When Marcel Met Cameron

French author Marcel Proust is famous for his gentle remembrance of things past, his eponymous character-revealing questionnaireﾅ and his love of madeleine cookies.
No word on his preferred biscuit, but since 2012, Cameron Bailey has been the Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). While brilliantly burnishing the Festival’s international reputation as THE place for glittering premieres and glittery celebrities, he still manages to keep it real: Cameron has confessed to a secret love for films that include car chases, gunfights, empty landscapes and family dinner scenes. That’s a wrap.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? A perfect hotel suite in an unknown city.
2. What is your greatest fear? Irrelevance.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Fear.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Arrogance.
5. ‘ ‘Which living person do you most admire? Agn’s Varda.
6. What is your greatest extravagance? Driving a car. Also eating meat.
7. What is your current state of mind? Triumphant.
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Order.

9. On what occasion do you lie? Answering questionnaires.
10. What is the quality you most like in a person? Generosity.
11. When and where were you happiest? In Barbados, writing.
12. Which talent would you most like to have? Musicianship.
13. Who are your favourite writers? Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Kim Thuy, Elvis Costello, Bob Marley
14. Who is your hero of fiction? Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
15. Who are your heroes in real life? Nurses. My mother was one.
16. What is your motto? “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”