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David Weaver TIFF blog

Meeting the press

Monday, September 8, 2008 | 01:29 PM ET

David Weaver is an old pro when it comes to the Toronto International Film Festival. The director behind Moon Palace (2000), Century Hotel (2001) and Siblings (2004) has attended the festival on several occasions, and knows the territory. This year, he came in support of Toronto Stories, a collaborative, four-part study of his native city shot with three other directors: Sudz Sutherland, Aaron Woodley and Sook-Yin Lee. Weaver blogged for CBCNews.ca throughout the festival, reporting on audience reactions, business deals, bizarre celebrity encounters and the general mayhem that is TIFF.

Next up is the press day. Publicity for Toronto Stories is basically split into two halves: the interviews you do prior to the festival and in its first few days that are tied to the festival; then, during the festival, you do a round of interviews that are banked for the eventual release of the film, whenever that may be.

This involves moving rapidly from room to room in a downtown hotel. I can best describe it as the closest I’ve ever come to undergoing the kind of Marine Corp. basic training depicted in Full Metal Jacket. You’re led by a harried-looking, exasperated publicist through serpentine halls crammed with caffeine-wired journalists, lights, cables, grip-stands and other paraphernalia of the modern media circus. You’re plunked down in front of a camera crew, the poster for your film is dropped into position behind you, and you and whatever poor actor has been selected to accompany you are subjected to some rapid-fire questioning. Before you know it, the interview is over and you’re back on the hotel corridor circuit. It’s dizzying.

Oddly, it’s during this ritual that I’ve come closest to seeing real celebs. I once passed John Cusack in the halls looking, not surprisingly, even more discomfited than I did, and I actually managed to trip Julia Stiles to the floor as she swept past me in 2005. That earned me a few choice expletives from the publicist accompanying Ms. Stiles even as I profusely apologized and reached out to help her up. “I loved you in Save the Last Dance,” I muttered lamely as she limped away, realizing that any dream I might have had of convincing her to star in my next low-budget Canadian opus was likely out the window.

There are more thrilling encounters, though. Arriving for an interview one day in the hotel’s courtyard, I was politely asked by a producer whether I minded waiting fifteen minutes while Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, finished his interview. When I happily ceded my time, Mr. Boyle offered me a jaunty salute and one of the precocious young actors with him handed me a Hersheys chocolate bar emblazoned with the film’s title, Millions.

Nothing tastes quite so good as chocolate sanctified by a master. Very, very satisfying.

Another strange effect of the film festival is that the first press/industry screening of your movie usually precedes the public screening. That means people start coming up to you and telling you they enjoyed the film before the public has even seen it. Since I’m a perpetually self-doubting, insecure individual – a Canadian, in other words – this gives rise to all sorts of uncertainties on my part.

Exacerbating this, the festival instructs the producers to keep their directors away from these screenings. They can be notoriously brutal affairs, because if the buyers decide your film is not for them, they have absolutely no compunction about getting up and walking out. One director friend of mine decided to ignore the festival’s advice and attend her screening anyway. When I saw her the next day, her eyes were like saucers as she described the impact it has on your soul as you hear the “thump-thump-thump” of theatre seat after theatre seat being vacated in the darkness – a verdict on the feature film you just spent three years of your life making. She works in telemarketing now, I believe.

As both a producer and director on Toronto Stories, I suppose I could take in the screening, but I decide not to. Instead I go to brunch. But when someone at the table next to us scrapes their chair on the floor leaving with their companions, I experience a panic attack. Apparently, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the theatre or not – you’re always suffering for your film.

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