The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 58

E' i Martin Does Toronto really want to be Everycity? 1 WAS WAITING OR AN appointment at the head office of the Bank of Nova Scotia on King Street West sitting having a smoke outside on a bench across the street when a car drove by with a camera man strapped onto the hood film ing a couple in the car ahead Behind them trailed an old rusty truck (with the name cleverly changed to Ho hum another movie being made in Toronto come a long way since Down the Road that engag ing movie about the two sad sack Maritimers who fall into Toronto in an old jalopy and go about doing their daily losing in what people are now calling Hollywood North or better The Little Apple It used to be a mild thrill at the movies to catch sight of the Beaches board walk or a slice of the Don Valley Parkway now it is old hat It seems you go anywhere these days without bumping into Donald Sutherland Susan Clark Lee Majors Susan Anspach Ryan and Tatum Richard Burton Suzanne Somers Elliott Gould or without tripping over sets de signed to re do Toronto as New York Washington Boston or someday God help us Milwaukee and Buffalo The list really is quite impressive: Outrageous! Silent Partner Double Negative High point ace off Second Wind Nothing Personal Running and on and on Some of them even do us justice in Silent Partner our Eaton Centre comes off nearly as well as New 59th Street Bridge The reason of course is money as in the Canadian ilm Develop ment Corporation The result is that Toronto has become a latter day Dodge City as in taxes The effect of all these made in Toronto movies is a curious glamor an amorphous and somewhat bogus celluloid fame There are these vaguely familiar landmarks: a hint of Yonge a whis per of the waterfront a smidgen of Bloor and oh oh that damned CN Tower looming into view like a DC 9 streaming over the set of a medieval battlefield Now you see it now you I expect to find wooden beams propping up the Royal York Hotel The process has reached ludicrous heights (or depths) as in the film ing last June of Nothing Personal with Sutherland and Somers One morning at Dundas and University startled commuters confronted what they surely must have thought was the final and inevitable Yankee inva sion The mailboxes had been painted blue with American eagles and the street signs had been changed to green and white ones proclaiming Pennsylvania Avenue and North west 19th Avenue On this morning you see Toronto was Washington DC and damned be he who first cried When the commuters stopped and stared a set director shouted: you all please If this was not culture shock enough the locals try ing to report for work through the front door of Global House were or dered to use the rear door on Simcoe Street (Exeunt fighting Alarums) The cumulative effect of all these Toronto movies is that Toronto has become a faceless refillable Every city and so much for what 1 like to think of as our distinctive style and charm Even our much vaunted cleaner streets are sometimes littered to make them look well less To ronto Toionto has become the ur ban stand in for North America a city that from one angle can look like Cleveland and from another like Chicago 1 am not sure that this is something we should be proud of It all came back recently when I watched Running with Michael Douglas and Susan Anspach It is about a 34 year old knockabout with a reputation for quitting who gets it into his head to compete in the marathon at the 1976 Olympic 6 The City.