Side Note

This Rob Ford movie just looks weirder and weirder

There are few substantial details available about Run This Town, an upcoming film about “the inner workings of a city seen through the eyes of the interns and assistants that run it,” according to IMDB, that takes place during Rob Ford’s time as Toronto mayor. What we do know about the movie has already raised intrigue. The first round of confused Twitter reactions came when producers announced that actor Damian Lewis was cast as the disgraced former mayor, despite the fact that the two look nothing like each other. Then, Robyn Doolittle, a Toronto Star journalist who investigated the infamous video of Ford smoking crack, publicly called out Run This Town’s producers for casting male actor Ben Platt in the film’s main reporter role. Platt responded that the character he is playing is fictional and “does not attempt to co-opt [Doolittle’s] narrative,” but the entire incident just cast further doubt on the film, still in its early stages.

Now, paparazzi photos have given the public its first glimpse of Lewis as Ford, and let’s just say they’ve done nothing to tone down the air of suspicion surrounding the entire project. Photos of the actor in complete Rob Ford costume in one photo, and only in prosthetic face makeup in the other, are what 2018 nightmares are made of. Apparently, Ford is not a main character in the film, but its writer and director Ricky Tollman told the CBC earlier this month that he wanted to make "a sympathetic portrait" of the mayor. Either way, the photos of Lewis as Ford offer one guarantee: plenty of people will keep an eye on the movie just to see how they go through with this whole… thing.