Barry Avrich

Location: Quebec| Profession: Filmmaker/Advertising

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Barry Avrich

Barry Avrich is a Montreal-born ad man who, directly after University, became a keystone in Toronto’s cultural industry. Having been born in love with movie making, however, Avrich only saw advertising as his meal ticket. While putting together posters and television ads for the Stratford Theatre Company and big budget Livent Entertainment shows in Toronto, Avrich kept working away on film projects. In 1996, he released a short film entitled The Madness of Method, starring Richard Kind and M. Emmet Walsh. Since then, he has directed a host of TV projects, including CBC Life and Times Programs on Michael Cohl and Edward Greenspan, as well as 2005’s The Last Mogul: Life and Times of Lew Wasserman, which achieved a wide and successful release internationally.

Barry Avrich

What They Said

“I went into advertising right away, but I was producing and writing short films at the same time. When I got to Toronto, the first movie I did was called The King of Yorkville. It was a satirical look at Yorkville in the eighties: you know, all those American Express Gold Cards, cocaine and wild partying. I thought it would be great to have the Bellaire Café (it’s Sassafras now) as the background for the meeting of two ordinary people, two losers. One was an aluminum salesman and the other was a salesgirl for Mary Kay cosmetics. Strangely, they meet at the Bellaire Café, find love and then say ‘let’s get out of here.’ They realize they were both trying to be something they weren’t.

We were set to shoot in the Bellaire, but Chrysalis, the company that owned the whole restaurant empire in Toronto - Bemmelman’s and Toby’s, you’re too young - it got a hold of the shooting script and suddenly gave the shoot a red light. “Nooooooo,” they said, “you’re portraying this whole area, and our establishment, as this drug-filled environment for artificial people. We don’t want this. You can’t shoot here.” This was a day before we were set to shoot. We had everything: a 16mm Ariflex camera, a cinematographer, a sound team, everything. This was my first big shoot. We’d even been licensed music from Blondie. So I pleaded with him. ‘We’ve got a contract,” I said. They weren’t having any of it.

So I went on my hands and knees to every restaurant owner in the Yellow Pages. Finally, this guy Marty from a restaurant called Peter and Marty’s at College and Bay (it’s not there anymore) says “I like you. Here’s what I’m gonna do. Saturday night, our restaurant closes at midnight. You can shoot from then all the way through Sunday.” So we were saved right? Then, at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, after we’d re-created the club and packed it with a hundred extras, our camera jammed and burnt down right in the middle of the restaurant. We had to plead with Marty to let us come back the next weekend. But it worked out. We actually got that short into theatres. It even won some awards.”