“City of Toronto Covering Corey’s Funeral” read the online story posted by Access Hollywood on Saturday night, picked up Sunday afternoon by People, then quickly followed by a terse non-denial by Kevin Sack of the city’s Strategic Communications office. What could possibly compel those seeking help for funeral costs from the Employment and Social Services department to blab about how destitute they are? Perhaps one too many inquiries from show business media, reaching Corey Haim’s mother Judy at a time when she was trying to figure out what to do — time was ticking away to give her former child star son a proper Jewish burial when it involved flying his body from the Los Angeles coroner’s office back to Toronto. It’s also entirely plausible that Haim, who spent the past decade or so renting a pad at Yonge and Eglinton, telling any stranger who’d listen about how broke he was, and even reportedly applying for retail jobs — before recently returning to Hollywood, not necessarily forever — was a beneficiary of the Ontario Disability Support Program, which entitles him to this benefit with minimal hassle, save for telling the funeral home that social assistance was being received by the deceased. (The assets of surviving family members are not audited in any such situation.) Concurrently, however, Startifacts.com, the tacky-looking memorabilia eBay broker that helped Haim generate a few bucks in the past, publicly pledged to pitch in $20,000. Continue Reading

It’s not everyday that an investor uses a magazine like Canadian Business to extend an invitation to any reader with $25 million to spare to wash their hands of an iconic entertainment brand — but so goes Death Row Records, whose music catalogue was unexpectedly won at a bankruptcy auction in early 2009 by a private Toronto bank, New Solutions Capital Group, headed by Robert Thompson-So. “This is just another commercial loan transaction that started as a workout and continues to be a workout,” he says. “Please — step up to the table and take us out.” He has a rival in Lara Lavi, the American woman hired to shape WIDEawake Entertainment into a player on the urban music scene, using reissues by the gangsta rap stable assembled in the mid-1990s by Suge Knight to establish their credibility. “I’d suggest the words to use for a company like New Solutions in the context of this is ‘financial vampires,’” Lavi says today, court ordered to steer clear of the 6,000 square foot studios and event space in Liberty Village that the company opened earlier this month. But now Lavi asserts that they didn’t know what they were doing, even while she entangled herself in their complex financial arrangement, which reportedly led the others involved in the Death Row resurrection to contend with her ego: she signed her name in emails as “Lara, gangsta soccer mom.” Now she claims to be ready to settle, and acquire the label herself — not disclosing how she plans to finance it. Regardless, when this is settled, the ghost of Tupac Shakur’s stint in Toronto will likely have proven as fleeting as the past local residencies of George Clinton or Rick James.

Canadian Music Week, the industry conference concurrent with the public Canadian Music Fest, will again pack many conference rooms at the Fairmont Royal York with satin-jacketed 20th century refugees wondering what comes next. For the live music business, though, the future involves a trend that few of those executives seem too willing to admit exists: the big-ticket legitimization of the tribute act.  While collective media enthusiasm is feigned for a few hundred indie bands slogging it out, all of that practice, practice, practice won’t lead to playing Massey Hall — especially when they’re up against shows like Queen — It’s A Kinda Magic, reaching that stage on March 19. (Coincidentally, the same night, an orchestral Music of Queen show is booked at Casino Rama.) This production from Australia, starring Craig Pesco as Freddie Mercury, prominently touts an endorsement from the late Queen singer’s 12-year personal assistant, Peter Freestone: “It’s wonderful to see the poses, and arm and hand movements again.” He has seen the future of rock and roll and its name is necrophilia. Continue Reading

In the 2001 episode of E! True Hollywood Story where the depth of his substance abuses, dating back to when he left Toronto as a teen to star in movies like Lucas, came to light when his drug-addled incoherence was captured during one infamous interview session. Corey Haim’s father reinforced the reason why he was willing to back his son returning to the movie business that enabled him after his initial teenage success: when your main goal in life is to win an Academy Award, there was no other way he was going to get it. Getting a part in a film capable of being nominated might have helped, of course, but by then the kind of big-screen comedy where his cameo services were in demand was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star — and then the A&E train wreck reality show The Two Coreys, centered on a real-life reunion with similarly troubled Corey Feldman, co-stars of four theatrical releases culminating in a threesome with Nicole Eggert in 1992’s Blown Away, then 1995’s straight-to-video sequel Dream a Little Dream 2. These are the choices that lead, not to winning an Oscar, but selling one’s extracted molar on eBay. But the kid kept on trying, right up until his death today of an accidental overdose. Haim’s attempt to ride a comeback trail actually started over 10 years ago, though: Universal Groove, a Montreal indie film set in the rave scene of 1999, touted as Haim’s first grown-up breakthrough, was left unreleased until 2007 — when it was issued to cash in on The Two Coreys, with the wacky claim that its stolen footage had to be reconstructed from clips found on the internet. So, maybe he just needed a better agent? Continue Reading