Bert Xanadu — a pseudonym of sorts, since his original last name was taken — is now over 500 tweets into a distinguished career as Toronto’s mayor, circa 1973, and the owner of the Imperial Six cinemas at Yonge and Victoria Streets. Curiosity about the motivation behind this eight-month work of Twitter performance art is rivaled only by the running 1837-style critiques of William Lyon Mackenzie surrogate @rebelmayor — whose true identity has been the subject of exasperating speculation for months. But there are many truths embedded in Bert’s bon mots, hearkening back to the era when the multiplex represented liberation, and movie titles deserved to be typed out in capital letters. For the record, then, the fruits of a Telex exchange with the actual man who is best known as @MovieMayor.

How would you size up the cinematic preferences of the 2010 mayoral candidates?

As mayor I look up to my constituents but look down on my opponents. I don’t see them so much as competition as merely municipal mosquitoes, seeking stimulation and notoriety by going after my blood. They all fall into standardized categories, as predictable as the rumbling stomach of the driver of the Yonge bus at 3 a.m.

There is the former provincial cabinet minister, whose over-confidence stems from his ignorance of the fact that the air at Queen’s Park is far more rarefied than that at Queen and Bay, where real people solve real problems, and get sprayed by speeding taxis on rainy days. For him I would recommend a viewing of Irwin Allen’s THE TOWERING INFERNO to make him understand that there is something that burns a bit hotter than his own rage!

Then there is the political party backroom operative, tired of kowtowing to the great men he has helped to elect, and having had a glimpse of the royal jelly, wants it for himself. But he can no longer see through the tinted windows of his deluxe limousine, and so forgets that the Tip Top Tailors clerk who sold him that silk-like tie this afternoon got to work on two wheels, not four. For him I prescribe a viewing of THE BICYCLE THIEF.

Next, there is the second-in-command, an honorable ward politician in his own right, but who, seeing his boss head for the exit, reminds us that he knows how the “system” works, where the fire exits are located, and how many gallons of paint it takes to coat the CNE Horse Palace. But he is Joseph Cotten to Orson Welles, and for this reason I urge him to watch CITIZEN KANE.

Then there is the “people’s champion” — a man who thinks his rough and ready ways have endowed him with a platinum pipeline to the psyche of the ordinary voter. But there are no ordinary voters, each is special and each asks his or her leader to be bigger than they. Not physically bigger, mind you, but bigger in spirit and vision. For this hale and hearty chap, I think a viewing of Clint Eastwood’s MAGNUM FORCE is in order. Or at least an absorption of its final line of dialogue: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Finally, there is the distaff choice, a smart businesswoman whose ownership of a newspaper with distribution extending from Bathurst to Mt. Pleasant, and from Davisville to Merton, has convinced herself that she can someday have Nathan Phillips Square re-named in her honour. I can only assume that some other forces are at work here, and so counsel that a close reading of John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is in order.

What has been the greatest achievement of the David Miller era?

I surely know how heavy weighs the chain of office on the queen city’s Chief Magistrate. When one is mayor, one has to do more than cut ribbons, jobs and corners! I will say though, that any man who is prepared to stand up the night he is first elected, in front of who knows how many grizzled newspapermen, and wave a broom in the air has balls! Few mayors have had the nerve to declare that this city — and Dufferin Street, I’m looking at you in particular — need a good, thorough sweep. Do you really expect Toronto’s finest cops on horseback to clean up after their own noble steeds?

Why does everything at the concession stand cost so much?

As both your mayor and the owner of Toronto’s top cinema, I have sworn to keep a strict separation between church (the Imperial Six) and state (why, City Hall of course!). So the litany of taxes on places of amusement, which I feverishly decry as a showman, I can but defend as the one responsible for the city’s coffers. For example, there is a 7.43 per cent derelict projectionist tax, to cover the police costs of hunting down and retrieving shirkers from nearby gin joints; a 4 per cent glamour tax, which serves to reduce the glitz to a level commensurate with a sober Canadian city; and a 16 per cent provincial censor tax, used to cover psychotherapy bills for fragile censors whose temperaments are shattered by mandatory viewings of hundreds of films like ZARDOZ and 99 AND 44/100% DEAD. But patrons also don’t realize we have unavoidable labour costs — for example, delicious bite-size strawberry Twizzlers arrive in raw form, as 65-foot licorice cables, heaved into a crawlspace beneath the projection booth by five stevedores, and then laboriously trimmed and packaged by apprentice ushers. Those are real costs that we must factor into our competitive entertainment pricing.

What is the next big thing in the Canadian film exhibition business?

Being a nation of spectators — and I must say, we excel as few nations do at the act of watching — the next big thing is in-seat voting. As mayor, I have noted that election night voter turnout could be increased if we offered moviegoers a chance to cast their ballots via flashlight during a motion picture! Some recalcitrant patrons will be gently urged by on-screen public service announcements I am producing, starring funnyman Rich Little.

Which technology poses the greatest threat to the cinema experience?

I would have to say the wristwatch. Egghead professor Marshall McLuhan and I agree on few things, but we both understand the paradox that cinema presents — a film moves forward, relentlessly in time (save for the extremely rare projectionist error) and yet induces a sense of non-time in the viewer (gawd knows I have had to rouse stunned viewers of THE TALL BLOND MAN WITH ONE BLACK SHOE). But the new and frightening “electro-digital” wristwatches that every other Tom, Dick and Harry seem to be wearing these days could hypnotize their owners, and overly-stimulate them as they excitedly share the shiny informational content within.

Startifacts, the memorabilia dealer which fronted the cost for the funeral, blabbed about how the cheque was never actually cashed — inferring that Corey’s mom misled the public by publicly asking for money, let alone suggesting that the City of Toronto would pay for the burial, and then ordered a stop-payment after learning the funds were paying for her cancer treatments instead. While a table of 30 mostly former child stars — including Todd Bridges — gathered at a Marina del Rey restaurant a few weeks ago to toast Haim’s memory, it appears that all those connected to him aren’t looking for an E! True Hollywood Story-style afterlife. Furthermore, the kind of magazines that would have assigned a writer to contemplate the meaning of his troubled life don’t really exist anymore, a casualty of gossip blog overdrive. (In its prime, this kind of article inspired Might magazine’s 1996 satirical cover story about the death of Eight is Enough runt Adam Rich, before there was enough of an internet to blow the joke.) Nonetheless, there were three unreleased projects that Haim left behind — incidentally, six more forthcoming jobs were listed on his IMDb page the day he died — all with backers still hoping for some amount of posthumous attention to pay off.

American Sunset, the New Brunswick-shot thriller which no other online media seemed intrigued by last November, will showcase before film buyers next week. Gary Rasmussen, president of Global Universal Pictures, explains: “History has certainly shown us that the transition from successful child star to a well deserved reputation as a serious adult actor is extremely difficult at best. I believe Corey achieved that transition with his stellar performance in American Sunset. We truly hope that our showcasing of his last work at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival will solidify Corey’s well deserved place in film history.”

New Terminal Hotel, a flick about “the dark side of the Hollywood dream machine” in which Haim had a glorified cameo, has the misfortune of being a film where he not only plays one of the ill-fated victims of a screenwriter-turned-murderous vigilante — but, per the clip above, puts on a terrible British accent in his role as “Jasper Crash,” a washed-up rock star: “I was actually quite glad he dies so I didn’t have to suffer through much of it,” offered a reviewer last month via IMDb. This movie even merited its own soundtrack CD available via Amazon — which costs a dollar more than the DVD. Both are only dubbed on demand.

Decisions, which has the distinction of being Haim’s last film in the lead role of a corrupt undercover cop who gets mixed up in the lives of six kids “known for their unsettling ways,” was somehow announced as hitting theatres in April, or maybe even just on video — but no outlets seemed enthusiastic enough about the prospect to help make this actually happen. “Sometimes,” reads the promotional tagline, “the voice of reason comes in a gruff, dirty package.” And, currently, the trailer for Haim’s attempt to acquit his reputation through actual acting is outpaced in the number of YouTube views by pictures from his freshly-dug grave.

PREVIOUSLY: Corey Haim’s biggest fan drives 18 hours to be taken seriously

The trailer for Reclaiming Our Pride, an hour-long documentary by Gladstone about how the 2009 parade got clouded, was posted to YouTube in advance of public screenings. Indeed, a dash of anti-Israel messaging can ruin your whole Pride Day, especially when juxtaposed against images of strutting politicians and temporary tattoos from sponsor TD Canada Trust. But isn’t the definition of freedom of expression to be potentially offensive? “I think it’s always sweetly amusing when people say ‘protesters should be nicer.’ Well, no,” serial tweeter David Demchuk told Xtra, suggesting it’s not inconceivable that a gay pro-life group get in the march, too. “I don’t care if people are Zionists or Zoroastrians. I only care about freedom of speech.” Gladstone told the more sympathetic Jewish Tribune that his efforts to get Pride sponsors to comment for his self-financed $10,000 film would rather just avoid the whole thing: “I’ve been surprised by how many sponsors, in their undertone, were, ‘We don’t want to be their targets as well. If we’re the bad guys and say we want this stuff out, if we ask for accountability, then they’ll turn their wrath on us.’”

Matton made the trip to stand on the sidewalk because she was distraught over the loss of her first crush, and felt the drive would provide some closure: “I figured if I could just get a glimpse, that would be enough,” she told the Toronto Sun. “I’ve never attempted to do anything like this in my life. This is my way of being near him — even though he’s now gone — and express how much I cared and how many other fans cared about him. I’ve never met him and I’m so devastated I didn’t.” All of Corey’s lesser fans have contended with leaving messages in the official online condolence book. Matton, who revealed via Facebook that her dad called to offer condolences (“he doesn’t even call me on my birthday!”) evidently drove right home — thanking a colleague for finishing her shift (“it meant more than u know!”).

PREVIOUSLY: Corey Haim funeral financing flap reveals secret cabal of Toronto Tea Partiers

Somehow, this all gets conflated into the talk radio-ready spin that a public memorial procession of Notorious B.I.G. proportions was being expected by the deceased’s family and/or offered by the mayor, and they are going to pay for it however they could — even if it means tapping into YOUR TAX DOLLARS. “I’d be more than happy to look into it,” cantankerous Councillor Rob Ford told the Toronto Sun, as if there were any doubt. So, the outrage stirred up in the process is completely ridonkulous. Just think, one week ago, Sarah Palin was pilloried on both sides of the border after admitting that her parents once voluntarily paid for the very kind of Canadian health care that her fanatics in the Tea Party movement hold up as an example of a backwards welfare state overrun by socialism. Gawker’s perennial commenter Raincoaster put the hysteria in perspective: “Kids, when a junkie dies in Toronto, what do you think they do with them? Pile them up in Mississauga somewhere and wait for the Rapture? Nope. They bury them. And your taxes pay for that.” But a mayor who just announced a $100 million surplus is a good target for calling starstruck. Most creative spin goes to John Kennedy of Pop Goes the News, though, pointing out that Vancouver-shot The Two Coreys got the usual breaks applied to production costs: “Taxpayers have helped Corey Haim before”. And, in the end, it was confirmed that since no application was ever filed, they won’t be doing it again.

PREVIOUSLY: The next nine Oscars that Corey Haim was striving to win

But he had enough name recognition to keep getting this kind of D-list work: Haim died with nine current unreleased projects in various states of completion, according to his profile on IMDb. Last fall, producers of New Brunswick-shot American Sunset courted kitschy attention by inviting fans to attend the genre horror film’s Santa Monica premiere for $10, which included a meet-and-greet, and autographed photo. At age 38, he obviously wanted more than this, and so kept on trying: he played a “nosy has-been rock star” in a Hollywood thriller called New Terminal Hotel, and Decisions had him in the lead role of a crooked cop — because, at his level of infamy, could there be any other kind? Currently listed as “filming” on Haim’s C.V. was The Dead Sea, about a strike team of mercenaries who discover zombies upon a naval vessel. And his future projects were stacking up nicely, all things considered: more scholcky stuff like Ratred 3D and The Throwaways, but also the rumoured lead roles in SAD (Standard American Diet) — whose description sounds like a Fast Food Nation equivalent for the pharmaceutical industry — and A Detour in Life, about an alcoholic widower dad struggling to shape up for the sake of his daughter. You can tell that someday, someway, Haim just wanted to get this thing right.

Ben Mulroney and his wife are expecting twins! Just what the country needs seven days after the Winter Olympics — a third generation to continue the legacy of Canada’s least popular prime minister, and CTV’s least popular host of etalk. Perhaps paternity leave is what it’s going to take to keep Ben away from the red carpet next year — given how he has been a fixture on the Academy Awards celebrity arrival pre-show since eschewing his Université Laval law school degree to do this. But, thanks to Twitter, viewers masochistically tuning in for this annual experience have a neutral place to vent. Here’s the recap …

The Runaways, the first feature film by Hamilton-raised and OCAD-schooled director Floria Sigismondi, features star Kristen Stewart fake-naked in a bathtub that becomes an ocean — so maybe those gothic 1990s rock videos, which the director is best-known for, play a bigger part in portraying the debauched formative years of Joan Jett than you might think. Premiering on Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival, prior to its wide release on March 19, the instant critical consensus is that the stylish teenage rock ‘n’ roll biopic isn’t as bedazzling as it was hoped to be. But then, as Karina Longworth puts it in a positive appraisal for The Village Voice, “underage girls are big business” — even though grizzled reviewers are more likely to focus on kindred spirits Kim Fowley, Rodney Bingenheimer and Tatum O’Neal. The latter is in the flick as an actress — playing the stage mother of Dakota Fanning as Jett’s singing girl crush Cherie Currie — but it’s a familiar kind of time-warp, which culminated in the two real-life Runaways doing a post-screening Q&A alongside their millennial reincarnations. Besides, the girl empowerment tale could be critic-proof, transcending tweets like the cinematographer who likened Sigismondi’s storytelling to “the structural sensibilities of a spider on LSD.”

Youth in Revolt, the latest in a series of Michael Cera flicks that too few teenage girls paid to see, leads one to wonder whether the 21-year-old Bramptonian’s future career doesn’t need a script. Due to time constraints on the promo trail — which included doing a series of bits with the six-week MTV celebrities of Jersey Shore — Cera’s publicist could allegedly accommodate just one of two American websites owned by AOL. So, correspondents from laddish site Asylum and trailer site Moviefone ganged up on him together, and came away with seven-and-a-half minutes of meta-awkwardness. Thanks to the atom-splitting power of online journalism, however, no aside from a junket need go to waste. “MTV Exclusive: Michael Cera clears up Ghostbusters 3 Rumors” is a headline attached to what amounts to one quote: “I don’t know much about it but for some reason people are asking me about it. I hope if they make it that it’s funny and that it captures the first one because that’s one of my favourite movies.” Another search engine-optimized MTV scoop with no payoff: “Michael Cera: ‘I’ve Done A Lot Of Stuff I’m Really Ashamed Of.’” Jason Reitman, director of Cera’s one-note breakthrough Juno, has recently tried to deconstruct the film-plugging process by tweeting a pie graph about the questions he was asked in regard to Up in the Air, followed by a Press Tour Simulator video that turned the tables on his device-wielding interrogators. The way things are going, Cera should consider giving up on movies — and follow Ashton Kutcher to the cover of Fast Company. But, before that happens, he’s got more celluloid to sell, per a current headline from AOL-owned Spinner: “Michael Cera Amazed to Work with Radiohead Producer on Scott Pilgrim.”