Oddballs - a film by Robert Fothergill
BW 1966 16mm

A couple of lads have fun knocking their croquet balls about Toronto in 1966.
Here is a link to the film maker http://www.playwrightscanada.com/playwrights/robert_fothergill.html


For people who lived in Toronto in this era it is a fascinating look at how things have changed. And for filmmakers it is a good lesson in how to entertain people on a buget of less than $1 million.

A NOTE FROM ROBERT FOTHERGILL

Re Oddballs – I shot it in the summer of 1966 with a fellow graduate student at Massey College, Sehdev Kumar, (referred to in the credits as Sami Gupta).

It began as nothing but a little home movie on super 8, but finding we had access to a 16 camera – an old wind-up Kodak Cine Special, borrowed from Ryerson, we decided to take it more seriously.

The bearded scholar in the little group of spectators is the novelist Robertson Davies, at the time the Master of Massey College.

The musical accompaniment was provided by a trio assembled by Peter Goddard who went on to be a music critic for the Toronto Star.

The (quite amateurish) little film – which had cost under $500 to make –was actually shown on the CBC-TV in 1967 – in a very marginal time slot, I might add.