Do you also miss those warm Istanbul nights, sitting on the patio of a mom-and-pop shop far away from İstiklâl Caddesi, eating hot pide (Turkish pizza) and drinking ayran with the rakı soon to follow?

Pizza Pide, in Leslieville, is a little gem where you can reminisce over amazing pide while listening to Turkish banter and tunes… though the Turkish music isn’t guaranteed. “We hear the same CD too much,” the owner said during my last visit. Fair enough.

The menu is extensive. The servings are huge. The pides are delicious.

Recommended: The Karisik, #18 and a bottle of ayran.

Sip the wine.
Feel the bite.
Hold onto it.
Drink it down.

Anticipate anything.
Everything. At once.
Focus on your breathing.

I remember an old-timer telling me
Whenever she walks in, and it’s the right she, you’re lucky.
He was a bit of a pervert.
Maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly.

Winter’s Bone

I know these people.

Grew up with them. Shared the same earth. Walked the same hallways at school. But we weren’t the same. They lived through poverty, hunger, gossip. Real struggle. I only observed it. And shrugged. Noticed it and mostly pretended not to. That’s what most people did. Nothing to move the story of these people in from the margins. Lives dismissed and looked down on, I know. But lives still witnessed. Not forgotten.

Life is unforgiving in Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone.” Conditions are cruel. The elements are unforgiving. Characters seem cast from stone as hard as the Ozark terrain beneath their feet. “Talking just causes witnesses,” we learn.

This is survivalism.

No one comes to this truth harder than Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence). She’s 17 and already weathered if not exactly weary or wise. Caring for a catatonic mother and raising two small siblings will do that. There’s no sign of dad. We soon we find out why.

He’s a self-taught methamphetamine cook but not much of a crook. Not much of a father, either. When the law brings him in, he puts the family home up as bond. Then he disappears. The local Sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) is sure he’s long gone, or worse, and tells Ree that if he doesn’t show, the house goes to the county. She says she’ll find him. So begins the film’s smouldering journey to the centre of this fractured family and the community that threatens to consume them.

Films like this are a pleasure to behold. Slowly, as Ree’s search deepens and her desperation grows, Granik peels away layers of the village’s underbelly. We sense the potential for conflict at every turn; every scene – even those featuring Ree and her young siblings – simmers with tension. If some outside force isn’t working against her, the pressure eating at Ree to do right by her little blood dependents threatens to swallow her up. Can she endure? We hope so. But never feel sure. Granik ensures that the answers we seek require the same patience and determination from her audience as she her young protagonist to project.

Much has been written about young Jennifer Lawrence. She appears in every scene in “Winter’s Bone,” supplying it not only an emotional centre but a physical one, too. She chops wood. Walks for miles. Skins a squirrel. And finds the patience to teach her siblings how to survive – in case she isn’t there to see it done. It’s the kind of gritty performance that easily invites exaggeration. Desperation, even. Lawrence keeps Ree observant and focused. Determined but vulnerable. She deserves her Oscar nomination. It won’t be her last.

The film also greatly benefits from the impeccable casting of its superior supporting performances. Unrecognizable at first glance, John Hawkes wears the scarred, sagging skin of Ree’s troubled uncle, Teardrop. This, too, is a complex character. A volatile compound of loyalty, menace, vice and dead desires coursing through the veins of a junkie left in the sun to dry out. Hawkes inhabits the man. Fearless character actress Dale Dickey is unforgettable as the hardened wife of a backwoods patriarch. That would be Ronnie ‘Stray Dog’ Hall who presents his pillar of whiskey and callous so powerfully the spectre of his influence alone outreaches his screen time.

Oscar wisely bestowed four nominations on “Winter’s Bone.” Its great oversight lies in denying Granik’s place among this year’s best directors. It is thanks to her that “Winter’s Bone” never strays from its inescapable duel sense of solitude and claustrophobia. She guides a cast of largely untrained stars, many of whom are from the Forsyth, Missouri shooting locations, who had never acted before – Hall among them. Perhaps most significantly she coaxes Lawrence’s unforgettable performance through the story’s every turn. A story she also co-adapted along with co-writer Anne Rosellini.

To date, “Winter’s Bone” is the lowest-grossing Best Picture nominee in almost twenty years. It’s earned nothing but acclaim since its rousing debut at Sundance, earning respectable distribution and more than tripling its modest budget. Its success confirms something close to my heart. Good films will prevail. Better yet, good films about places this real, and characters this vivid, will inspire countless more filmmakers to create their own.

****

Jennifer Lawrence – Ree Dolly
John Hawkes – Teardrop Dolly
Dale Dickey – Merab
Garret Dillahunt – Sheriff Baskin
Ron ‘Stray Dog’ Hall – Thump Milton

Directed by Debra Granik
From the novel by Daniel Woodrell
Running Time:  100 Minutes.

I had the aisle seat on the Royal Jordanian flight from Jordan to Turkey. George sat beside me, a 40-ish Palestinian living in Saudi Arabia, travelling to Istanbul on business. We spoke about his family, my family, business, Mid-East issues, global politics. As the food cart moved to the front of the plane, I pulled out a book from my backpack, excited to show him my special find from a bookstall in Amman (and by bookstall I mean street vendor with books on a bedsheet on the footpath). His eyes widened. “How do you know Handala?! You’re not from this region. And I don’t think most Palestinian youth even know Handala.”

I like Handala, the 10-year old boy with his back to the viewer, his hands behind his back. He is the silent observer of the satire, the irony, and the biting criticism drawn by his creator, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali.

“The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way.” ~Naji Al-Ali

Al-Ali was 10 when he left Palestine during the Nakba and said Handala would not grow old until all Palestinian refugees return home. Even if this happens (highly unlikely), Handala may never age. In 1987, Al-Ali was assassinated in London outside the offices of Al-Qabas, the Kuwaiti newspaper. His cartoons had won him enemies in Israel, the Palestinian leadership, and Arab regimes. His killer confessed to be working for both, the PLO and Mossad.

Photographer, Bassist, Cereal Enthusiast

I’ve known Kieran Meyn about five years. Seen him between schools, jobs, women. He could say the same about me. He has a good laugh; spontaneous and a little deeper than you’d expect. We met because, when he wants to, he takes great pictures. He plays a mean bass, too. Right now, he does it in a throwback punk band called Bathurst. They’re working on an album. What I’ve heard makes my heart pick up a beat.

We met over Moroccan chili and bruschetta and he let me ask him a few questions.

Why do you do the things you do?

My whole thing is just being as honest as you can. Everyday you shoot someone beautiful. Or work with an artist. One of the things I see the least is honesty. It’s kind of a commodity that’s lost its value. I’ve worked with some pretty decent corporate and music clients. It pays my bills and it’s great work and I love the people I work with. But it isn’t really fulfilling like I’m putting something out there that’s furthering anything. It’s perfectly valid. But I’d rather shoot a character study with someone who is beautiful because of who they are. My whole mission would be to try to capture that in a way that maybe someone hasn’t looked at before.

In terms of music, my band Bathurst is doing our full-length right now. I’ll admit, we go into the studio, we multi-track everything. Whatever. But I would love to have a little bit more soul on a record. We are trying really hard to make that. We don’t have glossy photo spreads or anything like that. Because, I mean…shit. Not one of us is pretty. It’s not going to do me any favours. I’d rather someone listen to my music because it reminds them of a time in their life when they cared deeply about something that maybe didn’t matter at all. And maybe they were fine with that. It wasn’t going to pay your bills. It wasn’t going to put food on your table. But you really wanted to go to that damn show. You were going to drink your face off. And you were going to party. And that was fine. Inside everyone is something that’s innately human and flawed and I think often there’s sort of a conscious rejection of that. But without some measure of honesty in your life, what have you got?

When you’re taking someone’s picture how do you know when you’ve captured some essence of that person?

There’s this quote I always come back to as a photographer. And as a sort-of life lesson. It comes from Annie Leibovitz. She has this book called Annie Leibovitz At Work. At the end there’s this Q+A section. Someone asks, ‘How do you know?’ She just goes, ‘It takes what it takes.’ And, really, that’s what it’s all about. My shoots don’t start when I pick up the camera. They start when someone shows me something real. Or something that I believe in, at least. Whether or not the things I believe in are real remains to be seen. If you’re working with a great actor, is everything you see on that screen, or are the characters that you fall in love with, real? Absolutely not. But to you they’re believable. So to my mind, if you can portray something that makes you feel something – whether it’s joy or absolute revulsion – I win. If I don’t make you feel something then I’ve failed terribly. That’s really where it starts and ends for me. I think really being able to understand people; really being able to get in someone’s headspace is the key to getting them to show you something real.

Where is the one place where you really feel like yourself?

There are two, actually. The first is my mother’s kitchen.

I was adopted. I won the lottery in that regard. And I think the way I was raised by my parents was different than the way people who are simply born into a family are raised. (But)I don’t know that that’s true. I only know one way.

My parents and I have been through a lot, as anyone who’s in their twenties probably should with their parents. If you haven’t, then you fucked up and so did they. (Laughs). You know, every time you meet someone new, you tell the same stories and all those little quirks come out? After a while, you kind of understand how they’re going to come out. You know the best way to spin them. But my parents… all the back story’s there. They know all the context. So it makes me feel like myself. My parents know pretty much everything there is to know about me. So I go to my parents’ place and all those things about being a photographer, being a musician, being “YOUR NAME” – it doesn’t exist. You’re just their son. And it makes you so comfortable. It’s really useful to have that context. It grounds me. The people who love you most see the worst sides of you. Because you let them. There are things that I’ve said and done to my parents that, in retrospect, you feel terrible for when you get older. But, at the time, you didn’t know better. Or, maybe you did and just refused to acknowledge that you knew better. So, for what it’s worth: Mom, I feel sorry for a lot of things. But there are still scars. And the fact that you can see all of them sort of counts for something. I have a profound love and respect for my parents that I don’t think I could ever really verbalize. When I go to their place, I know it’s home.

The other one. Find me any dirty VFW Hall on a Saturday night that’s rammed full of kids jumping on each other. That’s the person I’ve become. I grew up in places like that. That’s the parts your parents don’t see. When you’re out earning your own scars. So if I walk into some local show with some band playing too fast and too loud that can’t keep it together but the kids don’t mind and they’re loving it? I understand that. It’s not even a question of fitting in. Even if it’s not bands that I care for or want to see – and it’s awesome if it is – if I walk in and there are 500 kids going nuts in a room no bigger than this one, I know exactly how those kids feel. That’s why I feel comfortable there. Because I understand them.

What’s something you’ve learned from being around your parents?

(smiles)

I like that you just started to smile.

The first one is that the things you want and the things you need out of life are very rarely the same. You may or may not want to admit it. But until you understand that that’s the case, you’re a glutton for punishment. And that’s cool, too.

The other thing is that there are a million different types of people in the word. Each with their own history and their own story and their own way of doing things. And not all of them are ever really going to understand each other. But…trying is what counts. Trying counts for a lot. Even if you can’t make it happen and things don’t work out. A million times a day there are things I fuck up. But I’m gonna take a crack at it and fuck it up royally and walk up with a mess in my hands rather than having sat there and been like, ‘Well, Frank Oz told me that there is no try.’ That’s useless thinking. My parents are, in their own way, very different people. And, man, my mother’s PR Agent is raging right now. But no marriage is perfect. And my parents openly acknowledge that. But it’s good. They talk. And, really, that’s what counts. Whether or not you really understand the world at large, or yourself, or even the person you love – or why you love them – the fact that you try to make it work, and they’re trying to make it work…

Last one. Thinking about this, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to ask. But there’s an easy way to do it. Straight. What in your life scares you?

What in my life scares me…When I was younger – less so now, because you understand that it’s part of the contract you sign when you’re born – I used to have a really bad death fear. I was really unwilling to accept the idea of passing, essentially. Coming to grips not only with mortality but that, some day, everything that I’ve had, all the thoughts that I think are amazing, and all the things that I’ve done – at the end of the day it all boils down to zero. My mother told me once that the only way you can do anything with it, the only way you can have it be more than zero – even if it’s an iota – is to pass what you know along into the world. The things that matter to you. And hope that someone will keep that ethos alive. Even if it’s only your family members who survive you. I’m the last Meyn in my family. I’m the only offspring of three brothers. I’m kind of the dodo bird but, regardless of that, it’s a hell of a lot of pressure on a young kid. Despite all my, ‘Fuck yeah, punk rock!’ I want to be that boring guy. I want to settle down and have a wife. And have kids. And have a shitty home in the suburbs that I can bitch about. And talk about when I used to be cool. And have my kids not get it at all because I’m lame.

(Laughs).

But that’s sort of also what scares me. I live a freelance life and I play in a band. It may seem cool on paper. But cool doesn’t keep the heat on. Cool doesn’t keep the water on. Cool doesn’t do anything, really, other than it’s fun. When you’re 23 it’s great because having fun is what you’re all about. When you’re 45, cool is a lot less cool. It doesn’t really matter. One of my things is that I’ve dropped out of two post-secondary institutions. On paper, I’m a fucking failure. But, to me, I’m having a great damn time. But, if we’re being honest, one of the things that scares me the most is getting to that place when I’m 40-whatever and not being able to provide what I need to for my kids to have a great life. To be able to live happy. And, really, to be able to afford to grow up. I’ve been able to put some money away, which is great. But it’s not enough for a mortgage. It’s not enough to put clothes on a kid’s back. It’s not enough to feed three people. Hedonism’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong. But at a certain point you have to be able to look forward. That’s part of growing up. That, as much as I want it, is terrifying.

I think that last thing is losing my parents. Like most twentysomethings, we have that veneer of post-adolescence we try really hard to maintain. But, really, it’s made out of wall-board. You get it wet and it falls apart. And I’m aware of it. So it comes back to the first thing: death. Part of that contract is that I’m going to lose them. And whether or not I want to let go of it, the rug’s going to get pulled out. And it scares me. Because I don’t think I love anything in my life more than my parents. To lose that, and to lose it unwillingly, what’s scarier than that, really?

All you can really do is try to have respect for what they leave behind. Their ethos.

Honey on the keyboard. Mice in the wires. R&M trapped inside Tron. More or less.
We’re back now. Here… we… go…

We’re going to share something new tomorrow. We hope you like it. We really do.

It’s called 5 Questions. It’s a lot like it sounds.

We meet someone. Maybe we know them. Maybe we don’t.
We ask them five questions.
No more, no less. No rules, either.

What can you learn about someone in so little time? It might surprise you.
So might what you’re learning and from whom.

So come back tomorrow and see. We can’t wait to share.