dining on those stories for the rest of your life. He never said a word about it besides, “I never shot a man in anger.” This was six months of my life when I was 21. And I know it changed my life. I was on the Jewish route to law school. In Grade 13 I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and I thought I’ve got to get off this road to law school. When I got into Osgoode Hall I said, OK, give me a year to travel. And had I gone to England and Switzerland
the coolest people you’ve ever met. I didn’t have to pay any price in Forest Hill by hav- ing long hair and smoking dope and trying to be cool—there was nothing pushing back against that. But they had a big pushback, you can imagine. And they accepted me in some way that made me think I could make a meal of this story. But why did I need that acceptance? Why didn’t I have that accept- ance? I didn’t think I was allowed to be this version of myself.
before the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. Listen to more conversations with Ralph Benmergui at thecjn.ca/ntkr. —Michael Fraiman, director, The CJN Podcast Network Ralph Benmergui: The first time we were ever in the same room together was in 1974, in the first place I lived outside of my parents’ house in Toronto: 312 Avenue Rd. I get there and see a guy sitting on a futon bed. There’s a Hindu tapestry thing on the wall, and he’s smoking a beedi cigarette from India. I’m at an age where if I’m 19 and you’re 22, 23, 24 years old it’s like— wow, this is a guy from another generation. Alan Zweig: What I remember is that I was going on a trip to Boulder, Colorado, to sit in at Naropa University. I took poetry classes with Allen Ginsberg. I was going to be gone for a couple weeks and my room was going to be free. And I had a waterbed, which I thought you and your then-girlfriend would enjoy spending a couple weeks on. That’s how I remember how we met. RB: OK, now I remember too, but I also recall you were sitting there in a very South Asian pose.
AZ: It was a moment when I seemed older and wiser—it was a moment that didn’t last.
RB: But do you think there’s any residue from all of those India experiences in your life today? AZ: It was 50 years ago this past fall, and I’m still in touch with the people I went there with, including two girls from Texas who were very important to my coming of age story, and the two guys who are cur- rently in Vancouver and Salt Spring Island. I suggested the five of us get together again because you could easily make a movie about it. One of us ended up in prison in Iran for trying to smuggle hash. One of us had a kid. One of us had a schizophrenic breakdown on the beach in Goa, and I put them on a plane back to Toronto. And one of them just said, “A long time ago I knew you for a very short time.” Lots of things have happened to all of us since. I compare it to my father who was in the Second World War. How did he deal with friends who died while flying in planes over Germany? You would have PTSD, but also
and Amsterdam instead of India, I think I would’ve come home and gotten the law degree. Somehow on the road in India I was like, OK, I don’t have to do what’s being expected of me for the rest of my life. RB: You had a Dharma Bum thing going on. We can look at life differently than the way we do. AZ: And that’s what happened. These two ladies from Texas I mentioned, Lisa and Jenny, were like older sisters to me. I’ve found that people from repressive places, if they escaped those places, they’d be
I went to India again the next year because I didn’t know what to do. I figured I’d go to York University for filmmaking, then a guy there told me Sheridan College in Oakville had more of what I wanted. York people made Hollywood films, narrative films. The teachers at Sheridan were experimental. RB: And that’s where we intersected again, your student movie called The Boys , which was about four friends hanging out togeth- er. But why did you choose me to play one of them?
AZ: I was just casting—I didn’t know how much
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