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TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2000 (PART II) Send This Review to a Friend
What a difference 25 years can make. The first time around the Toronto Festival, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, had a devil of a task attracting enough celebrities to make the local citizenry take notice, let alone command world-wide attention. The major movie companies were also reluctant to participate, and there were skeptical articles in the local press, except for the Toronto Sun, which got behind the event from the beginning. This time the celebrities were everywhere--stars and directors showing up in Toronto to take part in press conferences, attend screenings, publicize their films with one-on-one interviews and at night make the rounds at the chic spots in town. And the local press was extravagant in the coverage accorded. It was a reaction befitting what has come to be one of the world's most important film gatherings, drawing critics and journalists from around the world.
Having been in on the beginning, I can especially appreciate and enjoy the phenomenal growth. I recall the determined visionaries who founded the festival and saw the possibilities--Dusty Cohl, Bill Marshall and Henk Vander Kolk, and appropriately their contribution was duly recognized in this anniversary event. When I chaired the craft conferences in the opening year, Cohl couldn't say which celebrity guests would turn up to discuss the subject at hand until the last minute, but there were always some who did, and the audience response was amazing. It was astonishing, for example, to find that at a 9 a.m. conference on screenwriting, 800 people came. I wondered what kind of a movie-mad city this was. Certainly one would never get that number in New York.
In the intervening years, as is well known, major movie companies have come to view the Toronto Festival as a useful showcase, and screen celebrities enjoy descending upon the lively city. Bigger and more elaborately organized, this year's festival had a steady stream of press conferences attended by stars and filmmakers and covered by international press and television and broadcast locally. Often, there was a choice between a conference one wanted to attend and a film that should be seen. Choices, choices.
One enjoyable conference was held for the film "State and Main," written and directed by David Mamet. While Mamet couldn't be there, Alec Baldwin, star and executive producer, enlivened the discussion, along with co-stars Rebecca Pidgeon, Julia Stiles, Clark Gregg, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and producer Sarah Green. Pidgeon, delightful and witty in person, was asked whether she automatically got a first crack at anything her husband, David Mamet, intended to direct, a reference not only to this film but to "The Spanish Prisoner" and the remake of "The Winslow Boy," both of which had her in starring roles.
Pidgeon facetiously declared it was "so very, very difficult" getting Mamet to agree to cast her in a film. Baldwin chimed in: "All she has to do is sleep with the director." Said Pidgeon: "That's the easy part." The film "State and Main," a satire on moviemaking, recounts what happens when a movie company invades a New England town for a location shoot. A scandal erupts when the character played by Baldwin becomes involved with a teenager (Stiles). Pidgeon said it took Mamet 15 years before he could turn his script into a film. (Aspiring filmmakers and writers getting rejection notices take heart.)
Baldwin made a surprising observation: "Mamet has one of the lightest touches of people working today. People only tend to think of him as someone whose material is tough. But he has a beautiful comic touch." He added, "The movie is funnier than I thought it would be and Mamet is breezier than I thought he would be."
John Turturro, with two films in the festival, "Two thousand and None" and "The Luzhin Defence," was the main attraction at a conference for the latter, in which he plays a troubled chess master. He looked very somber at the table in the press conference room, but was engaging when he responded to questioners. "Do you play chess?" he was asked.
"I play chess badly," he was quick to admit. "I'm constantly beaten by my 10-year-old son."
Marleen Gorris, who hails from Holland, has done some heady films, including the provocative "A Question of Silence," as well as "Antonia's Line" and "Mrs. Dalloway." With "The Luzhin Defence," she not only has worked with Turturro but has elicited from Emily Watson a performance of exceptional beauty and refinement as the woman who falls in love with the chess player. Asked which other stars she may have considered for the roles, Gorris answered unequivocally: "I feel proud that both stars were my first choices."
It is getting to be customary for one press conference to be devoted to a discussion by various European filmmakers about work in their respective countries under the collective banner of "European Film Promotion," which attempts to broaden the marketing possibilities for filmmakers of the various nations. Participants offered different takes on problems that in one way or another are related.
Romuald Karmakar, writer-director of "Manila," lamented that if a film gets poor reviews in Germany, a mind-set develops and there is a reluctance on the part of journalists and critics to report that the film gets a better reception elsewhere. British director Jamie Thraves, writer-director of "The Low Down," said that there was a problem in England because the British public tends not to like British films all that much.
Dominik Moll, writer-director" of the French film "Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien" ("Here to Help"), questions the tendency to think of European films as art films when compared with American films. "We have very commercial, awful French films too," he asserted.
There was no agreement on whether films necessarily had to reflect the countries in which they were made. For example, Spanish director Laura Mana, who wrote and directed "Compassionate Sex," stressed, "It's impossible for my films not to have an identity. Spain is where I grew up." On the other hand, there are other considerations. Hans Peter Moland, writer-director of "Aberdeen," was firm in his view: "It is not important where a film comes from. Our concern has to be the market, which is dominated by commercial considerations." Yet when I talked with Moland, he made a big point of having been able to shoot his film without any pressures to make changes as might have been the case with some producers, and he felt he was able to do "Aberdeen" with complete integrity.
Of course, in all such joint discussions there is the usual emphasis on the problems European filmmakers face in competing in a market so dominated by American product. Others taking part included directors Costas Kapakas of Greece, Baltasar Kormakur of Iceland, Pierre-Paul Renders of Belgium, Asia Argento of Italy and Florian Flicker of Austria.
Among the numerous other press conferences scheduled were those for "Almost Famous," directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand; "Duets," directed by Bruce Paltrow and starring Gwyneth Paltrow; "Pollock," starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden and Robert Altman's "Dr. T and the Women," starring Richard Gere. It was a veritable feast for the press.
On the social side, apart from the many lavish parties around the city, there was the annual outdoor barbecue held on the grounds of the Canadian Film Centre, directed by filmmaker Norman Jewison. The popular event was attended by some 3500 guests on a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon.
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