CALLING ALL REDHEADS WHO ARE MAD AND MISUNDERSTOOD
TORONTO STAR, Publishes Friday August 6 2010
By Susan Pigg, Business Reporter
Gareth C. Scales and Aaron Champion call all redheads to join them for a summit later this month, which the pair will include in their documentary on the plight of gingers worldwide.
Gareth Scales is a self-described “beacon” who stands out in a crowd — partly because he towers well over six feet, but primarily because of his red hair.
Scales, 34, knows from first-hand experience that growing up a ginger comes with its own special pain and stupid questions, so he’s calling on other like-haired people to join him at 1 p.m. Aug. 22 at Trinity-Bellwoods Park for what he’s dubbed the Toronto Redhead Summit.
“I’ve been called ‘fire crotch,’ says the 34-year-old Toronto film editor. “I’ve had people argue with me when I tell them I’m not from Ireland. People just assume I must have bad temper.”
He pauses.
“I’m sure some people would agree with that…,” he says with a laugh.
Scales is so fascinated by redheads, he and fellow filmmaker Aaron Champion, 25, have been interviewing redheads around the world for a documentary called “Better Red Than Dead.”
The Toronto summit is expected to be a key part of the doc and a chance to get a Canadian perspective on why redheads are seen as such standouts.
Scales has done his research: It’s not that redheads are more angry, it’s that their pigmentation tends to make them look flushed, he says. They are more prone to sunburns, less sensitive to pain but also less affected by anesthetic, “which must be why I hate going to the dentist,” he says.
“I never would have thought of making a documentary myself, but the minute I found out what Gareth was planning I thought there are so many stories we could tell that are universal to redheads,” says Champion.
Scales had been kicking around the idea for more than a decade, but became especially motivated after he married his dark-haired wife a year ago and realized the chances of their X and Y chromosones creating a child who looked just like his father were far-fetched at best.
“I felt like I was hurting the cause.”
He’s been touched by how emotional some of the interviewes have become, especially those from Britain and Australia where redheads seem especially singled out for abuse.
He met one Brit in a New York bar who came close to tears recalling how he moved to America and became a wealthy Wall St. broker just to show the kids back home that he wasn’t a geek.
While redheads have always been the butt of jokes, Scales believes there’s more of it now than ever, thanks to the 2007 Australian study claiming they are headed for genetic extermination in the next 100 years.
He’s shocked how South Park’s kick-a-ginger segment is still playing out in some schoolyards and the shockingly violent video, Born Free, by Sri Lankan/British rapper M.I.A., which features redheaded men being rounded up by police and then hunted down like animals.
Toronto playwright Johnnie Walker is among the 50 of so redheads headed for the summit with lots to say. His play, Redheaded Stepchild, opens at the Factory Studio Theatre August 15.
“I knew all about Johnny Walker Red at an unusually young age,” quips the flaming redhead. “Kids would tease me all the time, but when I got to university, everyone thought it was a really cool name.”
Walker figures, at the least, the summit will offer an interesting show — a park full of shocking red and a peanut gallery of fascinated bystanders with most basic blond and brunette.
“I think that (extinction) report is just bad science,” says Walker.
“Based on my very limited knowledge of genetics, I don’t think we’re going anywhere anytime soon.”
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