possible for an extended period—it is too cold and/or the roads and sidewalks are too slick. Getting downtown to the Y to find an alternate activity also seems to require too much courage in such weather. So inevitably, I stop. Getting started again when spring comes and the sidewalks are finally less treacherous is always hard. I worry that some year I will not start again at all, and so I had this thought: if I move to a place where I don’t have to stop running for more than a few days in a row, and if I keep on running all year round, then I’ll never have to start running again. This reasoning makes perfect sense to me: especially when I’m high on endorphins.

I finally have got myself back to the point where I’m running four days a week. I know that one key to my successful transition to Toronto is going to be to ensure that I continue to work out consistently. If I let that go during the move, it will be hard to get started again – there will always be something else I need to do more. In addition to boosting my spirits and my self-confidence, of course, exercise also builds my energy and strength. I’m going to need lots of those resources if I’m going to get all the packing done and do everything else I need to do in the next few weeks and months. I can’t afford to let the workouts slide.

So the Google map of Toronto with its little red balloons that showed the proximity of Pat’s house to a Running Room was a very welcome sight.

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The geographics

Posted on September 5, 2009 | 1 comment

Post #2

In the past couple of years, thanks to my involvement with on-line writers’ forums including the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition and Authonomy, I have been fortunate to acquire writing buddies all over the world. While most of them know pretty much where Canada is, their knowledge of specific cities and provinces can be kind of fuzzy. So I made a map with Saskatoon and Toronto on it. I also added Edmonton to it so you could see where I will be flying from on November 15. (Edmonton is where I lived for many many years and where my elderly aunt, who I visit regularly, is in continuing care.) I also put Vancouver on the map, because that’s where the winter Olympics will be next February! (Okay. Idiomatically speaking, it was not I who “put Vancouver on the map.” It did that for itself.)

If you click on the image, you will go to the original where you can zoom in and stuff.

If you click on the image, you will go to the original where you can zoom in and stuff.

FYI: It is 2700 km or 1684 miles from Edmonton to Toronto. From Saskatoon to Toronto, it is 2227 km, or 1384 miles.

The response to this blog has already been so positive and supportive — I have such great friends! Thank you! In addition to a great deal of cheering and moral support, one person in Toronto went to all the trouble to go downstairs and talk to a neighbour about whether her apartment might be available to me while she is snowbirding this winter (thanks, Gordon!) and another has offered me a “granny suite” to stay in while I am looking for a place to live (thank you Pat!).  So I am grateful and overwhelmed.

What else I have done toward getting moved so far? I have stopped replacing things like Mrs. Dash when I run out of them because I don’t want to have to pack and store any more than I need to. I am not freezing too much fruit this year, or buying any more cans than I can use up in the immediate future.

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Why Toronto? Why now? Why not?

Posted on August 29, 2009 | 13 comments

The Back Story

As my fifties draw to a close, I find myself with the opportunity to choose where I want to live. My two (fantastic, interesting) adult sons are well established with careers, families and communities of their own – one on the east coast of the USA, the other in western Canada. I can’t live near both of them, and if I lived close to one and not the other, charges of favouritism might occur. (“How come she has to live in the same city as me? How come you get all the breaks?”)

I am currently living in Saskatoon, which is a city with a truly lovely river valley, a beautiful university campus and lots of fascinating people. But it’s a small city and very home- and family-focussed. There’s just not enough for me to do here: especially in winter when, since I do not own a car, I am mainly trapped indoors by icy sidewalks that whip my feet out from under me on a regular basis, and blisteringly cold winds that turn minus 20 (tolerable and even pleasant) into minus 40 or worse (intolerable).

Due to a recent escalation in the cost of rental units in Saskatchewan, I cannot afford to live in Saskatoon any more than I can afford to live anywhere else. I live mostly hand-to-mouth because since I was about 30, I have stupidly put fiction-writing ahead of earning income on my priority list. But I do have a non-fiction book coming out this fall that will allow me to offer workshops and do consulting work almost anywhere in North America, the U.K., or even Australia and New Zealand. Maybe even Mexico and India, if I’m lucky.

Where to go?

So, I asked myself, if I am free to scrabble (and scribble) for a living in the city of my choice, where do I want to be? The only thing I knew for sure was that for now at least I wanted to be in Canada.

Prior to coming to Saskatchewan in the early 2000s, I spent about four decades in Edmonton, Alberta. I have many wonderful long-time friends there who open their arms (and homes) to me whenever I go back to visit. They do not suffer from their geographical location quite as badly as I make it sound—the long sunny days of summer in Edmonton and across the prairies, not to mention what can be a beautiful, extended blue-gold autumn, make it almost worth living through the cold, dark months between. Edmonton in particular is increasingly well equipped to be a winter city, with heated walkways, indoor parking, lots of theatre and music and an outstanding transit system. But in spite of all of that, for many of the same reasons that I’m disinclined to stay in Saskatoon, I’m not interested in returning to Edmonton.

Unlike many prairie residents, I have never had the urge to move to the west coast.  The west coast is beautiful (beautiful!) but Vancouver, Victoria and most of the other cities I have visited there are just too Zen and laid back for my tastes. And the politics are weird.

Montreal is a fabulous city, too. If I didn’t need to earn my living in English, I’d welcome the idea of living there, but my French is only passable.

Ottawa…? Nope.

From the beginning, there was only one real choice. Therefore, I am moving to Toronto.

An appealing option

Although it appears I arrived at the decision to move to Toronto through a process of elimination, I could just have easily arrived at it by creating a top-10 all-time favourite list of Canadian cities. Toronto would have emerged the destination-of-choice that way as well. I grew up in Ontario, and I welcome the thought of going back. I have missed the terrain of southern Ontario since I left in 1964, and a lot of my memories are grounded in the region.

As for Toronto itself, since childhood I’ve enjoyed my visits there. I have never shared the alternating feelings of resentment and schadenfreude toward that city and its residents that characterize the attitudes of most prairie-dwellers of my age, many of whom are still bristling from the national energy policies that Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his minions visited upon the West in 1980. For them, Toronto The Bad is an appropriate nickname. In fact, Toronto is a cosmopolitan, global city, with nearly 3 million residents (half of whom were born outside Canada) in the City proper, and at least 2 million more in the immediate vicinity. There is lots to do and see there, and that is what I want. (I do know that Toronto also has a winter, but I am actually more concerned about its hot and sticky summers, which I also remember well.)

The first step

So far I’ve taken only one concrete step towards moving to Toronto, and that is to buy a one-way plane ticket there from Edmonton on November 15. Everything else I need still to think about and plan.

I need to figure out, for example, where I am going to live when I get to Toronto, while I am looking for a permanent place to live. I need to decide what I will take with me to get myself through the looking-around period, and how I will get the rest of my stuff there once I’ve found a place to rent.

On the “surface” of my thinking, I am both frightened and excited about this new adventure. But deeper in, I feel quite calm and optimistic. I have hopes for Toronto in terms of my career that I’ll explain more clearly in another post, but I also feel a bit as though I’m going back to a very familiar place, and that I will be very comfortable in that setting.

I have not lived in Toronto since I was two, and even then it was only for six months or so, which gave me little opportunity to learn the layout of the city and its traffic routes. I have no clear plan regarding where I intend to live (although I have located on a map where the preponderance of violent crimes take place, and I plan to avoid those areas). It’s a bit like stepping off a cliff in some ways. But those who know me know that I like to step off cliffs fairly regularly. (I just don’t like to fall off them.)

I may be resolutely independent, and eagerly looking forward to figuring this thing out on my own, but I don’t feel as though I am alone. I do know several fellow writers in the Toronto region, and many many of my friends are regular visitors there. I also still have some friends from childhood living in southern Ontario, and even a few relatives. I’m happy to know that I can ask current and former Torontonians for advice when I need it—and that they will probably give me advice even if I don’t ask. (Fine by me as long as they don’t expect that I will necessarily do what they suggest—although I promise I will listen!)

This blog

When my good friend Larry Anderson suggested that I blog about the move, I immediately welcomed the idea. And already it feels good to have stated my intention publicly—it makes it real, and motivates me to start getting organized. But there is more to the appeal of writing here than that.  I have found great comfort and companionship in various on-line communities in the past few years, and I am sure that the one that forms around this blog will ultimately make me feel as though I may be moving to a new, big city on my own, but that I am utterly supported. So I thank you in advance for that support. (BTW, if you aren’t supportive, I just won’t publish your comments. So there. The naysayers among you can write in to my Militant Writer blog instead, where I happily take on all comers.)

I intend to blog not only before and during the move but also for several months afterward—until I’m actually settled. I’ve lived in enough places to know that a person doesn’t just move to a new place physically. It takes a lot longer than that to achieve the emotional, social, and even administrative transfer—it takes at least a year to settle in even when you’re just moving down the street.

And as far as being accepted by and accepting a new community, making it a home—well, that can take much much longer. That part can take decades. But finding a home is not my goal. As I get older, I realize that I prefer to be a visitor no matter where I am. My writing is my home, enriched by my community of relatives and friends who live around the world. Thanks mainly to the Internet, I can take the most important people in my life with me everywhere I go.

So now I have begun. If you are interested in following me on my new adventure here, you are most welcome. There’s a “Subscribe” button at the top of the right-hand column. Just click on it and follow the instructions to receive my (irregular) updates. (If all the options for subscribing boggle your mind, just click here to get the email option, and fill out the form that comes up.) I’ll try to keep the posts shorter than this in future!

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Ghost Town

Posted on January 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ricky Gervais has attracted a lot of fans and probably innumerable detractors in the past ten years or so. One of the originators (with Stephen Merchant) of the U.K. version of The Office (from which the U.S. series starring Steve Carrel derived), he went on to launch another British TV series (Extras, which he also co-wrote and starred in) and an ad lib podcast program (The Ricky Gervais Show) that some saw as going right over the top—both in taste and political incorrectness.

I have always thought Ricky Gervais was great—hilarious and fearless—and I’ve been quite willing to overlook his abrasiveness for the sake of the 75 percent of the time when I find him bang-on as a critic, a “small-p” political commentator, a wit and a stand-up comic. Still, knowing his penchant for going too far, I made no effort to catch him in his earlier movie appearances, which included A Night at the Museum and For Your Consideration, but after watching him in a couple of television interviews when his newest movie came out in the fall of 2008, I was encouraged to think that Gervais would finally be playing a role about as straight as was humanly possible for him. I therefore headed off with a certain amount of eagerness to see Ghost Town.

I was not disappointed. Ghost Town is a charming film with a plot that hangs together very well, and features note-perfect performances from its three major cast members (Téa Leoni and Greg Kinnear appear with Gervais). I was also happy to discover in it a movie with a life-after-death outcome that even an atheist can live with – not only for my own sake, but also because it meant that Gervais hadn’t needed to compromise his own much-articulated position of non-belief too much in order to take on this role.

Ghost Town is billed as a romantic comedy and it has no ambitions beyond that, nor does it need them. Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a Park-Avenue-type dentist who is a misanthrope to the very bottom of his heart—until he has a near-death experience during a colonoscopy. Unaware that anything untoward has happened during the procedure (the hospital doesn’t tell him about his brief demise because they don’t want him to sue, and they had him sign a waiver while he was still half-unconscious–although in fact they blame the incident on his insistence on a general anesthetic for a procedure which most people can handle without even a local), Pincus is dismayed to discover that he now has the ability to see people who have died but been unable to shake off this world because of some unfinished business. These individuals all want him to help them rest in peace by doing various kindnesses for them and their loved ones: him, Pincus, to whom kindness to his fellow man is near-anathema.

Pincus’s primary guide to the world of the unsettled dead is Frank Herlihy (played by Greg Kinnear) who was hit by a bus in the midst of trying to buy a love nest in Greenwich Village for himself and his mistress. Somehow Herlihy must make peace with his widow Gwen (Leoni) before he can shuffle off his mortal coil, and he mistakenly believes that the solution is to prevent her marriage to a kind and altruistic human-rights lawyer, whom Herlihy assumes must be a scoundrel. Pincus is the instrument with which he is determined to make this happen.

Predictably, Pincus falls in love with Gwen and must then try not only to dissuade her from marrying the lawyer but also from nurturing any lingering fond memories of Frank. He must also expand his own capacity for kindness, for Gwen is a kind and loving person. From this premise a great deal of humour can arise, and does—and a lot of the nastily funny dialogue has all the earmarks of having come straight out of Gervais’ wicked mind. But he also plays the part with control and finesse, and before too long we begin to genuinely care for Pincus and to root for his future happiness. He is human, not a caricature – as he could so easily have been – and the credit for that goes to Gervais.

The only two unresolved issues in relation to Ghost Town are 1) why Kinnear gets higher billing than Gervais (perhaps the former’s recent film successes, including Little Miss Sunshine and Fast Food Nation, have made him a stronger box-office attraction at least in North America than Gervais, but the latter is definitely the more compelling actor here, and is on-stage for a much longer time, and has—from everything I have read and heard—a much bigger ego. I’m amazed he didn’t fight to have his name on top) and 2) why the movie didn’t get more attention in the theatres: it was out on DVD within two months of its original release.

As a light comedy this movie totally worked for me and I recommend it. It will make you laugh—and cry, but in a nice way. Take a Kleenex, and enjoy.

Ghost Town is rated PG.

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JCVD

Posted on December 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

“Who knew he could act?”

That seems to have been the question the reviewers of JCVD have been asking themselves—as have, no doubt, the film’s enthusiastic viewers. The “he” to whom they are referring is none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme (JCVD)—the star of the movie and also its subject.

The acting question is, in fact, central to this funny and very moving film. Van Damme has traditionally starred in B-grade action movies where his physique, physical condition and skills at martial arts seem to have been the primary qualifications for his leading roles. That he can act—can give an authentic portrayal of an intelligent, sensitive actor nearly past his physical prime who is unable to dislodge himself from the muscle-man niche to which he has been assigned by the Hollywood machine—is a surprise, and the surprise is an essential component of the plot.

But other questions need to be asked as well, such as: Who wrote this fabulous script which considers its self-referential nature with such gentle irony, but also creates a compelling and sturdily freestanding story? And what genius gave the entire project its lovely film-noir feel, which contrary to what one might have expected, makes it feel not film-noirish, but rather entirely real? (The answer to these latter two questions seems to have a good deal to do with a French writer, actor and director named Mabrouk El Mechri, with whose work I was previously unacquainted, but for whom I will certainly watch in future.)

JCVD is set in Belgium, in the home town of the fictional Van Damme–to which he has returned owing large sums of money to the U.S. government and just having lost a custody battle in California. To his deep sorrow, and her apparent regret, his young daughter has chosen to live with her mother full-time, despite her love for him, because she can no longer stand the way her classmates tease her about his strong-man movie roles. When he gets a phone call (during a cab ride that can only be based on a real incident, it is so apt and funny and true) to say that his cheque to the tax department has bounced, he gets the driver to stop and goes in to the post office to wire money to his U.S. lawyer. There he walks into the middle of a robbery involving three gunmen and half a dozen hostages.

Implicated in the robbery due in part to the machinations of the villains and in part to his own reputation from the movies, Van Damme is also the hero of the tale to the townspeople who have come out in droves to watch the incident unfold–and even to one of the hostage-takers (who insists on a kick-boxing lesson from the film legend). To the locals, JCVD is the home-town boy who has made good. Even his mom and dad come by to argue his inherent virtue and obvious innocence to the police (whose tactical manouevres are based, in one of the film’s lovely ironic touches, in a video store).

By the end of the stand-off, and the movie, Van Damme has revealed how deeply wounded his eponymous character has been over the course of his career by his inability to move beyond stock figures and into more dignified, dramatic roles. JCVD gives him and/or his character the opportunity he has been missing, and the results on both real and fictional levels are impressive. In the showing I went to, the audience broke into spontaneous applause as the credits began to roll, and I felt like joining them.

I want to watch this funny, poignant movie again—although I think I may first have to suffer though some of Van Damme’s action thrillers so I get the in-jokes I missed the first time. My inclination to seek out examples of a cardboard representation based on respect for a three-dimensional performance may be the reverse response to what the film envisions, but I expect it is an outcome that Van Damme–both real and fictional–would appreciate.

(JCVD is in French with English subtitles, and is rated R.)

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