Camera: Michael and Diane Budman host a private screening of Frank Marshall’s new doc in their Forest Hill home

By Frances McInnis | Photography by George Pimentel

February 29. It wasn’t quite musical chairs, but there was a flurry of seat swapping between courses during a dinner at the Forest Hill home of Michael and Diane Budman. The buzz was mostly about a new ESPN documentary by Holly­wood producer Frank Marshall that they’d just previewed in the basement theatre. Right to Play centres on Budman’s friend, Johann Olav Koss, the founder of the humanitarian sports organization of the same name. Things started slow as Budman spent a few minutes figuring out the DVD player, leaving the guests in the dark. (Martin Short couldn’t resist: “It’s a triumph, Frank.”) After dinner, Short nudged musician Stephan Moccio, his fellow judge on Canada’s Got Talent, toward the piano and delivered a semi-improvised, mostly nonsensical song that referenced bin Laden, deadbeat dads, dirty beards and Navy SEALS, and left the crowd howling. The moral of the story: when throwing a dinner party, always invite a comedian.

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