He may not be Evergreen, but Paul Williams is Still Alive

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Songwriter Paul Williams, alive and kicking in Toronto. (CHRIS YOUNG / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

TORONTO -- Manitoba's contributions to the Toronto International Film Festival this year included more high-profile productions, such as Goon and Guy Maddin's Keyhole. But one film offers a vivid glimpse of Winnipeg, and it's a film with actual Oscar potential in the category of best documentary feature, in my opinion.

That would be Paul Williams: Still Alive, a documentary about the Grammy/Oscar-winning songwriter. The film actually begins in Winnipeg at the 2006 Phantompalooza, where Williams, an inescapable pop culture figure in the '70s who has faded into near obscurity, was celebrated as one of the creative masterminds behind The Phantom of the Paradise, a film Winnipeggers embraced when most of the rest of the world ignored it.

Director Stephen Kessler admits in the opening of the film that he had something of a childhood obsession with Williams, but assumed he had died sometime in the '80s owing to addiction issues. He discovered Williams was still alive, and would be throwing a concert at Phantompalooza 2. Kessler flew to Winnipeg to meet his oddball idol, thus initiating a five-year filmmaker/subject relationship that vividly answers the question: Whatever happened to Paul Williams?

Kessler, who directed an obscure, hard-to-find but wonderful 2002 comedy titled The Independent, enjoys a prickly relationship with Williams as he follows him to rehab events (Williams is a licensed rehab counsellor) and a concert in the Philippines.

This hugely entertaining doc screened Sunday evening at the AMC Theatre on Dundas and Yonge and among the enthusiastic crowd (who gave the film multiple standing ovations) was, inevitably, Phantompalooza organizer Doug Carlson.

"I thought it was extraordinary," Carlson said Monday. "I watched the early Winnipeg section with a lump in my throat."

It is not known if and when the film might actually get released, but Carlson says Winnipeg may get an early shot at seeing the film.

"The director is very keen on bringing it to Winnipeg as a treat for all of the Phantompalooza fans where it all began," Carlson says.

By the way, an audience member asked Williams why it was that Winnipeg loved Phantom of the Paradise so much. His response: "If I knew that, I'd be dining with Stephen Hawking right now."

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The traditional Sunday-night Manitoba party at the Drake Hotel, sponsored by Manitoba Film and Music and Onscreen Manitoba, provided an epicentre for Winnipeg filmmakers, including:

-- Guy Maddin with his lovely wife Kim Morgan, to whom he dedicated the screening of his feature Keyhole on Friday evening;

-- Goon director Michael Dowse; evidently tired of talking about Goon, Dowse touted a different movie: Academy Award winner Alex Gibney's The Last Gladiators, an examination of NHL enforcers focusing on Montreal Canadiens' tough guy Chris "Knuckles" Nilan, who was offered as a model for Goon star Seann William Scott.

-- Mike Maryniuk and John Scoles, proffering screeners of their animated short The Yodeling Cowboy, which screened at one of the festival's short-film programs Monday.

-- Matthew Rankin, who says his short festival entry Tabula Rasa will screen in Winnipeg in the next few weeks in conjunction with the French-language film festival Cinemental.

-- Jacqueline Loewen of the brilliant sketch comedy troupe Hot Thespian Action, who affirmed plans are afoot for a TV series in co-operation with Original Pictures' Kim Todd. It is not so much a sketch comedy show but more of a sitcom with a single sketch-comedy element, in the same way earlier episodes of Seinfeld incorporated a pertinent bit of standup that enhanced the plot of that week's comic premise.

-- Danishka Esterhazy, who hosted a DVD-release party Saturday for her film Black Field at the Rivoli club on Queen Street, with star Sara Canning in attendance.

TIFF wraps up Sunday.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 16, 2011 D4