Film festivals always start to wear me down by the fifth or sixth day. Even people who work fewer hours than I tend to feel exhausted at this point. I’ve been doing the usual 6:30 wakeup and hitting the sack no earlier than 1 am each night, and today marks the beginning of the seventh day of that pace. I’m holding up reasonably well and keeping as focused as can be expected under these circumstances.
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One of the tables at Bymark, the elegant restaurant on Wellington Street where Miramax held its after-party Tuesday evening for Scott Hicks’ The Boys Are Back. Costars Clive Owen and Sam Neill attended.
I did, however, fall asleep in a sitting position on the westbound Bloor Street subway the night before last, and awoke only at the very end of the line.
“Kipling! Kipling!” I opened my eyes and looked up at a woman standing over me and trying to wake me up. “This is Kipling, sir…last stop!” I stumbled out of Kipling station and looked around at the break nocturnal landscape — acres of unlit nothingness and endless stretches of parking lot depression — and realized I was in Toronto’s equivalent of western Siberia. I suppose I should be thankful to that woman. If she hadn’t woken me some kid might’ve come along and stolen my bag.
I spoke early yesterday evening with Mother and Child director-writer Rodrigo Garcia, and then dropped by a delightful after-party for Scott Hicks‘ The Boys Are Back (Miramax, 9.25). And that was it.
Today’s activities: Don Roos‘ Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (9 am), Tom Ford‘s A Single Man (11 am), Fatih Akin‘s Soul Kitchen at 1 pm, Steven Soderbergh‘s The Informant! at 3:15 pm and a chat with Werner Herzog around 5;15 pm. Where’s the writing time in that schedule? Beats me.
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Toronto-based artist Richard Kruger gave me a lift yesterday in this contraption, taking me from the Elgin theatre to the Soho Metropolitan hotel on Wellington Street.
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