Caffeinated Clint
We catch up with Estevez, Brosnan, Christie & Linney
TORONTO PART 5
This last day at Toronto for this weary journalist was spent in the walls of the Intercontinental Hotel. It was a day of final interviews, all one exclusives. The biggies began with the legendary Julie Christie, star of Sarah Polley’s critically acclaimed, stunning directorial debut, “Away from Her”, which has just been bought by Lions Gate. Christie agreed to do very few interviews, so it was fortunate that the star of classics such as “Dr Zhivago”, “Darling”, “Don’t Look Now”, “McCabe and Mrs Miller” and “Shampoo”, agreed to chat to me. In our far reaching interview, Christie talks about this latest film, as well life as the 60s ‘It’ girl. Fascinating, eloquent and a ferocious intellectual, meeting Ms Christie was a major high point during a frenetic festival.
If it’s Toronto, it must be time to interview regular attendee Laura Linney, here with the Australian film “Jindabyne”, which Sony Classics will release later this year. But Laura also co-stars with Robin Williams in “Man of the Year”, a rare mainstream Hollywood film for her, and in that interview, to run next week, Linney talks about both of those films.
It was also great to meet the two directors of “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing”, Barbara Koppel and Cecilia Peck. They did craft a wonderful film that is continuing to get rave reviews, and they talked about working with the trio and the process of making a documentary such as this.
Then spent nearly half an hour with Emilio Estevez, who described his absence from the screen as the result of Hollywood being unforgiving for his past box office failures. But Estevez is back with a vengeance as star and director of Bobby, a complex pierce with 22 major speaking roles, and the director confirmed he has at least two other projects ready to go.
It’s always great catching up with Pierce Brosnan, playing a disheveled soldier on the run in the dark Western, “Seraphim Falls”. Brosnan did confirm that he is definitely doing a sequel to “Thomas Crown Affair”, with the working title “The Topkapi Affair”, that is expected to shoot on location in Istanbul. Brosnan told me about the blessing and curse of Bond and his regret at not doing “Casino Royale”. He was candid and charming, and another interview to watch out for.
That plus Jennifer Lopez saying hello to me, marked the perfect end to the Festival. And thus endeth Toronto for another, crazy year. Movies and celebrities were in abundance, the cell phones were heard in all directions, and once again some great movies were revealed here. Even the publicists were more of a pleasure to work with this year. Kudos to the International House of Publicity ‘[aka IHOP] for being the number 1 PR agency in Toronto again this year. After all, anyone who allows me to speak to Julie Christie and Penelope Cruz gets a gold star on my book.
Until we meet in the dark again, happy movie going!
– Paul Fischer
