Filmmaker Ron Mann. (Stan Behal, Sun Media)

Ron Mann has found fame to be malleable, literally varying from door to door.

"I was in Halifax at the Atlantic Film Festival and I had time, so I walked into a record store," the eclectic documentarian says in an interview at his creatively cluttered Mercer St. office.

"And I talked to the guy about jazz, and from my credit card, he recognized me as the guy who made Imagine the Sound," he says, referencing his early film about the free-jazz movement (Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon et al).

"Next door was a head shop, and I went in there -- me, the poster boy for pot (he's on the board of the National Organization For The Reform Of Marijuana Laws) -- and the proprietor recognized me, and we started talking about my movie Grass.

"And down the street was a comic-book store and I went in to buy a Love And Rockets comic. And I was recognized as the guy who made Comic Book Confidential. And I remember thinking -- 'All these stores are practically next to each other, but each of them only knows me for one film.'

"It's like all these satellites of people floating around, orbiting your universe. They just don't cross over. The only time they do is at film festivals."

Festivals such as Toronto's Hot Docs, which this year has a program titled Focus On Ron Mann, showcasing films from his early career -- the latest being 1999's Grass, detailing pot prohibition history, a film that has raised six-figures for the cause of decriminalization. Missing are recent works such as Go Further (his chronicle of Woody Harrelson's West Coast eco tour in a hemp-fueled bus), Tales of the Rat Fink (a bio of hot-rod detailing legend Ed "Big Daddy" Roth) and Know Your Mushrooms.

Included are some interesting earlier works such as Dream Tower (about the '60s Toronto "hippie-haven" Rochdale), Twist ("which is really about the transition from the '50s to the '60s, how we went from square to aware," Mann says) and Poetry In Motion, a collection of profiles Mann mordantly refers to as "my Dead Poets' Society," for the filming of now-deceased icons such as Burroughs, Ginsberg and Bukowski.

But perhaps the most interesting piece for Mann fans is Flak, a restored and re-edited film he made at the age of 16, about the plight of friends living in the asphyxiating shadow of a since-defunct gypsum plant near 401 and Weston Rd. It was amusing to hear he was "still working" on the film before I saw it, what with his reputation for getting films done later rather than sooner (he admits he's delivered prints "still wet" to festivals).

"I was a kid going to the Roxy Theatre a lot, working at Sam the Record Man," he says, citing two defunct T.O. landmarks. "I was the guy you could hum a song to, and I'd tell you what record you were looking for," says Mann, who is known for his soundtracks (Mark Mothersbaugh in Grass, The Sadies in Tales of the Rat Fink). And at that job, I made enough money to pay for my first real film."

As it must to any film wunderkind, Hollywood came calling. At one point in the '80s, Mann had a $1-million contract to come up with three scripts for Ivan Reitman.

"I wrote one script that was never made, a Bill Murray movie called Hoods in the Woods. Afterward, Ivan was making a movie called Legal Eagles and I was around as a production assistant. And I said, 'You might as well put me to use.' So they funded a behind-the-scenes doc which I used to shoot Comic Book Confidential.

"By day I'd be shooting Robert Redford, Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah, and at night I'd be using my crew to shoot artists like Wil Eisner and Jules Feiffer with the budget from the behind-the-scenes film.

"I never looked back. I left L.A. and became serious about documentaries. I remember arguments with (Mann's mentor, documentarian Emile) de Antonio about it, like, 'What are you doing working for the enemy?'

"But the truth is, I really like both Hollywood filmmaking and documentaries.

"I don't see it as oil and water."

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