1990
Bouncers turn away Whoopi Goldberg and her co-star Sissy Spacek from their own shindig (for The Long Walk Home) because they don’t have passes.
TIFF director Helga Stephenson convinces Clint Eastwood (premiering White Hunter, Black Heart) to visit her dying mother, a huge Eastwood fan, at St. Michael’s Hospital.
1991
Director Terry Gilliam goes missing before the premiere of his movie The Fisher King. Frantic festival staffers eventually find him at a Blue Jays game.
Atom Egoyan’s The Adjuster wins best Canadian film. He spontaneously hands the $25,000 prize over to John Pozer, who got an honourable mention for The Grocer’s Wife. (Wim Wenders had done the same thing for Egoyan with a $5,000 prize at the Montreal film festival). “Arsinée was pissed,” Egoyan later said of his knee-jerk largesse. “We were broke.”
1992
Quentin Tarantino premieres Reservoir Dogs, his career-making feature debut. Like a film school nerd on amphetamines, the twitchy director forgoes sleep in favour of midnight screenings and all-night parties with his cast: Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen.
1993
Kim Campbell is moved to tears by David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly. That, or she senses her days as PM are numbered. (She’s ousted from power less than a month later.)
1994
After a minor administrative foible at the Sutton Place front desk, pre-sober Robert Downey Jr. turns into a raging Mike Tyson–toddler hybrid, punching the walls and crawling around on his hands and knees.
1996
Demi Moore arrives in Toronto with an entourage that includes a personal hairstylist, even though she’s still sporting her GI Jane buzz.
1998
A die-hard Vince Vaughn fan gets busted for producing counterfeit passes to Vaughn’s Clay Pigeons party at Montana Bar and Grill.
After partying till 4 a.m., Ben Stiller blows off several interviews, claiming to have “a stomach thing.” Stiller later apologizes to the Star’s movie critic Peter Howell, saying he was on “a self-destructive tear.”
En route to dinner at Bistro 990, Michael Caine almost gets into Mike Harris’s limo, mistaking it for his own. Upon hearing the ride belongs to a Canadian politician, the Oscar winner quips, “I don’t want to get into that!”
1999
Robin Williams imitates Jean Chrétien’s facial paralysis at the press conference for Jakob the Liar.
Nick Nolte addresses his homeless-chic fashion sense while promoting Simpatico, remarking, “People magazine gave me sexiest man and worst-dressed guy. I’ve been working on that for 20 years.”
I must admit to being amused by the 1994 “highlight.” If memory serves me correctly, that was the year Robert Downey Jr. attended the festival to promote Norman Jewison’s “Only You.” When I interviewed him at the time, he told me how pleased he was to be clean and sober. No kidding.
August 26, 2010 at 11:50 pm | by Joe LeydonJack Nicholson has some known cousins who have been nominated for an Emmy at the 62nd Emmy Awards, according to his Family Forest® …
August 29, 2010 at 2:59 pm | by Alexisfamilyforest.wordpress.com/
See who they are.