Meet Splitsville’s resident philosopher
A Kramer vs. Kramer in the age of Conscious Uncoupling.
Consider that the wrap on one of the best reviewed offerings of the Toronto Intenational Film Festival, Marriage Story. Funny and sad, infuriating and knock-down phenomenal, the Noah Baumbach project got a massive serotonin shot of Oscar buzz when it played here in Toronto on Sunday, followed by a celebration thrown by Netflix for it at Soho House.
The film, driven by the terrific Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, also features a slew of other praise-be performances — Laura Dern, hello. Not only that, but it was also instantly clear that the film is going to provide spools and spools of insider Hollywood gossip, as awards season shifts into gear. It is all the talk.
For starters, our lady Dern, indeed (who gives a monologue “that is going to be GIF’d until the end of time,” as one tweet succinctly surmised). She is very obviously playing a version of another Laura, is she not? Laura Wasser, the uberfamous Hollywood divorce attorney, who has had a client list as long as the lines outside Roy Thomson Hall these days: Angelina Jolie (twice!), Britney Spears, Jennifer Garner, multiple Kardashians and Maria Shriver, to name just a few.
It gets better, though: Wasser actually represented Dern herself in her divorce from Ben Harper. Better still: Baumbach himself is, no doubt, pulling from his own experience of divorcing Jennifer Jason Leigh. The Single White Female star famously hired Wasser when she sought to extract her marriage from Baumbach seven months after having his child. Baumbach, of course, is now with Greta Gerwig.
Known in the industry as the “Disso Queen” (dissolution of marriage), and born with the law in her genes — her dad was a successful divorce lawyer, too — the girl-next-door Wasser is someone who knife-fights with a smile. She is also somewhat of a philosopher of Splitsville, having published the book It Doesn’t Have to Be That Waya few years back: “To me, separating love and the law makes a lot of sense. I believe in: ‘I love you, I want to have babies with you, I want to live with you, but I can’t promise that it’s gonna be ’til death us do part. I also don’t want to be financially responsible, or, frankly, have you be financially responsible for me.’ ”
The lawyer, who bills clients $850 an hour and requires a $25,000 retainer for her services, has also said, “I don’t know that humans were meant to mate for life. Maybe we were when we were dying in our late 30s and early 40s … But we’re living until our 90s. Some people meet, fall in love and stay soulmates forever, God bless them. But that’s not the majority of the world.”
Got it. Meanwhile:
At the Sony Pictures dinner, held the other night at Mortons on Avenue Rd.: Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, Isabelle Huppert, Antonio Banderas and Greg Kinnear.
Tom Hanks quipping hard to photo-seekers, when heading into the AT&T Variety Studio Lounge at Hotel Germain: “I am not going to pose for a selfie, but I am going to walk really, really slow …”
Susan Sarandon eye-spied stopping by Dynasty Cannabis on Queen St. W.
Priyanka Chopra. Hazelton Hotel. Out the front door.
Jon Hamm and Luke Wilson making the rounds at The Goldfinch bash, which was co-hosted by Audi at Don Alfonso.
Passing in the night, at RBC House, on Duncan St., which has played host to a slew of TIFF parties over the last many nights: Allison Janney and Danny DeVito.
Making it to the party for the hilariously oddball Jojo Rabbit, held Sunday at Arcane: Kate McKinnon.