We had time for dinners… I got a chance to hang out with Otto a lot… and really liked how down to earth and honest he was. He didn’t hide his feelings. It was really refreshing. By the end of the week, I really loved these three. I was excited to go to work every day and hang out with them. All the while I thought Linda was gonna be some stuck up TV executive (She was at Nick)… but she was anything but. She never complained (even if she wanted to!)… and was funny, modest and human. If more TV execs were like Linda… oh man… things would be oh-so-good.

Ottawa 94 was a much different experience. I was there day and night. My job was to be the stage manager and make sure the projection went well. It was a stressful job. I knew many of the films, but I was dealing with union people. They were okay, but a couple of them hated to work… and like most projectionists, the idea of checking for sound and focus was a foreign concept to them. We had a few problems which the directors remember to this day.

Steve Dovas’ :10 ID for MTV was shown without sound. John Hay’s hillbilly series for MTV was shown without sound (twice) and that prompted the audience to make their own dialogue and sound effects. I think we fugged up a JJ Sedelmaier shortie too. Oh God… I remember the looks on their faces when they were introduced following their film. Through the glare of the spotlight they stared up at the projection window, anger dripping from their nostrils. All three guys remember the fug up to this day.

Also the site of my first worst hangover ever. After a red wine night with Marc Glassman, I showed up the next day for my shift looking purple or something of that sort. My breakfast was a muffing and a bottle of pepto bismal. Oh yeah… forgot to mention that Kelly was working for us now. She was pretty much running the show as festival producers did in those days. I never drank red wine with Glassman again. Just beer.

I was smug. More so. I was impatient with some of the staff and resented one guy coming in from out of town to do work. Guess it’s a testament to the OIAF, but shit man… so many people think they own the festival. I remember — sorry — Prescott Wright hovering over me all the time in the booth telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing. Annoyed the fuck out of me. Who the fuck was this guy anyway? I was later told, by him, that he basically invented the OIAF (untrue). Tom Knott told me to ignore him, but fuck a duck what was I to do? And man… the guy farted all the time. Between him, the projectionists and my hangovers, it was a funky-smelling booth.

I think Wrong Trousers won that year. Now I like that film a lot and it’s a worthy winner, but in my books, it’s a safe choice. For me, the film of ‘94 was Filmtecknarna’s hypnotic and disturbing black-and-white dreamscape, Revolver. Rumor has it that four of five jury members wanted to give Revolver the Grand Prix. Because the lone member of the opposition was so steadfastly opposed to the Swedish film, the only other film they could agree upon was Trousers.

By this time I knew Knott was leaving the festival. Warner Bros. was gonna hire him to recruit. I decided then and there that I wanted his job. I didn’t know sweet fuck all really, but I knew I wanted to be with all these people, even the smelly ones. Before Ottawa 94 was out, I was lobbying people to support me as OIAF director. What a schmuck. These people had no power do to nothing.

It was a strange year… and one that I only understand better now because I’m seeing one of our own staff members acting pretty much the way I did. I remember a moment. McSorley and I are sitting in the Oasis (ha). It was the cafeteria/restaurant we hung at every day at the university. Sitting with us was one Will Straw. He was THE prof at Carleton. Very hip guy who made Lacan, Foucault and Bourdieu sound interesting and approachable. Will was the rock of the department. The guy who cared about his students.

He organized trips to New York (with Mark Langer) and was always socializing with us. He was a real mentor to us all. We wanted to be like Will — smart, funny, hip and cool. That day though, Will looked at us and said that he was 40 years old and felt lost and unsatisfied with his life. It was a shock to hear this. How the fug could he feel this way? He was a tenured prof… all the students adored him… Christ… he had it all.

I didn’t understand.

I saw the CFI and OIAF as deadbeat in those days. Everyone seemed tired. The CFI had been routinely dismantled since the mid-1980s and was down to just a handful of people now. Money was very tight. Because the place had been saddled with a massive debt thanks to a previous director, Knott was faced with the task of putting on the OIAF with very little money and a lot of debts to pay.

I treated him like crap in those days. He frustrated me. I treated McSorley (remember… I was working for him during the off-year of the OIAF… managing the cinema) like crap. I treated everyone like crap. I thought I knew everything and saw these guys as deadweights… saw them as guys who’d been their too long and we’re crippled by fear. I figured I — the master of nothing — could rejuvenate the place. I got angrier and felt more and more stifled by the situation. If only I was given the chance, I could show them and everyone what I could do, who I could be.

Chris Robinson is little more than a man. In his spare time he cares for the elderly. www.animationpimp.com.