London native Shianne Brown still remembers her disbelief when she heard, half a world away, that Toronto mayor Rob Ford had been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell is happening in Toronto? That\u2019s crazy,\u201d the filmmaker recalls thinking when the news broke in 2013.<\/p>\n
The late mayor quickly became an international spectacle, first for the bombshell allegation that he eventually admitted to, and then for the flaming rollercoaster of scandals that followed \u2014 which included allegations of public drunkenness and physically knocking over a city councillor.<\/p>\n
More than a decade later, Brown is the director behind \u201cTrainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem,\u201d a new Netflix documentary chronicling Ford\u2019s rise to power and his chaotic time in office. <\/p>\n
The episode, out Tuesday, is part of the streamer\u2019s \u201cTrainwreck\u201d anthology series, which, according to a logline, examines \u201csome of the most disastrous events ever to blow up in mainstream media.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to really tap into the human being that is Rob Ford, not the political headline that is Rob Ford,\u201d says Brown on a video call from London.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a side of this story where you just go full force into the scandal, but that didn\u2019t feel like it did the story justice or it did Rob Ford and his many supporters and his friends and family justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown asked Ford\u2019s brother, Ontario premier Doug Ford, to participate in the film but he \u201ckindly declined.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a tragic story because of the way he died and you\u2019ve really got to respect the family\u2019s wishes, particularly with a project like this, where you\u2019re going to tap into the scandals and the difficult side of the story,\u201d says Brown. Ford died of cancer in 2016 at age 46.<\/p>\n
The film weaves together archival footage and interviews \u2014 with local journalists including Robyn Doolittle and insiders from Ford\u2019s circle, including his former driver Jerry Agyemang \u2014 to trace the populist wave that swept Ford into office in 2010 and the public unraveling that made him infamous.<\/p>\n
Brown found Ford \u2014 who built a largely suburban base of voters with his tax-cutting, anti-establishment agenda \u2014 had a way of making the \u201cdisenfranchised feel emboldened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would often be the person who speaks to the cleaner, janitor, the people who keep our lives going but might not always get a thank you from everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says Ford\u2019s rhetoric of standing up for \u201cthe people\u201d against the \u201cdowntown elites\u201d resonates today, speaking to a broader global shift in how power is won.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a story about the underdog. I think we\u2019ve seen it in elections around the world,\u201d she says, pointing to the Brexit referendum in the U.K. and Donald Trump\u2019s first presidential election in the U.S., both of which many initially dismissed as unlikely outcomes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a story of listening to everyone around you, not just in your echo chamber, and understanding what are the issues that are impacting everyone, not just your own microcosm\u2026 I think that\u2019s something this story of Rob Ford brings in 2025 \u2014 this idea of, \u2018Let\u2019s listen to people who feel disenfranchised, marginalized and unheard.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
While some politicians employ a \u201cdivide and conquer\u201d approach, says Brown, \u201cI felt Rob Ford wasn\u2019t necessarily a person who had malicious, vindictive (intentions). He actually seemed like he was a man who wanted to help people, but half the city just didn\u2019t agree with his politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, says Brown, Ford was \u201cquite antagonistic to people. He went after the media.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film captures Ford\u2019s often hostile relationship with local reporters, showing him repeatedly lashing out at those he saw as adversaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if he just admitted it (smoking crack) first up, that would have really helped his cause. The back and forth with the media, calling them liars \u2014 going up against an establishment as big as the media is pretty tough, and I think that\u2019s partly where he\u2019d gone wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown says that the deeper she dug into the story, the more she saw how frequently cameras captured Ford spiraling in a cycle of substance abuse. Viral videos of his bizarre public behaviour made him easy fodder for late-night American TV. He even appeared as a guest on \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d amid the crack scandal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a man battling addiction in an intensely public arena. It\u2019s a disease. I really wanted it to come across that this was a man who was struggling and he had to confront the media every single day,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it were to happen today, would it be the same outcome? Would the media react in the same way? (Ford was in) a flash point in time where there weren\u2019t conversations about mental health as widely as there are today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown hopes the film makes people consider the circumstances that culminated in the now-notorious crack video.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to think about where he was at that point in his life. How did he even get in that situation in the first place, with people that aren\u2019t necessarily his friends? What led him to that moment?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really for us to judge and obviously I\u2019m telling this story, but I just hope it makes people think a bit differently about who he was and what happened to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025.<\/p>\n
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London native Shianne Brown still remembers her disbelief when she heard, half a world away, that Toronto mayor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-188891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114692885295929344","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}