After Hollywood production ground to a halt in Toronto in March amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, local restaurateur Fadi Hakim decided not to wait out the summer until A-list talent possibly returned to his popular old-school diner to shoot their Hollywood movies.
Hakim — co-founder of The Lakeview on Dundas Street West, which played itself in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz, starring Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams, and stood in as a New York coffee shop in David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis — instead invited budding Toronto filmmakers with a skeleton cast and crew to shoot their first or fourth short film inside his eatery. "We're a 24-hour restaurant.