25th Toronto International Film Festival Coverage: Day Five
Yikes. What a hot and humid day in Toronto. The sort of day that makes one listless.
The listlessness definitely hit the press conference for Ed Harris’ Pollock. This has been a pet project…no, an obsession…for Harris and he’s tried to bring it to the screen for over ten years. With all that anticipation, it was a little surprising that the assembled reporters weren’t teeming with questions. It was a little slow at first and at the beginning the conference’s moderator seemed to be asking all the questions.
I finally went to pose a question to Ed Harris, but the heat finally knocked out one of the TV cameraman recording the event. After he was taken care of, I asked Harris whether the long wait helped or hindered his ability to get the film in the can? As the actor/director, had he run the scenes in his head so many times that they came out perfect or did the opposite happen to him and he found himself second guessing whether he had just committed the perfect take to film?
Harris felt that the first aspect was truer, that having all the planning and forethought had enabled him to commit a truer performance knowing that that he already had the bases covered.
The next big thing on the agenda was the premiere of Robert Duvall’s soccer film A Shot at Glory. It’s always nice when we can add some shots of a screen legend to our archives. After that it was off to the premiere of Sally Field’s Beautiful, which stars Minnie Driver and Hallie Kate Eisenberg. I was surprised at how tiny Hallie is, but not surprised at how stunning Minnie Driver still is. Speaking of surprises, just as we were packing up, Sally’s old beau, Burt Reynolds hit the carpet and it was a rush to get the shots.
Each year there’s always one premiere which borders on utter chaos. That was the case of the premiere for Al Pacino’s Chinese Coffee. The crowd at the Uptown was huge and when Al arrived, they surged forward, pushing the press with them. Pacino’s security and the police whisked him away. At least we have a press conference with him to look forward to.