Post City Magazines | September 2008, Ari Lantos by Adam Nayman

Ari Lantos

This movie mogul in the making talks to us about his hot new festival film and following in his famous father’s footsteps

by Adam Nayman

AT A GLANCE, it would seem that the most obvious angle on Ari Lantos would be “like father, like son” — to simply cite the Midtown resident and film producer’s storied lineage and talk about how the family business flows through his veins. But over coffee near Lantos’s Davisville offices, the twenty-seven-year-old producer is more eager to talk about the differences between himself and his internationally renowned pop.

“At this point, my goals are very different from my father’s,” he says. “[Robert] has the films he’s going to make over the next seven years all lined up already. For me, it’s a constant grind, sifting through material to find the next great little project.”

The great little project of the moment, meanwhile, is slated for a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It’s called Real Time, and it could be the most accurately titled thriller since Snakes on a Plane.

Written and directed by Canadian Film Centre graduate Randall Cole, it tells the story of a young gambler (Jay Baruchel) given one hour to live by the older hitman (Randy Quaid) hired to do him in, and it unfolds in — you guessed it — real time.

“The stakes are high right off the bat,” says Lantos, whose selfstarted production company, APB Pictures, is co-financing the film. “There’s this young kid who basically has an hour and change to take care of everything in his life before he dies.”

The minute-for-minute gimmick seems savvy in this age of Fox’s 24, but Lantos bristles at the comparison. “I didn’t get involved in the project in an attempt to piggyback off the success of 24,” he says firmly. “I also don’t want people to get the impression that we’re operating on that sort of budget. The real-time nature is similar, but it’s more of a character piece.”

As such, it needed an actor of some substance for the lead role. “[Quaid] is a great actor,” says Lantos admiringly. “I’ve said all along that we were lucky to secure him for this. He was high on our list, he loved the script, he liked our director’s first feature, and within a week and a half, the deal was done.”

This should not give the impression, however, that making Real Time was a snap.

The two things a movie needs most — time and money — were hardly in abundance. “To get a proper movie made for a million dollars is very difficult,” explains Lantos.

“Production was difficult because we shot in Hamilton, and I was shuttling back and forth between the cities. I’d drive in, work for 12 hours and drive back,” he says.

By contrast, post-production was a breeze, and the hope is that Real Time will find a receptive audience at TIFF.

“Toronto has become a glitzy launching pad for Hollywood movies, and smaller movies can get lost in the mix,” Lantos says. “That being said, Toronto is all our hometown, and it would be a cool place to premiere our first feature.”

Lantos is in a position to talk tough about TIFF because he’s been there before: his first credit as a producer was on Simon Ennis’s clever 2005 short The Waldo Cumberbund Story. Prior to that, Lantos attended McGill University, graduating in 2003 with a degree in English cultural studies. He worked briefly in distribution at Alliance Atlantis and filmed some behind-the-scenes material for the DVD release of Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies (which Lantos Sr. produced) before making the decision to enter the family business — on his own terms.

“There are two things I’d like to do,” he says. “I want to build my company, to make films that are successful and generate revenue. That means making films that appeal to as wide an audience as possible, which is obviously not something my dad cares about. The other side of it is to make films that nobody’s made before.”

When asked if there’s a particular type of script that appeals to him, he laughs, “Yeah, good ones. They’d have to be possible on a reasonable budget, too. You’re not going to be able to make Mission: Impossible III the first time out.” While one might argue Mission: Impossible III wasn’t worth making, period, Lantos has a point. At this stage of his career, it’s probably advantageous to stay under the radar.

He talks like somebody who knows how to play the game and doesn’t mind admitting that he’s been carefully absorbing information for years. “I have been around [the business] for a long time. I have the benefit of learning and gathering information from somebody who has it figured out,” he says.

The other thing he’s inherited from his father is a predilection for water polo.

Before leaving for Montreal, Lantos was a member of Canada’s junior national squad. “That was a father-son thing. My background on my father’s side is Hungarian, and water polo is the biggest sport in Hungary. They take it very seriously. There’s been this battle back and forth with Serbia for world supremacy in the sport. They’re right next to each other, so it’s a long-standing rivalry — like the Maple Leafs and the Senators,” he says. “Kids there get pushed into water polo like they get pushed into hockey here.”

A nagging shoulder injury subsequently forced him into what he calls “semi-retirement,” although he will — when pressed — state that he could take his dad, one-on-one.

He takes a more self-deprecating tack when asked about his participation in the National Post’s annual “Worthy 30,” which surveys the city’s most eligible young bachelors.

“I was approached by Shinan Govani. He said he was doing his annual thing, and I had just broken up with my girlfriend of about a year, so I figured why not. I did the interview, which was all ridiculous questions. Then they called and asked if I would be part of the photo shoot.

We met at the St. Lawrence Market, which I thought was a bizarre place for a photo shoot. The theme was “meat market,” of course. The pictures were pretty bad. The article came out, and because it was alphabetical, my name was near the top. It made it look like I had fought to be at the beginning.”

Not that he’s bitter — at least not really. “It turned into more of an opportunity for my friends to heckle me than anything else,” he says. “My mother was all excited and sent the story to my relatives. And that’s it. It’s not like there was a flurry of e-mails from horny females.”

The perils of pin-uphood aside, Lantos says life away from the office is quiet — which is how he likes it. A Forest Hill kid since birth, he praises his neighborhood’s idyllic qualities: “I live on Russell Hill Road, and the Forest Hill village is just a block away. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. “It was great place to grow up. And it’s a safe place to grow up. I mean, I can walk my dog at three in the morning.”

Understandably, Lantos is playing his future endeavours close to the vest. But he does say that, for the moment, he’s more comfortable behind a desk than behind a camera. Despite his background in film studies, he has no desire to be a producer-director.

“It’s not something that I’m entertaining at this point,” he says. “Let me master production before I try to do anything else. This is a career that takes a long time to get successful at. I don’t want to get my hands into too many cookie jars. I want to do one thing at a time.”