I Don't Need To Explain My Art To You (But I Reserve The Right To Criticize Yours!): #AdaTIFFmems

No one's seen me at a Midnight Madness screening in years - wait, actually that's not true, I go to many MM's, but usually for the second screenings. And I can still be spotted socializing in the ticketholders line before a number of midnight shows.

I don't want to get into a lot of boring detail about lifestyle changes, suffice to say the increasingly late start times of MM screenings and my inability to be out until 3:30am (home at 4am) and then go to work/P&I screening by 9am the next morning has left me parting ways with the MM traditions (for now! Just need to win the lottery and ditch that pesky 9-5 job and I'll be back).

That's not to say I don't have many MANY fond memories. Outside of actual volunteering, I don't think as much teamwork went into anything TIFF-related more than our MM outings. Even in the early days of SMS and other non-voice communication thru cell phones, we would have BB groups, other group chats etc. to coordinate getting tickets, getting to the ticket line early, how many seats to save, how many are in the rush line, and the list goes on...

I guess these are not exclusive to Midnight Madness, we would do this for every film and still do, but this kind of team effort is most evident when there's a large group of us at the same film together, and that was usually at midnight.

Standing in the line catching up with friends, tossing the beach balls around in the theatre (I've made my share of dollar store beach ball purchases, those things don't just materialize out of nowhere), elbowing one another to stay awake, cheering on violence and gore... all part of the "standard" MM experience, but also what makes it one of the greatest programs at TIFF.

We also had a number of special moments over and above those listed in the previous paragraph. Like getting the theatre to sing happy birthday to Darrin the year it was his bday at midnight. Or all the great photo ops with programmer Collin and a number of the MM filmmakers!

My favourite MM movie is probably still SPL (2005 I believe?) with HK legend Sammo Hung and Wu Jing in attendance. The sequel is screening this year, I have no idea whether it'll live up to the original (in action I think it will, not sure about story), but I'm excited to see it all the same.

Another great night was the screening of Chocolate in 2008. My friends and I probably took up the better part of two rows, we sat right up in the front because we like craning our necks that way (I think it was because those were the only two rows we could find in the centre front half of the theatre). Pretty sure I was sitting next to my friend Alex and not far from another buddy Darrin (both of whom I met while volunteering of course... Alex back at Sprockets 2001, Darrin at TIFF 04/05?)

I don't recall the premise, but at some point Colin made a remark about there not being many Asians in the audience, and Darrin (and Jack?) and I protested loudly. Not cool! ;)

Afterwards during the Q&A with director Prachya Pinkaew, Colin had a mini contest - a movie poster for the person who asked the best question. We listened for a while but nothing very original came up, which I figured was key to winning. Finally I was like "I got a good one" and put up my hand.

God bless Alex, he doesn't even ask me what the question is, he just starts waving his hand and pointing to me echoing "she's got a good question!"

I wound up asking Prachya if he would consider casting Colin in a future film and what kind of role would he give Colin?

Nothing super insightful, but it was enough to win me the poster :) I got it autographed by Prachya Pinkaew and still have it. We also got some great pics with him.