Scenarios For The Inevitable Rob Ford Biopic
By Kaleb Horton
Rob Ford is dead. His story is finished: he has reached the peak scandal level afforded by his office. Rob Ford drinks vodka in the woods and smokes crack on camera and darkness has descended on Toronto. There is nowhere to go and there are no jokes left to make. It’s done. He would need to murder a man in low-earth orbit to top himself. No longer is it a mere novelty that a man who looks like Chris Farley can be so unrepentantly evil yet walk the earth a free man.
It is possible for him to ride the publicity afforded any dangerous person in the public eye and host a talk show on a fledgling cable channel. But that is not a story. (Besides, John McEnroe’s talk show only lasted six months.) It is certain he will get a book deal. Now that he has admitted to everything and threatened to murder everyone he will ever likely threaten to murder, his story is told. Anything else is anticlimax. Rob Ford is dead. Now he belongs to the ages.
All that’s left to do is make the movie. Rob Ford is a desperately evil man, higher on his notoriety and lovable late night talk show whipping boy status than he ever was on crack cocaine. He’s cinematically evil, and his story begs to be tackled by a non-judgmental auteur and a well-traveled character actor. But who should make this movie? What will the finished work look like?
The Coen Brothers: Desperate Little Man
Forget the Coens. They’ll wait until Ford dies in 6 or 7 years and fictionalize his story beyond all recognition. They’ll set it in the 1960s and have the film revolve, inexplicably, around a bank heist. And they’ll have it star, obviously, anybody who’s available and has ever been shortlisted for a Confederacy of Dunces adaptation (John Goodman). They’ll name it after a truncated prewar folk song. Let’s go with "Desperate Little Man." There, done.
[Malware at Happy; Link blocked for now]
There is no legal mechanism for getting rid of a mayor who has not been convicted of a crime. Although some councillors are thinking of asking the provincial government to intervene.
Ford Nation really and truly only cares that he has lowered their taxes. Full stop. I can think of two times in the past year or so that he has opened his fat mouth and said something which totally goes against the policies developed through consultation, thought, research, time, and money for the city- once on what to do with the lands around the mouth of the Don River, and more recently about including 20% affordable housing in all new residential development. He does not understand the vision that a city needs to become more than buncha people living in the same place. All that he and Ford Nation care about is that TAXES GO DOWN- and they would forgive him anything, up to and probably including murder (Anthony Smith, anyone?), if he keeps doing what they want.