Casa Loma gets its close-up in the film about Toronto standing in for other places

Casa Loma is a city oddity, but it’s so ingrained in Toronto’s cultural life that we often don’t think twice about it.

It is hard to imagine that the 98-room Gothic Revival château, built between 1911 and 1914 at a cost of $3.5 million, was conceived as a family home by financier Sir Henry Pellatt, whose greatest achievement was Bringing hydroelectric power to Toronto.

For the past decade, artist Dave Dyment has immersed himself in the fascinating history of Casa Loma. The castle, perched on the hilltop overlooking Davenport Road, can look menacing or majestic, 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 feature-length documentary, Dead Ringer, uses the story of Casa Loma as an entry point to explore how the city of Toronto has become a surrogate home for the Suicide Squad, X-Men and The Incredible Hulk. among many others. Based on film clips, Dyment reveals the personality of a city rarely portrayed on screen.

As part of the Ontario Culture Days program, Dead Ringer will have its sold-out premiere on September 27th at Casa Loma. (Two encores are planned for October 7 and 16 at Toronto City Hall.) The screening and the artist talk takes place in the basement of the mansion, which was originally intended to be a swimming pool before Pellatt ran out of money and ditched the building confiscated of unpaid taxes.

It was two weeks before the premiere and Dyment was completing the final sound mix of his love labor. Though he hasn’t worked on the film full-time over the decade, several of his other projects, including a 12-minute short film about the Hearn Generating Station, address similar themes of place and representation.

Just before COVID-19 shut down the city, Dyment — previously director of the Mercer Union Contemporary Art Center — and his partner, fellow artist Roula Partheniou, left Toronto for the quaint town of Sackville, NB. Despite his enthusiasm for his new home, Toronto is always on his mind.

Originally Dyment, who narrates the film, thought Dead Ringer was going to be an autobiographical project until he received a copy of the fantastic 2003 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, in which director Thom Andersen explores the film’s myths and realities explores City of Angels through clips from various films.

“It really got under my skin,” said Dyment. “Initially, I thought I would do the reverse of that: Toronto as a cheater, Toronto masquerading as other cities like New York and Chicago and Detroit, London and even Tokyo.”

He considered “telling local stories using footage from productions where Toronto is the location but not the backdrop.” To further push the topic, he wondered if he could reuse this footage and tell local stories.

Ambitious in scope, Dyment recognized that his project might never have an end date.

“The new episode of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ debuts today. I’ll watch it and there’ll be a clip being shot in Toronto and I’ll be like, ‘Damn, this is never going to stop,'” he said. “Casa Loma gave the film a tighter, sharper focus because I could tell the stories and then just tell the story again about this castle, which is a film in its own right.”

As part of Pellatt’s eccentric vision for Casa Loma, he had historical relics such as Napoleon’s desk and the coronation chair from Westminster Abbey recreated for his majestic home. “That’s the rich man’s folly,” said Dyment. “It’s almost as if it’s becoming a practical castle in the middle of the city in advance. So if you’re shooting at a sound stage on Eastern Avenue, you can just go over there and do some exterior shots of the castle, and then go inside and it’s playing a mansion in Texas or whatever.”

While about a third of Dead Ringer is devoted 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 he’s reviewed more than 3,000 clips from Toronto locations. He hasn’t seen most of the films in full, although he’s enjoying his newfound joy in heist films. A third of the clips made it into the documentary, the rest is in his archive for possible future projects.

“I feel like I know the city better now. If there’s a fraction, a sliver of the screen, where you can see a stretch of street, I can identify the neighborhood 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, you know it’s from Judith Krantz’s 1987 miniseries I’ll Take Manhattan.

It’s going to be a wild ride for those attending the premiere of Dead Ringer, as Casa Loma’s basement theater was used to film a scene from the 2005 moaning comedy The Pacifier, with Vin Diesel playing a Navy SEAL, his latest job is to protect a family with five children. Dyment can’t give more context because he’s never seen the whole movie, but he knows the basement serves as a sewer while the action star jumps in the water for a big rescue.

Dyment giggled. “The idea is that you sit in Casa Loma and watch a movie about Casa Loma where Casa Loma doesn’t play Casa Loma.”

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