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<\/a>I\u2019ve been covering the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 of the 50 years of its existence. I\u2019ve dusted off some memories from those years as a personal look back at the fest\u2019s first half century.<\/p>\n2015<\/strong>: Hosting the press conferences at TIFF is always a gamble. For every great question from the press pit, there are an equal number of inane ones that only tick the celebrities off. At the \u201cOur Brand is Crisis\u201d conference someone asked Sandra Bullock about her character\u2019s grown-out roots. The Oscar winner replied as best she could and when she finished, co-star George Clooney chimed in, \u201cAren\u2019t you glad you asked that question?\u201d Later she shut down a silly query regarding how she keeps her bum as toned as it is in the film. \u201cIt\u2019s so sad that you just want to talk about the butt,\u201d she said, before tersely adding that leg lifts are the secret to posterior pertness.<\/p>\n2014<\/strong>: Robert Pattinson, doing press for \u201cMaps to the Stars,\u201d told me what Hollywood was before camera phones: \u201cWhen I first started going to LA everyone was underage and if you were a famous actor the rules did not apply. You could be a sixteen-year-old and go into a club but now that there are camera phones everywhere that doesn\u2019t exist anymore. That period was so weird. You\u2019d see a fourteen-year-old actor wasted, doing lines of blow on the table. It was crazy. Now they just do it at their parent\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n2019<\/strong>: David Foster\u2019s candor. At the gala for the doc \u201cDavid Foster: Off the Record\u201d the hit-maker joked with director Barry Avrich about the artists NOT included in the film. \u201cWhere\u2019s Boz Scaggs? Where\u2019s NSYC? Where\u2019s Richard Marx?\u201d Avrich replied, \u201cHe turned us down.\u201d With timing that Jack Benny would admire Foster paused, looked at the audience and said, \u201cWell then, f**k Richard Marx.\u201d<\/p>\n2020<\/strong>: During one of TIFF\u2019s pandemic years, I hosted a reunion panel for Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cFull Metal Jacket,\u201d featuring actors Vincent D\u2019Onofrio, Arliss Howard, and Katharina Kubrick. On the panel they shared anecdotes about the grueling boot camp training and Kubrick\u2019s meticulous directing style. In a first for TIFF, the pre-taped panel was aired in drive in theatres before a screening of the restored film.<\/p>\n2016<\/strong>: During the press conference I hosted with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop about the Stooges documentary \u201cGimme Danger,\u201d the rock god choked up when he spoke about the comeback of his legendary band. \u201cI put almost eight years into the original group, and I put about 12 into the comeback. During those 12 years, the whole repertoire was covered, all three albums,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery member of the group during the 12-year period, and our sidemen, graduated with honors. Meaning that when they passed away, they had houses, money and bad habits. These are the three things a rock star is supposed to have. They got their rock and their recognition, alright?\u201d<\/p>\n2011<\/strong>: Rumor had it that Madonna forbid TIFF volunteers from looking her in the eye during the screenings of her film \u201cW.W.\u201d or the press conference, which I hosted. Turns out it wasn\u2019t true, although there was at least one \u201cvolunteer\u201d the singer probably wanted to ignore. At the end of the press conference a woman in an orange volunteer t-shirt asked for an autograph, claiming it was for another volunteer who was too shy to ask. Turns out the woman was not a volunteer, but a shill for an autograph mill who make big bucks off of celebrity signatures.<\/p>\n2024 Tweet<\/strong>: Things I learned at #TIFF #123: If you\u2019re nervous about public speaking, eat a banana before waking on stage. Full of B vitamins, they help calm nerves and contain tryptophan, a protein that the body converts into serotonin, the \u2018happy hormone\u2019 which will keep your mood upbeat.<\/p>\n2019<\/strong>: Stand near any press person during TIFF and you are guaranteed to hear this, \u201cI\u2019m so tired.\u201d It\u2019s a grind to cover the festival in a meaningful way, but the complaint has become a joke, most memorable made by director Ron Mann who wore a t-shirt emblazoned with \u201cI\u2019M TIRED\u201d in bog bold letters.<\/p>\nIn the early days of my festival coverage, I didn\u2019t have an off switch. I made it a mission to see as many movies as possible and talk to anyone and everyone who would speak to me on camera. I can now tell you that\u2019s not the best way to go about things. One year, for example, Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd had several films in the fest, and me, in my fest-addled brain, formed them all into one epic film. As a result, I asked him questions that referred to all the movies as if they were one. He gamely answered the first few questions before it dawned on him what was going on. He could have gotten up and left, but instead, took control of the interview and generously molded his answers into something we could actually use<\/p>\n
2023<\/strong>: The 4K \u201cStop Making Sense\u201d restoration of the four-decade old movie is a joyful, high-energy revisiting of a classic concert film. A document of a band working at the top of their game, it captures the love of music and performance in a way few other have. And it\u2019s got a good and you can dance to it, which people did in the theater I saw this in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source richardcrouse.ca \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been covering the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 of the 50 years of its existence. I\u2019ve dusted off some memories from those years as a personal look back at the fest\u2019s first half century. 2015: Hosting the press conferences at TIFF is always a gamble. For every great question from the press pit, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2003858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2003858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2003858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2003858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2003858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/richardcrouse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/presser.jpg\")
<\/a>I\u2019ve been covering the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 of the 50 years of its existence. I\u2019ve dusted off some memories from those years as a personal look back at the fest\u2019s first half century.<\/p>\n