The Toronto International Schmooze-Fest

Actually, it is a film festival. I have to admit I'll see about 50 movies in nine days which makes me about as bonified nutso as much as the targets I mutilate in Hell (in case you were all wondering about qualifications). This has actually earned me some brief interview time with a Finnish television network and the ABC affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas over the last couple of years (in case you want to put a face to the writing). Let me answer all the questions right here:

No, I don't do parties. I don't have the need and there are more than enough prostitutes, PR flunkies, and cellphone-bearing studio coffee retrievers to give the "A-listers" all they really come to Toronto for anyway (okay, along with the free stuff.)

Yes, good stars always come. You can bet the farm that Festival officials will start teasing you with three days of the first public pass sales. Then absolutely overwhelm you with them just around the time $18-$30 single-ticket sales begin. Go through 20+ years of press releases and see if I'm kidding.

Most of the biggest stars can really stay home for all I care. I don't need my film starting 30 minutes late because Nicole Kidman's limo got stuck in traffic and she couldn't make it through the throng of paparazzi and shameless autograph hounds to get to her 5-second wave-then-say-goodbye to the people who actually bought tickets to her really mediocre film (although at least "Dogville" got released. I don't expect the same for Orlando Bloom's glorified Cayman Islands tourist guide masquerading as a "suspense thriller" from 2004.)

You can get tickets for anything. At $18-over $30 a pop, even the wannabe New Yorkers of Toronto have realized that paying that kind of dough for typically sub-marginal swill really isn't worth it and you can get closer to the "A-list" star by watching Access Hollywood.

Toronto's Festival is getting too star-driven for it's own good. It grew to be the second most relevant festival in the film world by discovering films which studios went into big-time bidding wars for or films that would gather Oscar momentum buzz. Now they seem desperately intent on figuring out how to get Charlize Theron to show up (when, in reality, her post-Oscar career decline seems to be running in tandem with Halle Barry's. Must have something to do with acting in movies with "Monster" in the title perhaps?)

But, hey, it's films, and films have actors, and finding them their rightful place in Hell is what it's all about, right?

TAGS: festival film toronto