Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The joke goes: "The women in Montreal are so beautiful. Where do you send all the ugly women? To Toronto?"
In the Hot Docs smash movie Let's All Hate Toronto, Brampton comedian Russell Peters tells the joke as evidence towards the animosity Canadians have for Toronto. Rob Spence and Albert Nerenberg, the directors of Let's All Hate Toronto were offended as well. They brought forth a petition to the Just for Laughs comedy festival to scrap the recurring joke, which is often told by American comedians to win over the Montreal crowd. Lo and behold, Just For Laughs agreed, and will be retiring the joke at the 25th annual Just For laughs festival this summer.
Let's All Hate Toronto will be a part of Comedia, the Just For Laughs film festival, this summer in Montreal. At the screening on July 14th there will be a ceremony to retire the joke.
“Just for Laughs is built on fresh, engaging and often cutting edge humour, and the joke is neither accurate or cutting edge," says Just for Laughs Comedia Producer, Paul Ronca. Of course, the festival doesn't censor comedians, but will discourage comedians from using the joke.
If you missed out on your chance to see the movie, you weren't alone. Lineups stretched around the block and even scalpers were offering movie tickets at jacked up prices outside the Bloor in April.
But don't you fear, because Let's All Hate Toronto will be screening at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto starting tonight, Thursday June 28 until July 3.
You already know we here at Torontoist love the movie, now see it for yourself. If you go to tonight's screening, the ever so handsome Mr. Toronto will be in attendance for a Q&A alongside his co-director Albert Nerenberg.
Rumour has it, if you go dressed as a zombie, you'll get free popcorn, too.
Photo by Nadine Spizzirri-Phillips from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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So, um, who's the babe?
Obviously she's an object that gets no say in our unconditional loving of her.
The directors mentioned this at the Q&A after the first Hot Docs screening.
One of them (I think it was Nerenberg) stated that he believed there was a time (as recently as the 80s) when that joke was true, in as much as—according to him—Toronto women were not good-looking until the past decade or so.
The fact that he'd say something like that to an audience of 800 people seemed to me less like self-deprecation and more like casual misogyny. This leads me to believe that their campaign to have the joke retired has much more to do with it being denigrating to Toronto than being denigrating to women.
An infinitely better Toronto-Montreal joke, also told at Just For Laughs, can be found here.
Jonathan,
I believe Albert said that we looked boring and puritanical, not ugly. he is quoted as saying the following: “Yes. Toronto did have a certain reputation for a lack of street style but that is no longer true.”
And if I remember correctly, he then talked about how the many different ethnicities in Toronto made the women even more beautiful on a wider range of spectrums.