Happily living in Vancouver

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Award-winning actor Ben Ratner appears in four films at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival. While he only makes a cameo in Silvio Pollio’s mob-related comedy Guido Superstar: The Rise of Guido, Ratner has substantial roles in Carl Bessai’s Fathers and Sons, Bessai’s Repeaters and Katrin Bowen’s Amazon Falls.

Ratner said he has worked with Bessai a few times, including in Mothers and Daughters, which was voted audience favorite at last year’s film festival. “I loved the way he made that film,” said Ratner, “which was really having faith in his actors to come up with ... content, scene by scene. It was very much an improvised film, but the lead characters had fleshed out a storyline, so you went into a scene knowing basically what you had to accomplish, which is a great way of working.”

When Bessai mentioned that he was going to be doing Father’s and Sons, which comprises four very different stories about middle-aged men and their fathers, Ratner said he immediately wrote down some ideas “on a napkin” and gave them to Bessai at the party after Mothers and Daughters. “I don’t know if he kept that napkin or if he blew his nose in it, or what he did, but, anyway, we shot the film the next year.”

In Amazon Falls, Ratner plays a director who inadvertently helps propel a delusional aging actress’ downfall. “Sometimes a director, quite often actually, a director offers people parts that don’t come through.... You get inspired by people and you go, ‘Hey, I have something for you. We should do this.’ And then, time goes by and you write another draft and you realize, ‘Oh, that character’s gone,’ or ‘That character needs to be older than this person,’ or ‘That character needs to be a man instead of a woman.’ And those loose promises you made begin to fall away, and it happens a lot. That’s how I tried to approach that character, less as a manipulator than as somebody who is genuinely excited by the people he wanted to work with.”

In an entirely different role, Ratner plays a counselor at a drug rehab centre for young offenders in Repeaters. He described some positive aspects of his character, but said, “the audience should identify with the lead characters in detesting my character.... It’s an authority figure and it’s a film about young people who want to be free and I represent one of the people who’s preventing that from happening, and they get their revenge on me.”

Given his busy careers – acting, writing, directing, teaching – and what must be an insane schedule at times, Ratner said, “I love what I do. I love doing the things I do.... [T]he teaching is probably the most balanced of all these things because it’s consistent. My studio is right across the street from my home and, four times a week, I walk across the street and sit down in my rocking chair for five hours, and I know where I’m going to be and I know what I’m going to be doing, and I know that my students really value our time in there, and I know I can be effective in helping them, and that’s a very balancing thing. We never know exactly what’s going to happen during the class, but we’re all there for the same reason.”

Prior to acting, Ratner had a few other performance-related careers. He was an amateur boxer in his teens and fought at the national level, however, he said, “A Jewish kid from Spadina in 1936 [had] a shot at being a great fighter, but a Jewish kid from Kitsilano in 1980, not so much.”

A Muhammad Ali fan since age 10 or 11, Ratner finally met Ali at the release of Vancouver filmmaker Pete McCormack’s documentary Facing Ali, “which was an incredible experience after so many years of him and his spirit and his humor and his courage and his showing what somebody can do, not just on an athletic level but on a social level and an entertainment level.”

After boxing, Ratner spent a number of years playing music. He was in the band L. Kabong – named after a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon. They had some success, opening for Bryan Adams at the Pacific Coliseum, for example. But, said Ratner, “I wasn’t a very good bass player ... and I wanted to find my way into something where I felt more authentic. I’m more of a verbal type than a musical type, so I started doing stand-up comedy and studying acting. Stand-up was my first real [experience] being up there by myself and just talking to a crowd. I did that semi-professionally for a year or two and then realized that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my years in nightclubs, comedy clubs or otherwise, dealing with trying to win over crowds who might not necessarily be there to listen to you.” So Ratner wrote a one-man show that he did at the Fringe festival, which led into acting.

Currently, Ratner said he is working on a show for the Sci-Fi Network called Eureka, “playing a wacky mad scientist, which is fun.” He’s just finished a show called Facing Kate, playing a “hustling attorney,” and recently worked with Canadian director Anne Wheeler on The Boxer and the Kid, playing a high school teacher. “This is what happens as you get on,” said Ratner. “When I started doing these kinds of films, I was in my early 30s and, now into my 40s, a lot of these films are focused on younger people ... so you start playing the teacher or the authority figure or the parent.”

His first time playing a parent in a feature, he said, was in the Canadian independent film Mount Pleasant. The transition hasn’t been hard for him. “The films I have done have never been based on youth,” he explained. “[For] some people, it’s about being a beautiful, young specimen. For me, though I’ve done a lot of lead parts, they’ve been more character leads, they’ve been more about the essential qualities of these characters or the comedic aspects of these characters.... It wasn’t like the phone stopped ringing because I was getting wrinkles. It wasn’t a situation like that. I’m not that kind of actor. I think, probably, the older I get, the more opportunity there will be.”

Recognizing that he might have had more opportunities if he had stayed in Los Angeles, where he lived briefly, or moved to Toronto, Ratner said, “I found what I really needed to do was to be happy and be creative, and I found that in Vancouver.... I’ve had so many students who I know I really helped them realize their dreams and I really helped them feel good about themselves and succeed, not only in their careers but succeed more in their lives, and I get a lot of satisfaction from that. And I can’t do that if I’m just running around with a suitcase looking for the next big part.”

He added that he also has other passions, one of which is painting, he said, adding with a laugh, “And it’s hard to do large-scale, abstract oils in a hotel room in Phoenix when you’re working on a movie. I still have great ambition as an actor, and I’ll always want to push myself further, looking for those big roles.... But I’m very happy just being creative, feeling like I’m being useful and like I have respect.

“It’s like my friend Babz Chula, who passed away last year. Babz was a very well-respected, deeply loved person, who never broke through as an actor on an international level, but the only way you could describe her was as a success. I’ve got a lot of inspiration from that, kind of redefining what is success.”

About being Jewish, Ratner said, “I think being Jewish, for somebody like myself, who wasn’t brought up with a lot religion, is something that you’re not even aware of how much it’s affected you until, maybe, you get older and you start just looking at your life.... I think one of the ways being Jewish has affected me is it’s made me very tenacious and it’s made me a survivor. I’ve been an actor for 20 years ... and I just refuse to give up, I refuse to go away.

“I’ve developed four television shows for networks, and I’ve done that without the credentials. I’ve done that just on tenacity and passion, being able to walk into a room and really feel like I can convince people of things and fight for things.

“I made a feature that I wrote and directed and co-produced and co-starred in, and everyone says you can’t do that, you’re not a director, you don’t know how to do that, and I just fought for it and stayed tenacious.... I think that’s something that a lot of different cultures bring to the table, but Jews are famous for it. Jews are fighters and Jews are survivors, and I’ve been surrounded with relatives from the Old Country, old Russian Jews, who, these ladies lived to be like a hundred years old, and they’re fighters and they’re tough and they don’t give up, and they stay loyal and true and committed, and that’s been a great example for me.

“So it’s not the religion necessarily, but the culture and the example that’s been set, not just by my family, but by other Jews. Like I said, boxers in the ’30s.... They were tough and they didn’t give up. I take a lot of inspiration from that, as well as [from] a lot of my favorite actors, especially somebody like Dustin Hoffman, who portrays the kinds of characters I like playing, which are underdogs who refuse to lose. Part of that is that Jewish attitude of knowing no one’s going to hand you anything and, if you want to get something, you have to fight that much harder or ... be that much smarter, that much tougher, so I think that’s had a big effect on me.

“I remember at Babz’s memorial, speaking about her being a Jew, and Babz was like me, she wasn’t religious, but I remember saying, she ate like a Jew and she talked like a Jew and she laughed like a Jew. It wasn’t something I was planning on saying but I remember this thought just hitting me, and taking a breath and saying, she fought like a Jew. She fought cancer for eight years and ... I think she was just channeling all those tough old Russian Jewish ladies in her past and further back, and that’s something I’m really proud of. I think that ... even though, like I say, you won’t see me in synagogue, the film I made, the family was Jewish and Fathers and Sons, the character was Jewish, and the TV series I’m developing now, the character is Jewish. It’s something that I keep bringing to my work and that certainly, to me, shows that it’s something I’m proud of and something I identify with, even if it’s not something that is religious in practice. It’s something more that’s in your soul.”

VIFF runs from Sept. 30-Oct. 15. For the entire festival schedule and ticket information, visit viff.org.

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