TORONTO \u2014 At the Toronto International Film Festival, you never quite know what you\u2019ll get: a tearful standing ovation, a chance encounter with a movie star in a dive bar or a bizarre screening mishap that becomes the stuff of legend. <\/p>\n
Filmmakers, programmers and industry insiders have seen it all \u2014 and ahead of the festival\u2019s 50th edition, they share their funniest, strangest and most nerve-racking stories from years on the circuit.<\/p>\n
Piers Handling, former TIFF CEO<\/p>\n
Moments before the 1995 premiere of acclaimed French filmmaker Claude Sautet\u2019s drama \u201cNelly et M. Arnaud\u201d at Roy Thomson Hall, Handling says he witnessed a side of the director unlike anything he had ever seen. <\/p>\n
In the green room, he told Sautet in French that a few sponsored Canadian short films would be screened before the feature. Handling suspects something got lost in translation, because his comment seemed to set the director off.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was extremely nervous before the screening. And he had a unique way of letting off steam, which was literally running around the green room and bouncing off the walls and off couches. I\u2019d never seen this behavior before. It was so weird and so bizarre,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
Handling says nobody in the green room \u2014 including the French ambassador to Canada at the time \u2014 knew what to make of Sautet\u2019s outburst.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such childish behavior and no one could calm him down. We were just watching this guy running around the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Handling was then called to the stage to introduce Sautet, unsure if the director would follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea if he was actually going to come out on stage or if I would just be standing there alone when I introduced him,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went out, said my words, looked to my side, and there he was.\u201d – Alex Nino Gheciu<\/p>\n
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Charlene Coy, publicist<\/p>\n
Coy handled a variety of films at TIFF over the last 23 years, among them young stars at pivotal moments in their careers, including Andrew Garfield, Denis Villeneuve and Robert Pattinson. But it is veteran screen star Lauren Bacall that leaves one of her most lasting memories, after Bacall visited TIFF for \u201cThe Walker\u201d in 2007.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe legendary star was famously afraid of flying, so she had a driver bring her and her dog from New York City to Toronto,\u201d Coy says by email.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe could be challenging, but we quickly developed a rapport, to the point where she trusted me with everything. In addition to the press and red carpet, she also asked me to sit with her for all her meals, take her shopping at Pusateri\u2019s and Danier leather, and insisted I be her sole publicist for two full days. <\/p>\n
\u201cDuring that time, she shared personal stories, including photos of her children with Humphrey Bogart, and entrusted me with shipping her packages back to her Los Angeles home \u2014 a surreal experience I\u2019ll never forget.\u201d – Cassandra Szklarski<\/p>\n
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Atom Egoyan, director<\/p>\n
When Egoyan premiered his third film, \u201cSpeaking Parts,\u201d at the 1989 Perspectives Canadian sidebar at the Uptown Theatre, the director nearly faced a catastrophe. The local lab that spliced the reels had mixed up the order. As a result, the TIFF audience saw the first reel jump straight to the third.<\/p>\n
Stunned, the filmmaker asked the confused audience to sit tight while he raced home, across the city, to fetch an extra print.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the most surreal moment: I was in a cab trying to convince the driver that I was not delusional, that there were 900 people waiting in a cinema for him to drive me to Broadview and Dundas so I could pick up a print,\u201d Egoyan remembers.<\/p>\n
But he says the most unbelievable part was that the audience sat patiently for over half an hour waiting for him to return.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came running back into the theatre with these film canisters and I was sweating like a pig. I was imagining I\u2019d come back to an empty cinema,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then I heard people start to clap as they saw me run into the theatre. The air conditioning system had broken, too, but they stayed put.\u201d – ANG<\/p>\n
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Natasha Koifman, NKPR president<\/p>\n
Koifman says 2013 was a particularly memorable year for a charity fundraiser she throws for Artists for Peace and Justice during TIFF. That year it took place at the home of Diane Bald and Roots co-founder Michael Budman and a constellation of Hollywood stars were in attendance, including Adrien Brody, Colin Firth and then-freshly linked couple Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis.<\/p>\n
The backyard party-meets-auction took a soggy turn when actor Maria Bello pulled in a $20,000 bid by gamely leaping into the swimming pool, fully clothed in a designer suit and Louboutins.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was wearing this beautiful red Marc Jacobs suit that he custom made for her for TIFF,\u201d recalls Koifman.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe jumped right into the pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
A press release at the time adds that a member of Daniel Lanois\u2019s band jumped in with Bello, swimming briefly before returning to dry land, but that pool hijinks didn\u2019t end there. <\/p>\n
A third guest took to the water when the auctioneers spotted an iPod at the bottom of the pool and pop graphic artist Peter Tunney leapt in to rescue the device. – Cassandra Szklarski<\/p>\n
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Kazik Radwanski, director<\/p>\n
While at TIFF in 2012 for the premiere of his debut \u201cTower,\u201d Radwanski skipped the festival\u2019s glitzier parties in favour of a Locarno Film Festival\u2013hosted bash at tiny punk dive bar The Bovine Sex Club. <\/p>\n
\u201cOut of nowhere, Bill Murray walked into the party and everyone just kind of froze for a moment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Murray slipped into the bar\u2019s grimy back room and mingled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember everyone just kind of trying to be cool, but we were also like, \u2018Holy crap, Bill Murray\u2019s here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
As if the moment wasn\u2019t surreal enough, Radwanski later saw acclaimed French actor Sandrine Bonnaire hit the dance floor \u2014 a far cry from the tattooed, leather-clad punks and metalheads who usually populated the venue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was such a big fan of her films from the \u201980s and then I saw her just dancing there. I was like, \u2018Oh my God, it\u2019s her!\u2019\u201d – ANG<\/p>\n
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Peter Mettler, director <\/p>\n
Back in 1977, Mettler, then a film student at the school now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, says he became the festival\u2019s sole chauffeur after a chance meeting with the organization\u2019s director of hospitality. That year Henry Winkler came to the festival to promote the film \u201cHeroes,\u201d and it\u2019s credited as TIFF\u2019s first celebrity appearance. Mettler was tasked with driving him and his gaggle of bodyguards around in the festival\u2019s Lincoln. <\/p>\n
This was during Winkler\u2019s turn as Fonzie in \u201cHappy Days,\u201d and he was a hot commodity. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s hundreds of girls \u2013 young girls \u2013 and they\u2019re literally going on the screen of the windshield. I have to drive one mile per hour as their hands are clamouring all over, like trying to get a look at the Fonz,\u201d Mettler recalled. <\/p>\n
The guards cleared the way for Mettler to drive through, and he parked the car after dropping off Winkler\u2019s team. When he returned, the fans had tucked love notes into the Lincoln.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery little crack is full of love notes,\u201d Mettler said. \u201cIt was incredible, the power of that kind of image and celebrity at the time.\u201d – Nicole Thompson<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Tuesday, Sept. 2.<\/p>\n
Alex Nino Gheciu, Cassandra Szklarski and Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 At the Toronto International Film Festival, you never quite know what you\u2019ll get: a tearful standing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[76,49,48,361,75,1554],"class_list":{"0":"post-114334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-film"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}