PW: There are two cities in the world (the other is Paris) that got it and I don't understand it. There is such a love affair with the film . . . in Winnipeg, there are people who got that piece of art.

SK: I have to say if it wasn't for the people of Winnipeg this movie would never have gotten made. When I saw the level of affection people had for Paul, I said, “I can't be the only person on earth with this level of affection for Paul.” This was an amazing event.

Q: I have to ask you about your signature hairstyle, that long blond shag you wore in the '70s.

PW: Me and Hayley Mills. I ripped her off. It's just the way it grew in — the Swan hairstyle.

Her ’nuff-said reply came in response to my query about how the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) eighth annual Talent Lab had gone. Ouardiri and three other budding Montreal filmmakers – Omar Majeed, Catherine Chagnon and Mark Slutsky – are part of the four-day workshop that puts them and 20 other participants in close quarters with their idols.

Among Talent Lab’s guest speakers this year are Gus Van Sant, documentary icons Frederick Wiseman and Alfred Maysles, Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees Of Separation) and Davis Guggenheim (whose U2 doc From the Sky Down was the opening film of this year’s festival). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – one at a time:

“(De Palma) was awesome,” Slutsky said, explaining how the director of such films as Scarface and Mission: Impossible had spent an hour with the group, sharing insights and telling stories. “He’s very, very smart – he’s obviously got a huge brain; and he’s pretty outspoken and honest.”

“He gave us notes,” Chagnon said, “very direct notes.”

“He said, ‘You have no excuses,’ ” Majeed continued. “‘You should all be going out and making movies.’”

Slutsky: “He also said, ‘If you can’t put a movie on a credit card, get financing from friends or make a movie with no money – give up!’ ” (General laughter.)

Her ’nuff-said reply came in response to my query about how the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) eighth annual Talent Lab had gone. Ouardiri and three other budding Montreal filmmakers – Omar Majeed, Catherine Chagnon and Mark Slutsky – are part of the four-day workshop that puts them and 20 other participants in close quarters with their idols.

Among Talent Lab’s guest speakers this year are Gus Van Sant, documentary icons Frederick Wiseman and Alfred Maysles, Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees Of Separation) and Davis Guggenheim (whose U2 doc From the Sky Down was the opening film of this year’s festival). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – one at a time:

“(De Palma) was awesome,” Slutsky said, explaining how the director of such films as Scarface and Mission: Impossible had spent an hour with the group, sharing insights and telling stories. “He’s very, very smart – he’s obviously got a huge brain; and he’s pretty outspoken and honest.”

“He gave us notes,” Chagnon said, “very direct notes.”

“He said, ‘You have no excuses,’ ” Majeed continued. “‘You should all be going out and making movies.’”

Slutsky: “He also said, ‘If you can’t put a movie on a credit card, get financing from friends or make a movie with no money – give up!’ ” (General laughter.)

Despite Kessler’s initial plan to stay behind the camera, Williams coaxes him out, and Kessler becomes part of the story. He follows Williams from small hotel gigs to celebrity golf tournaments to a stadium show in the Philippines — where the downright manic and nervous director must accompany Williams on a six-hour bus ride through a terrorist-infested jungle to get to a gig. During this expedition, their strained relationship helps shape a candid examination of an artist who fought against his own drug-fuelled ego run amok and then became more in love with the attention than the music.

Paul Williams Still Alive is both a rollicking pop-culture flashback filled with great television and performance clips, and the humorous journey of an awkward documentarian and his reluctant subject. Yet it ultimately evolves into the touching tale of a man who has made peace with the beast that fame and celebrity awoke.