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| Mike and my Mother |
I used to be in the movie business but when I met Michael I was
Toronto's leading 'bootlegger' I owned an after-hours club that was basically for musicians but I expanded it to the famous. And I had been notorious in the 60s for my lavish parties and I slowly built up an illegal business it was a lot of fun and very profitable and I met everybody and their dog. Mike was at the Art College of Ontario and had made this acclaimed 8mm film that won an award and thought he was somebody.
Meanwhile, I was the King of Toronto in those days (lol) and we clashed often, it took a couple of years for us to become friends he kept after me. Finally, when we did become friends, we were good friends.
People have often asked me how mike got his scar.
Mike got his scar before I met him.
He told me he was sitting in his girlfriend's house having a beer and waiting while she changed as they were going out, suddenly there was a hammering at the door and when he opened it up this drunk guy attacked him screaming that he was stealing his girlfriend. in the course of the brawl the guy broke the bottle and gashed Mike's face Mike thought he had lost his eye and he freaked out he actually tore one of the guy's eye
out. After the police and the ambulance and everything was sorted out it seems the guy had the wrong house his girlfriend lived next door and Mike didn't even know her..
I got in the movie business after the after-hours business. I got into
the movie business by phoning a producer twice a week for 2 years.
I was an assistant producer on 'Double Negative. I got Mike a small role in it.
These stories about Michael seem rather wild and there is
lots to tell but there are even some I can't tell. Mike's ex-wife is a
policewoman named 'Ironside' 20
I went to Peterborough with Mike just after the release of 'Visiting
Hours". His father had a heart attack and I went with Mike to visit
him. It was quite an experience a lot of people in that hospital had
seen visiting hours and you should have seen the looks on their faces
when Mike walked by. In the movie, Mike had a Canon Sureshot 35 mill camera prototype.
He stole it from the movie and gave it to me for my birthday. it was a great camera.
One afternoon Mike and I tried to seduce two young ladies by smoking a lot of dope and building a huge bowl of sangria. It backfired Mike and I both passed out and some weeks later when I developed the film I discovered the girls had stripped us and taken photos. of us naked. I thought that was hilarious. I shoved the photo of mike into a book and forgot which book. I expect somebody got a surprise one day.
I was approached by a fan and I wrote some stories for them.
I really don't think about 'spilling the beans' I find it amusing that
Mike has such a big fan club. For me, it was just fun to remember what a wildman he used to be and write some of these things down. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these tales they are written just as I remember them.I had a stalker fan of his pump me for the information she had a good story and I passed it on to mike.
Then I get a phone call from Mike, his lawyer, and his agent accusing me of giving her information about mike. like phone number and address. Not only did I not give her any information I did not have his latest info.
Mike sort of brushed me off and wouldn't believe me.
Which was a little disappointing as we were such close friends and our list of adventures together read some like sort of weird underground action-adventure. I understand why. I was a part of his past that he doesn't particularly remember. He is and has been clean and sober for about 12 years and this is probably good as he would most likely be dead or in jail if he had kept on. I wouldn't say that I liked him better as a drunk but he certainly was interesting and we had a lot more in common than we do now.
By the way, it was Mike's sister who gave her the information.
A mike story: We used to drink at the Club 22 at the
Windsor Arms in Toronto. One night my friends Johnny Hart and Jack Caprio who draw the cartoon BC were in town and I joined them for a few drinks with Mike in tow. Michael got fairly hammered. I got up to meet another old friend Catherine O'Hara from SCTV she had her parents with me and introduced them to me as I shook hands with her mother, I gave a bit of a bow, and as I did Michael came up behind me and bit me on the ass and wouldn't let go. It was unbelievable I jumped and hollered and leaped around the room but he wouldn't let go. It took Jack and Johnny and a couple of waiters to get him off of me and I don't know why, he just thought it was funny, and when it stopped hurting I laughed too. Mike was barred for that but I managed to get him reinstated and the next afternoon we drank $400 of margaritas between us.
I remember the next morning after that we went for brunch at Joe Allens with lady friends Mike ordered a triple Bloody Caesar with a shot of Vodka on the side. This is Mike's favorite story at AA
Back in the mid-seventies, I used to own an after-hours club and Mike spent a couple of bad years drinking himself into the ground. As often as not he would pass out in the club and I would just put a blanket over him and leave him there. I lived over the bar and one night I woke up with this horrible thumping through the floor. I go downstairs to find Mike with his face stuck to the bar. He had managed to get a hold of a pool cue and thumped it on the ceiling. I had just put in a new bar and got this guy to put a plastic top on it. He made a mistake and the bar top didn't set properly. Michael in his stupor crawled up on the bar and fell asleep on it. His face was firmly stuck to the bar It was quite a job to pry him loose without any more damage to his face.
I had somehow become a movie producer and Michael and Winston Reckert were going to be in it.
We hung around together and Mike and Winston got really crazy sometimes they got banned from several restaurants and bars and I saved them from arrest a couple of times.
One day Winston had just finished a movie and was flush. So Winston and Michel Ironside and Alberta Watson and Winston's accountant Jerry and I are sitting around at Jerry's drinking beer smoking dope and snorting coke. We were getting pretty crazy and we thought we should order some food. the subject of ribs came up and Jerry said the best ribs in the world were from Fat Willy’s Rib Shack in Chicago. So Winston says can we get some?. Jerry got on the phone with plane tickets and taxis etc we had ribs from Fat willy's in 4 hours for about a thousand dollars or so.
Mike and I had several pretty good fights. One night Michael and Winston Rekert (Neon rider) went to see Willie Dixon at the El Mocambo. This is after both of them had made a couple of good movies and things were beginning to happen for them. We had met some interesting young ladies and wanted to party later. Well, I have this very fussy friend who had gone to Poland for a month or two and had left me the key to his apartment. So I invited everyone back to his place which was just down the street and Mike used the phone to phone his girlfriend. when he couldn't get her he threw
the phone out the window right through the screen I bopped for that one. it was a real hassle to get it all repa
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