27th Toronto International Film Festival Coverage: Day Six
Day 6…hard to believe the Festival is halfway over…
The last time we saw Joel Schumacher and Colin Farrell together at the Festival it was for the premiere of Tigerland. At the press conference for Phone Booth, their mutual admiration society was still in session. The film’s setting is quite claustrophobic as Farrell spends most of the time pinned down in a New York City phone booth by an unseen sniper voiced by Keifer Sutherland. Under orders not to move or he’ll get killed, Farrell is then surrounded by cops, led by Forest Whitaker, who believe that he is doing the shootings.
Schumacher, who shot Tigerland in 16mm, is again experimenting with different filming techniques as much of the film is shot in sequence and several cameras caught different angles and improvs happening at the same time. The easiest job on the film? Kiefer’s. The Canadian actor spent most of his time taping voice-overs in a studio.
The Spider press conference proved that even a film with a director like David Cronenberg and a cast featuring Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne can have a hard time getting made. Their financing almost fell through several times and there were days that they had to ask the crew to work on a promise of payment.
After Spider we had a chance to photograph Catherine Deneuve at the 8 Femmes press conference before we delved into the life of a young artist named Adolph Hitler in Max, which stars John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Molly Parker and Leelee Sobieski.
After surviving four press conferences, we rushed over to cover the red carpets for City of Ghosts, Max, Blue Car, Try Seventeen and Dirty Deeds, a premiere which featured veterans Sam Neill, Michael Caine and Bryan Brown on a fun photo line.