Casa Loma is an oddity in the city, but it’s so ingrained in Toronto’s cultural life we often don’t give it a second thought.
Now a go-to venue for weddings and Halloween fright nights, it’s hard to imagine that the 98-room Gothic Revival-styled castle, built between 1911 and 1914 with a $3.5-million price tag, was designed as a single-family residence for financier Sir Henry Pellatt, whose biggest accomplishment was bringing hydroelectric services to Toronto.
For the past decade, artist Dave Dyment has immersed himself in Casa Loma’s fascinating history. Perched atop the hill above Davenport Road, the castle can look ominous or regal, haunted or luxurious, its versatility making it a popular location for American film and television productions. (That, and Ontario’s film tax credit program and the lower value of the Canadian dollar.)
Dyment’s full-length documentary “Dead Ringer” uses Casa Loma’s history as an entry point to survey how the city of Toronto has become a stand-in home to the “Suicide Squad,” “X-Men” and “The Incredible Hulk,” among many others. Using film clips as a foundation, Dyment reveals the personality of a city that rarely represents itself onscreen.
As part of the Ontario Culture Days program, “Dead Ringer” will have its sold-out premiere at Casa Loma on Sept. 27. (Two encore screenings are scheduled for Oct. 7 and 16 at Toronto City Hall.) The screening and artist talk will take place in the mansion’s basement, which was originally intended to be a swimming pool before Pellatt ran out of money and the building was seized for unpaid taxes.
It was two weeks before the premiere and Dyment was wrapping up the final sound mixing on his labour of love. Although he hasn’t worked on the film full-time over the decade, several of his other projects, including a 12-minute short on the Hearn Generating Station, speak to similar themes of place and representation.
Right before COVID-19 shut the city down, Dyment — previously the director at Mercer Union contemporary art centre — and his partner, fellow artist Roula Partheniou, left Toronto for the picturesque town of Sackville, N.B. Despite his enthusiasm for his new home, Toronto is always on his mind.
Initially, Dyment, who narrates the film, thought “Dead Ringer” would be an autobiographical project, until he was given a copy of the fantastic 2003 documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” in which director Thom Andersen explores the myths and realities of the City of Angels through clips from various films.
“It really got under my skin,” said Dyment. “Initially I thought that I would do the inversion of that: Toronto as impostor, Toronto masquerading as other cities such as New York and Chicago and Detroit, London and even Tokyo.”
He pondered whether he could tell “local stories using footage from productions where Toronto is the location but not the setting.” Pushing the theme further, he wondered if he could repurpose that footage and tell local stories.
Ambitious in scope, Dyment realized that his project might never have an end date.
“The new episode of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ debuts today. I will watch it and there will be a clip shot in Toronto, and I will think, ‘Damn, this will never stop,’” he said. “Casa Loma gave the film a narrower, sharper focus, because I could tell the stories and then just cycle back to telling the story about this castle, which is a film set unto itself.”
As part of Pellatt’s eccentric vision for Casa Loma, he had historic relics such as Napoleon’s writing desk and the coronation chair from Westminster Abbey recreated for his majestic home. “It’s this rich man’s folly,” said Dyment. “It’s almost as if the lead-up was for it to eventually be a handy castle in the middle of the city so, when you’re shooting at a sound stage on Eastern Avenue, you can just go over and take some exterior shots of the castle, and then go inside and it plays a mansion in Texas or wherever.”
While about a third of “Dead Ringer” is dedicated to Casa Loma, the film also covers other popular filming locations such as the CN Tower, Kensington Market and the Prince Edward Viaduct. Dyment estimates that he’s scrubbed through more than 3,000 clips of Toronto locations. He hasn’t watched most of the films in their entirety, though he is relishing his new-found enjoyment of heist films. A third of the clips made it into the documentary, with the rest sitting in his archive for potential future projects.
“I feel like now I know the city better. If there’s a fraction, a sliver of the screen in which you can see a bit of the street, I can identify the neighbourhood like I’m on a quiz show,” he said.
Part of the fun for viewers is trying to identify the productions as Dyment narrates. “Dead Ringer” doesn’t identify the clips onscreen, but if you see Valerie Bertinelli, know it’s from the 1987 Judith Krantz miniseries “I’ll Take Manhattan.”
It will be a wild trip for those who attend the “Dead Ringer” premiere as there is a scene shot in the Casa Loma basement theatre taken from the 2005 comedy groaner “The Pacifier,” in which Vin Diesel plays a Navy SEAL whose latest assignment is to protect a family of five children. Dyment can’t give any more context because he never watched the full film, but he does know that the basement stands in as a sewer as the action star jumps in the water for a big rescue.
Dyment chuckled. “The idea is that you’ll be sitting inside Casa Loma, watching a film about Casa Loma, in which Casa Loma doesn’t play Casa Loma.”
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