'Once Upon a Time in Canada' Chapter 86.

On the way there, in my free time, I went ahead to TIFF Bell Lightbox and spent my time at the TIFF Founder’s Lounge. I figured that I just relax whilst waiting for David to arrive without waiting at home with crappy Wi-Fi. I sat down on a comfortable, luxurious-looking chair, got out my phone and put on my headphones, and just watched videos. This became my source of entertainment until the time came. It’s an obvious method and it’s the one thing I do whilst I’m waiting. This was all I needed whilst I was waiting. I somehow spent the entire time watching everything from videos of Francis Ford Coppola to Dua Lipa music videos. But it didn’t feel like a long time.

It didn’t take very long until David messaged me to let me know that he was almost here. So I grabbed my bag and made my way downstairs to greet him. Bringing up the fact that this is the first time, and maybe the last time, I got to hang out with him in person made it all the more interesting. I was excited to finally meet him when he approached me. So yeah, it was about time, but we’re finally here. And I’m really excited to hang out with the guy for the day. We have the entire day to get to truly know one another, as well as our cinematic tastes. And going to the Film Reference Library together to see artefacts from the David Cronenberg exhibition couldn’t have been a more perfect opportunity. So we took advantage of this while it lasted.

The collection ranged from props and other items from Shivers, Cronenberg’s debut, to Map to the Stars, Cronenberg’s final film. But David and I, especially, couldn’t contain our excitement to see them in person with our own eyes. So the first thing we spot was Rosanna Arquette’s costume in Crash. Once we were done with that, we made slowly went from one item to the next studying them and taking photos of them. They ranged from Scanners to The Fly (1986), and M. Butterfly to Spider. But I didn’t know how to really contain my temptation to touch them when they were right in front of my eyes. Today was all about hanging with a friend for the first time and sharing our tastes and love for cinema, including Cronenberg’s cinema. Sadly, it didn’t feel as great as it should have been due to the thought of going back to New Zealand looming over my head. It had me wondering if I should have met David a lot earlier and why it never became the case.

Everything was going well still despite the somewhat dark imaginary cloud above my head. The day continued on with a screening of the documentary Hail Satan? The film itself was an interesting one to say the least. Not really the documentary I was expecting, but nonetheless interesting. We were both in surprise when the credits rolled, but it completely faze us from talking about it afterwards. Then we slowly made our way to a bar across the Royal Ontario Museum to have a nice dinner. That’s pretty much it. Everything went as I had hoped and David perfectly lived up to what I expected of him. Pity we just couldn’t have hung out a long time ago.

Also, see Chapters 85 and 87.