WHAT TIFF MEANS TO ME

‘I know from experience that it’s OK when the stars at TIFF take you for a ride’

Seven years ago this month, I had a great time with Jessica Chastain in the back seat of an air-conditioned limo parked on Front Street.

Let me explain. Chastain had just exploded on the cinema scene with two films at TIFF – Coriolanus and Take Shelter – and three more in theatres: The Help, The Debt and The Tree of Life. Everyone wanted to talk to her, and I arrived for a tentative interview slot at the Park Hyatt in Yorkville only to learn she was en route to the CBC, 3.5 km south.

Off I went in pursuit, and was told that after her on-air bit she could give me a few minutes in her car before it took her to the next gig. So there we were, sheltered from the late-summer heat, discussing her even hotter career. She was apologetic about leading me on my merry chase, and we parted on a Casablanca note: “We’ll always have this limo!”

I love the annual madness that is TIFF, and not just the thrill of meeting stars in cars. Just watching movies at the festival is a process of discovery, serendipity and surprise.

Back in 2000, I chanced upon the delightful Australian comedy The Dish, about a remote community’s small but vital role in the first moon landing. (Very much looking forward to First Man, Damien Chazelle’s biopic about Neil Armstrong, this year.) I knew nothing going in, and I loved it.

Four years later, I watched the moving biopic Hotel Rwanda, about a hotel manager who saved hundreds of refugees during the Rwandan genocide. The crowd came to their feet as Don Cheadle stood up for a bow, but the cacophonous applause doubled when he revealed that the man next to him was Paul Rusesabagina, the humanitarian hero he portrayed in the film.

TIFF audiences also get the chance to discover new talents and then watch them evolve. The same year as The Dish brought the Canadian premiere of George Washington, a humane and lyrical indie drama and the debut feature of a young director named David Gordon Green. He has since gone on to make ribald comedies (Pineapple Express, Your Highness), quiet dramas (Prince Avalanche) and, last year, Stronger, a biopic based on a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

I got to talk to Green about that one, and he said switching genres keeps him on his toes, and is something he wished more directors would try. True to form, his TIFF film this year is Halloween, a straight-up sequel to the 1978 original. “It’s going to take me to a place that’s more valuable than money,” he said.

This year, I’m excited to be talking to Don McKellar about his film Through Black Spruce; mountain climber Alex Honnold, subject of the nail-biting documentary Free Solo; and Jennifer Baichwal about her new documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. But my best “get” as they say in the business is Maria Bello, appearing in the Canadian drama Giant Little Ones from director Keith Behrman.

Scheduling TIFF interviews is a bit like air-traffic control, and not each one makes a perfect landing. Bello’s PR rep said she had a brief window, Sunday afternoon at 12:30. The catch: the interview would take place in a moving car, starting outside festival headquarters at King and John, and wrapping up at Queen and Dovercourt. I’d have as much time as traffic allowed. Sign me up, I said.

I know from experience that it’s OK when the stars at TIFF take you for a ride.