::: George Christy ::: From the Beverly Hills Courier

Brad Pitt and Keira Knightley come and go, championing their films, as do moguls and talent agents, spinmeisters and stylists to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), now in its 33rd year. Thirty years ago when I attended my first festival, after an invitation from then-public relations director Helga Stephenson of Canada’s Eaton dynasty, I predicted TIFF had the makings of being the most important film festival in North America. This is now a reality. Ideal within a cosmopolitan city where the denizens still have manners for our movie studios, along with Europeans, Asians, South Americans, Africans, Middle Easterners, Russians anxious to showcase their products for Oscar buzz. As well as negotiating sales with distributors, as happened with Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke as a down-and-out boxer making a comeback, bought by Fox Searchlight for four million dollars. Sony Pictures Classics screened I Loved You for So Long, prompting Oscar talk for its star, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married with Anne Hathaway and Rosemary DeWitt. My Toronto friend, Julie Rekai touts Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, a ferocious tale about political power in Italy, as an Oscar contender for Best Foreign Film. Hundreds of journalists jam the screening rooms and gala premieres, along with the Torontonians, who are rabid fans and give standing ovations to the worst movies. Truth to tell, the festival’s huge success is rearing an ugly head with overcrowded screenings and exhausting parties. PR boulevardier Raymond Perkins, who represents the famous Roots stores (Hermes leather quality, thanks to leathermeister Karl Kowaleski, at L.L. Bean prices), finds that he runs into “too many of the same people” at the fannybumper events. The festival opens the first Thursday after Labor Day, and that weekend is the hot ticket, and now chockablock with everyone getting into the act. Virgin’s Richard Branson took over Friday this year with a luncheon and a nightly concert. CTV’s popular E. Talk Daily hosted a D-Squared fashion show on Saturday that drew droves, also on Saturday the Walk of Fame honored Canadians James Cameron, Wayne Gretzky, Michael J. Fox, Bryan Adams, k.d.lang. Additionally that evening Bobby Kennedy Jr. hosted his Waterkeepers charity that is doing clean-up work, its current project being the Hudson River. The OneXOne fundraiser dinner at the Maple Leaf Gardens brought out Matt Damon and Wyclef Jean in support of African children, although the live auction was interminably tiring. The events list goes on and on. Our own annual Saturday luncheon, in its 24th year at the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, acknowledges the Canadian movers and shakers who meet our Hollywood friends. This year, we dedicated the luncheon to the festival’s late co-founder, Dusty Cohl. His wife Joan was greeted by the Honorable Brian Mulroney and his beautiful wife Mila, their son Ben, who hosts E. Talk Daily, daughter Carolyn Mulroney Lapham, who we invited to bring her two-year-old beauty Theodora for pals to meet her during drinks when we invite 130, and, as we imagined, Theodora is a star. CTV chief Ivan Fecan and wife Sandra Faire, who’s producing CTV’s So You Think You Can Dance, were among the 80 luncheon guests in the hotel’s Print Room, as were Bobby Kennedy, Jr. who flew to Toronto from San Francisco with Sara Johnson Redlich on her G-3. Roger Ebert’s wife Chaz, shared remembrances of Dusty Cohl, as did indefatigable ad-cum-marketing whiz Barry Avrich. Atom Egoyan and wife Arsinee Khajian, whose film Adoration will be released by Sony Pictures Classics, were hailed, and stoking the conversational fires were the festival’s directors Piers Handling and Michele Maheux, Canada AM host Seamus O’Regan; Geoffrey Rush; MPCA’s Brad Krevoy; Overture’s Chris McGurk and Danny Rosset; Genevieve and Ivan Reitman; Sony’s Michael Barker and Tom Bernard; Rex Reed; Flash of Genius director Marc Abraham; Universal’s Hollace Davids; Robert Lantos with producer son Ari; Norman Jewison with Lynne St. David; Helga Stephenson and Catherine Verret, whose husband Pierre is France’s ambassador to Washington.