34th Toronto International Film Festival Coverage: Day Three
Is it really Saturday?
We started off the day shooting the arrival of Playboy icon Hugh Hefner at the premiere for the documentary that traces his career and his battles for civil rights and constitutional freedoms. The film’s director, Oscar-winning documentarian Brigitte Berman, joined Hef and his three new girlfriends.
We also attended the press conferences for Solitary Man, which stars Michael Douglas, and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air which stars George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman.
Solitary Man stars Michael Douglas as a car magnate who leaves his wife (Susan Sarandon) and begins bed-hopping after getting some scary health news. His personal journey destroys his business, hurts his relationship with his daughter (The Office’s Jenna Fischer) and finally leads him to an old college buddy (Danny DeVito) who helps him piece his life together.
Up in the Air, from Juno director Jason Reitman, stars George Clooney as a corporate downsizer who spends his life on the road, enjoying an unencumbered existence. When he begins to fall for a fellow traveller (Vera Farmiga) and faces a stationary job pushed on him by an efficiency expert (Anna Kendrick), he must finally confront the reality of putting down some roots.
From there, more red carpets followed.
Get Low, with Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek, follows Duvall as a 1930’s Tennessee hermit who throws his own funeral party while he’s still alive. The film was written and directed by Aaron Schneider, who won an Best Short Subject Oscar® for Two Soldiers.
The biggest kerfuffle of the day occurred on the carpet for Triage, where Colin Farrell had a run-in with a British photographer. Publicists and other studio types frequently crowd the carpet at events like this making the jobs of the shooters a difficult one. Usually, the photographers yell at them to “Move please!” or “Clear the carpet!” but this time a couple of the photographers were a little more forceful with particularly forceful “Get off the carpet!” shouts. Farrell took offence to one photographer and went face-to-face with him, telling him that the woman he was shouting at was his sister and he should never yell at a woman like that. Despite it all, Farrell still managed to pose for the rest of the photo pen.
We closed the day off covering the red carpet for A Serious Man, which is the latest work written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in the Sixties, it traces the unravelling life of a Midwestern professor played by Michael Stuhlbarg.