MONTREAL — One honor down, one to go.
Veteran producer Alan Ladd Jr. is set to be feted with a gala dinner Friday night by the Montreal World Film Festival after receiving a lifetime achievement award here Thursday.
Cameras flashed and the audience cheered as Ladd Jr. came onstage opening night to receive a personal tribute from festival director Serge Losique.
“I don’t have seven houses, like John McCain,” he joked when summing up his success as a producer and studio head, something he attributed largely to the directors and actors who worked in his movies.
Among the other Friday highlights in Montreal is Brent Fidler’s Edgar Allan Poe biopic “Poe: Last Days of the Raven,” which was scheduled to receive its world premiere.
Montreal’s offbeat nature also will be on display with the world premiere of “Died Young Stay Pretty,” Eileen Yaghoobian’s documentary about underground indie rock concert posters.
The film portrays subculture giants like Art Chantry, Brian Chippendale and Print Mafia, who create idiosyncratic concert posters on the cheap, and then often sell them online to fans.
Additionally, Marcia Gay Harden will be in Montreal over the weekend to publicize Mary Haverstick’s “Home,” while Tony Curtis arrives later this week to receive his own lifetime achievement award.
The Montreal festival runs through Sept. 1.
