THE TROTSKY WAS one of the biggest, best-received movies at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
That its director was a 31-yearold from Montreal makes this fact somewhat surprising, especially considering that his leading man, Jay Baruchel,is slight and gawky and not the most obvious casting choice for a fiery, romantic film star.
However, when examining the cast of The Trotsky a bit further — the film is a funny, rollicking anti-capitalist screed somewhat in the manner of Rushmore meets Warren Beatty’s Reds — its success becomes a little more obvious.
Because along with Baruchel, Emily Hampshire and local actress Liane Balaban, is Saul Rubinek, a stand-out on NYPD Blue and Law & Order who helped launch Quentin Tarantino with his flare for Tarantino-esque dialogue in True Romance. A film and television veteran,Rubinek says he learned his craft while living in the Annex and that he hit his first marks on the stages north of Bloor Street.
“It was really a very fertile ground,” says Rubinek, 61, who recently wrapped the highly anticipated Barney’s Version in Montreal, acting opposite Dustin Hoffman and Paul Giamatti in Mordecai Richler’s hilariously grumpy classic.
“My father was a stage actor in Europe and, living in the Annex, I took to acting like a fish does to water.”
The story of a young high school rebel convinced he’s the second coming of Leon Trotsky, The Trotsky, directed by Jacob Tierney, is a coming-of-age story in which the hero doesn’t just want to get the girl, but he also wants his classmates to unionize and stand up for their rights. In the picture, Rubinek plays Baruchel’s agitated though ultimately compassionate father, a man who has also learned a thing or two about the value of defending his ground.
Rubinek was born in a refugee camp in Germany, the son of Holocaust survivors,and he started acting when the family moved to Ottawa when he was a little boy. His dad had been a Yiddish stage actor and theatre manager before the war.Rubinek moved to the Annex at 17 and began working for the CBC and performing in the hippie-friendly coffee shops of Yorkville.
“Anybody who was anybody in the world came through there. Bruce Cockburn was a regular,”recalls Rubinek with a laugh. “God knows what was going on there. God knows if there was drugs, but all I do remember is that my parents weren’t immediately too thrilled.”
Of course, if Rubinek’s parents had cause for concern, the young actor squelched those worries when he landed a gig at the Stratford Festival in 1970.
“I bummed around Europe and auditioned for Stratford for some reason, and when I got in, it was completely a fluke,” Rubinek says.
“I sang a bunch of songs and told some jokes,and I was a member for a year and then quit and came back to Toronto because it was more exciting.”
A restless actor and playwright who would also go on to direct, Rubinek became involved in experimental theatre, working with what’s now Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and forming the cutting-edge Toronto Free Theatre group.
“It’s funny to look back on what was once the most adventurous theatre in North America is now Mr. Green Jeans in the Eaton Centre,” says Rubinek, who sounds almost wistful when recalling the free-living, devilmay- care days of his rebellious youth.
Rubinek eventually heard the siren call of New York, and his work with the famed Public Theatre would lead to breakout performances on iconic shows like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. Back then,Rubinek was still dividing his time between the Annex and Manhattan, and he sees these years as the foundation of his burgeoning film and television career.
“I look back on the beginning of my true life in the theatre in Canada as being back then,” says Rubinek of his work in the mid-1970s and the relationship he formed with Toronto.
The relationship grew so strong, Rubinek says, that his parents eventually moved from Ottawa to North York to be close to him, his wife and their two kids.
“My parents had an apartment at Steeles and Bathurst and, with us in the Annex, bringing my kids to their place for Passover fills me with memories of my mother’s cooking and my father’s joy,”says Rubinek,who has been married for 20 years to his wife Elinor and has two children, a 15-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.
“I consider myself an extremely fortunate person because I get to make a living doing what I love, and that’s being a success in any language.”
Success, for Rubinek, is tied into family and pride in his adopted home country. He says making The Trotsky was one of the easiest decisions of his film career because not only was he friends with the director’s father, the famed producer Kevin Tierney,but he’d actually played the father to his son Jacob in a 1986 film called Obsessed.
“I always thought he was a gifted, awesome person,” says Rubinek of the younger Tierney, who directed The Trotsky “and so when his script arrived, I put it on the top of my pile and I think I gave him the fastest yes! of my whole career.”
At this point, Rubinek’s career has become one for the ages. It’s no surprise, then, that his younger castmates on The Trotsky and even his director turned to him for advice on the Montreal set.
“Acting is a funny business because nobody can predict who’s going to be or stay some kind of star,” he says. “It’s like wondering who’s going to win the lottery or get hit by a truck, but I just know there was a lot of memorable talent working together on that great little film.”
Great films, terrific stage shows and memorable television performances have defined Rubinek’s career. He was unforgettable as a drug-huffing film producer in True Romance and, along with his work on Frasier, Law & Order, Warehouse 13 and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the actor calls his current work on Barney’s Version the most rewarding professional experience of his life.
“Barney’s Version is a work of art for the ages,” says Rubinek. “I actually did a three-hour radio show for CBC playing Barney once, and it’s still probably available in the CBC sales department …of course, CBC’s sales department is probably three guys in a basement playing pinochle, but it’s there if you really look.”
In the new film, currently in postproduction and directed by Richard Lewis, Rubinek shot in Rome, and he says the picture is going to delight the legion of rabid Mordecai Richler fans — a group he knows well, because he’s also a member.
“Barney’s Version was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, and of course it’s a work I’ve adored for years,” Rubinek says. “My entire career has really been a joy, and when I look back on everything, my family and Toronto, it really is with this overwhelming joy.”