Brian Johnson has been with the Toronto International Film Festival from the beginning. In its early days, Johnson literally held the festival in his hands, schlepping film cans from cinema to cinema, delivering prints to grateful theatre managers and even more grateful audiences. And while his first job wasn’t quite as glamorous as his current one – film critic for Maclean’s – it was just as important.

Now Johnson holds the history of the Toronto festival in his hands – and we can be can grateful again. Brave Films, Wild Nights is a perfectly fitting tribute to what is now regarded, after Cannes, as the second most important film fest in the world. Johnson wends his way through the 25 years of the festival chronologically, devoting about a chapter to each year. Each chapter coalesces around a particular film or films, sometimes because of a scandal, but more often because of what that film represents in the development of the festival, or of cinema in general. Like the festival itself, Johnson’s history is slick and sexy, abuzz with gossip. The abundant photographs that illustrate the book are peopled by everyone from Jackie Burroughs to Warren Beatty to Jean-Luc Godard, and the pages are peppered with outrageous and insightful anecdotes about them all.

But the real stars of both the festival and the book are to be found behind the scenes. The festival has always been run by notorious characters, from its founders Dusty Cohl and Bill Marshall to legendary programmer and bon vivant David Overbey. They are the true life blood of the festival, and they justifiably dominate Johnson’s chronicle. “The story of the Toronto festival,” Johnson writes, “is one of spinning the counterculture into a mainstream phenomenon.” It’s the story of the little festival that could, emerging from a small showcase for tax-shelter-era films to Miramax’s favourite launching pad. A story, in Johnson’s hands, that’s as entertaining as a Tom Cruise vehicle, but as rich and valuable as an Abbas Kiarostami picture.