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Searching for Jerry StillerAt the Toronto International Film Festival, even the faintest whiff of celebrity can cause a media frenzy.
ILLUSTRATION: ANNICK POIRIER, COLAGENE.COM Like ants descending on a picnic, the photographers outside the party at Toronto’s Windsor Arms Hotel last September were rustling. “This is Toby Jones!” sang out a woman with a clipboard and a job to do. “Spider-Man?” thundered a slim, Asian bystander, looking like he was fully under the hex of the limelight. No, not Tobey Maguire, I explained. “He plays Truman Capote,” I said. “I thought that was Philip Seymour Hoffman,” responded the man, looking at me suspiciously. He was Truman Capote too, I said. But Toby Jones is in Infamous, the other film about the famous writer of In Cold Blood. The man sighed. And then, following the photographers’ cue, he pulled out his camera and contributed to the light show of flashes falling on the short, goateed, disgruntled-looking actor. “Is he at least related to Tommy Lee Jones?” followed up my new friend. It’s the Toronto International Film Festival, after all, which, in Shakespearean terms, is kind of a Midautumn Night’s Dream, where nothing is quite what it seems and we often see only what we want to see. But unlike the flower-based elixir that had the Bard’s characters falling in love with the first person they see, the potion that intoxicates the characters in this production – journos, publicists, perked-up spectators – has its victims falling in love with just about every minor celeb they see, or at least rabidly chasing them with a camera-phone. Celebrity delirium is always a risk this time of year – and for me, an occupational hazard – but there is something about TIFF that causes otherwise sane people to whip out the camera for not only Alec Baldwin, but any Baldwin brother and, heck, if it came down to it, either of the Baldwin sisters (one of whom, last I heard, is a very nice physical therapist living on Long Island). Each year, a micro-economy emerges, with celebs as the currency-in-trade; the sheer number of journalists in town, for one, creates an environment where the famous and fabulous must be hunted, found and duly noted, no matter the stature. For 10 days, the whole idea of stardom gets a serious make-under. Can’t get Ben Stiller? His pop, Jerry Stiller, just might do. No Jennifer Lopez? Will Jennifer Love Hewitt work? Oh, and is Mike Myers a no-go? Okay, how about that other guy from Wayne’s World? (What was his name? Dana something?) The defining quality of TIFF’s micro-economy is runaway inflation, South American-style. Were Jack Osbourne, La Toya Jackson and that Pedro guy from Napoleon Dynamite to show up at TIFF, they would all cause pandemonium. And the attention-grab margin between Kate Winslet and Kathy Griffin? More than small, it’s microscopic. Such is this topsy-turvy world, where there are red carpets to walk, parties to fill and gift bags to be Santa-ed out – all of it documented by a press pack who resemble coyotes on Ritalin, and all of it, of course, lapped up by the public. The zenith of all this? Last year, when one frosted-flaked, recently out former pop star and his well-constructed Amazing Race-winning then-beau parachuted into Toronto for the Festival, they were treated like the Second Coming of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Lance Bass and Reichen Lehmkuhl seemed to hit every open bar and gift lounge the fest had to offer. The boys even took the opportunity, later in the week, to go on a red-carpet double date with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, arriving together at the latter power couple’s film premiere. Even more stunning was the contrast Lance and Reichen provided at the opening night party for The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, where they stole the art-house show. That movie is a Canadian period piece in which snow is the main star, and the language spoken is not Boy Band, but Inuktitut. Oh, well. “Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate,” wrote Emily Dickinson. For 10 days in Toronto, when the circus comes to town and celeb culture shifts into overdrive, such is the way it goes. But in the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s Toby Jones or Tobey Maguire, Philip Seymour Hoffman or Ryan Phillippe; this is a film festival, after all, where you can never be too rich, too thin – or, evidently, too C-list. Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. |
