Last summer, my biggest disappointment on leaving Toronto wasn't leaving my brother and family behind - Worst Sister Award, over here - or facing the dismal British autumn, or just leaving a very cool city for my pretty unremarkable hometown. It was the thought of missing out on the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) only days before it began.
Luckily this year I've been here for at least the first half of the Festival, and while it's proving almost impossible to get tickets for anything, I'm doing my best to check out as much of it as possible. Anyone who knows me will know that the translation for that, for the most part, is a nice bit of celebrity spotting. Some would say stalking.... I would staunchly deny it. Before giving in and admitting to it.
So my first experience of TIFF was, of course, a couple of hours spent on Yorkville in the north of the city. Yorkville is the place to be for celebs, and the place to see for all avid celebrity spotters. It's home to the Four Seasons and Hazelton hotels, as well as designer stores and exclusive clubs and bars. It's also right around the corner from all the other top-notch hotels and hangouts. Myself and another celebrity-obsessed friend arrived there at around 4:30pm on Friday, which in hindsight wasn't all that wise - the first big opening night of the Festival, at the time of evening when pretty much everyone would either be getting ready to go out, or already on their way.
My friend is somewhat of a seasoned pro at star spotting, so she suggested we take a look inside the Four Seasons. "I hung out in the lobby there for a few hours yesterday, but I didn't see anyone..." she said. For her, the exceptional part of that sentence was the lack of sightings, not the fact that she just racked up to the Four Seasons and plonked herself down on one of their plush lobby sofas for the afternoon. So, following suit, I wandered into that very same lobby whilst practising my very best "I'm supposed to be here" version of nonchalance. Once again, it worked, and once again... no celebs. Just a lot of important-looking people stood around waiting for more important-looking people.
The waiting did pay off. A little later on we watched Bill Murray (who I hope wasn't going anywhere fancy, since he was wearing a simple body warmer and baseball cap) get into his waiting car outside the Hazelton and be driven off slowly, pausing with his window open to allow fans to take photographs. It's nice to see the real old-school actors having time for their fans. Something which was brilliantly juxtaposed ten minutes later, when Megan Fox was whisked away in a big, white Audi with blacked out windows and, from what I could make out from their silhouettes, flanked on either side by bodyguards. Wouldn't wanna risk a security threat Megan, would ya. Or worse, a bad photo. Maybe one of those with a half eyelid flutter. Damn, I wish that window had been open...
After that we gave up on Yorkville and headed down to Roy Thomson Hall for the premiere of The King's Speech, a British film which stars Colin Firth as King George VI, and tells the story of his struggle with a bad stutter. We didn't have to wait long for everyone to arrive, the only big stars being Firth and distinguished actor Geoffrey Rush. It was a fairly small premiere, so we had a good view and got to shake hands with Colin. We succeeded in getting the only real reaction from him that night, when my friend shouted "Hey Colin, see you for a beer later, yeah?", and me adding "We'll find a nice Irish pub!".
Aside from Colin's lovely, friendly handshake, the real event of the night was meeting a fairly strange young man who was more of a star-spotting "pro" than either of us could ever wish to be (and would ever wish to be...). His conversation starter was to offer, since he was so tall, to email us his photos if we didn't manage to get any good shots. He then showed us the glossy A4-sized photos he had ready for the two actors to sign, and went on to tell us - in detail - about all the celebrities he'd met and seen so far this Festival. The best moment, though, came when he proudly said:
"And last year I was the only person to get Robert Deniro's autograph... No, wait. It wasn't Robert Deniro. Who was it...... Oh yeah, Mariah Carey. Mariah Carey's autograph."
Everyone around me burst into not-so-subtle laughter. I, realising that this guy was a few signatures short of a full autograph book, stayed completely straight-faced, and answered:
"Yeah. I can see how you'd get the two of those confused."
Poor guy didn't really get it. He carried on, blissfully unaware of his sweet-but-creepy appearance, shouting "Happy birthday Colin!" before the car door had really even opened - and raising even more judgemental eyebrows - and repeating poor Geoffrey Rush's name more times than I ever care to hear again.
I was smugly satisfied when, last night at the premiere for The Town - which I will be writing about soon! And which was a much bigger event - I saw the same guy, at the back of the huge crowd, looking on with a dejected expression on his face that seemed to say:
"With this crowd I'll never get Jennifer Aniston's autograph. No wait, not Jennifer Aniston..... Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck's autograph..."
hahaha, that last line made me giggle. So lucky you're getting to go to these premiers! Seriously cool :)
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