"Love Shines"

Last weekend I dedicated a couple of hours to reading the VIFF movie catalogue in order to choose a couple or three movies to see. We like to go to the film festival every year to take in at least a sampling of non-Hollywood films. It’s not that we’re part of an anti-Hollywood movement or anything; we just like to keep abreast of what the rest of the world sees.

However, September is a very busy month for us, especially Shauna. She puts in many extra hours during evenings and weekends getting prepared for the new school year, and thus doesn’t generally have any time for choosing film festival movies. It’s no small task either, as I think there are over 300 to choose from.

So last weekend I settled into our comfortable living room chair, in the corner by the window, with our warm Spaniel sprawled on my lap, and cracked the cover of the 208 page 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival catalogue. It was a little overwhelming at first, but my wife suggested a strategy. Why not check the program guide first and see which movies were playing on days we had available, which made perfect sense. I narrowed it down to the Thanksgiving weekend. It still turned into a 2 hour time commitment, but in the end I chose one movie, and Shauna chose one from my list of finalists. Plus we have one in reserve that we’ll try to get rush seats for tonight after the one we’re scheduled to see.

I chose “Love Shines”, which is a documentary about one of Canada’s best, but least commercially recognized songwriters, Ron Sexsmith. Shauna was only vaguely aware of him, and admitted she couldn’t name even one of his songs. To be honest, I couldn’t name one on the spot either, although I was quite sure I’d recognize a few in the movie once I heard them.

Back in 2006 we visited friends that had just moved back to their hometown of Toronto, and I remember Oona and Nick mentioning Ron Sexsmith. The conversation had turned to music one hot, humid evening as we sat in their backyard enjoying a bottle of wine. At the time I didn’t want to admit I really didn’t know who Ron Sexsmith was; I chalked it up to me being a few years older that they were and I figured I’d just somehow missed Ron’s envelope of radio airplay. As it turns out, lack of radio airplay has been a big issue in terms of Ron remaining under the radar all these years.

But getting back to VIFF…last night we went to see “Love Shines” and, wouldn’t ya know it, it was the World Premiere of the film. And who should be seated about 3 rows behind us but Ron Sexsmith himself! There was a Q & A session after the film, and Ron and Bob Rock (“Legendary” record producer) and the film’s director were all in attendance.

At the end of the evening, as we all filed out of the theatre, I found myself standing in the aisle right behind Bob Rock. I was close enough to be able to catch the scent of his leather jacket. People seemed to making a big fuss of him, because after all, he is pretty famous. Nowadays he’s behind the scenes, but he’s very sought after to produce big names in music. As far as I’m aware he’s most famous for working with Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and Metallica.

That made for interesting irony for the movie, that a famous heavy-metal record producer would take on an unassuming, low-volume-selling, singer songwriter. Filming for this movie began eight years ago, and I would imagine that the film director was thrilled that a plot device such as this would drop into his lap. Of course I’m assuming that filming began on this movie before Bob Rock signed on to produce “Love Shines”, the album. I’m really not sure about the timeline of events.

The movie as a whole was a refreshing glimpse into the life and struggles of a man displaying a "typically Canadian" trait; modesty. There were many well-known music industry personalities in the film singing (pun intended) Ron's praises. Elvis Costello even favourably compared Ron Sexsmith's talents with Paul McCartney, and suggested that perhaps Ron was born "out of time", that being that his productive song-writing years would have gotten him a lot further ahead if he'd been writing pen-to-pen with McCartney in the 60s.

Ultimately, I think we saw that Ron is doing what he loves to do most, and making a living at it. And although he's not a household name (yet), I really can't picture him remaining Canada's best kept secret indefinitely.

Apparently the album drops, as they say, in February 2011. I'm eagerly anticipating the release of a tour date for Ron's next Vancouver visit.