I arrived early at the Fox Searchlight hospitality suite at The Four Seasons for my interview with Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, and as a result had the pleasure of again running into the lady of the hour, Juno star Ellen Page, who was hanging out before some photo shoots—a great talent and sweet girl. As we were waiting, Reitman arrived, followed shortly thereafter by Cody, who was wearing a tight Superman shirt and short skirt, and could not help but recite some key passages from Roger Ebert’s glowing blog entry about the film. I had a good laugh when Reitman introduced me to Cody as a top Oscar predictor who always gets it right… except once, when I incorrectly projected that he would be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for Thank You for Smoking; to my credit, he conceded, I was on the ‘right’ side of that error, and with Juno quickly becoming the consensus favorite of the festival, all seemed forgiven.
It turns out Reitman and Cody play off each other beautifully. At the outset of our interview, I asked them about their Toronto experience thus far, and Cody showed off a massive bruise on her leg that she acquired while trying to slide down a banister at a party last night after having a little too much to drink. She is charmingly irrepressible, while Reitman comes across as more reserved, but can actually keep up quite well—he noted that before his father Ivan Reitman shot the movie Dave (1993), they were given a tour of the White House, during which he decided to slide down a banister, to their tour guide’s horror. We chatted about L’Ebert’s review, and when Reitman said anyone would be lying to say they didn’t “want Ebert’s thumb,” Cody, a one-time stripper and constant troublemaker, went to town on him. We went on to discuss the women who have most influenced their lives, the unlikely confluence of pregnancies and births around the film (Reitman and his wife, Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman and his wife, and a few others), elements of Juno that were actually autobiographical for Cody, and finally the studio’s recent decision to release the film in the heat of Oscar season on December 14. I asked Reitman, who I know is savvy about the awards season, to share his thoughts on that decision, and he gave the answer that anyone who has seen the movie in Toronto would expect: he feels a lot better about it now that audiences and critics have strongly embraced the film, and he only wishes it was later so that he could enjoy the ride even longer.
I had a short turnaround time before my next interview, so I hopped onto an elevator (joined by Casey Affleck, his wife, and kid) and headed down to the spacious second floor lobby to work for a bit. Weird sidenote: yesterday, some couple decided to have their wedding march through there—frankly, a pretty ridiculous choice of date and location, especially when half of the swarming hotel was dressed to be a wedding crasher! Among those who passed through that hallway during the short time I was there today: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones (sporting a sick mustache), and Josh Brolin, the three stars of No Country for Old Men.
Next up was an interview with the wonderful veteran stage actor Philip Bosco (The Savages). His wife of fifty years sat nearby and he occasionally sought her help to help him remember names of bygone people and films—no, don’t worry, he does not have dementia like his character in the film, but is actually doing very well for a seventy-seven year old. (I reminded him that no matter our age, we all have moments of forgetfulness, or as I like to call it, CRAFT’s Disease—as in Can’t Remember A F*cking Thing—which he enjoyed.) Bosco says he generally does not like promoting his work, but said he was having a blast in Toronto, where the studio had put him up at The Four Seasons—he said, “We feel spoiled—this is nice!” and his wife added, “Yeah, this is not theater stuff.” He recalled that he had not even wanted to see the script when his manager told him it was for another low-budget movie, especially at this point in his career. But when the manager called back and said that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney were attached, he had it sent along immediately. I asked if he had mixed emotions about being thought of to play a man nearing death (like the Peter O’Toole character in Venus) and, somewhat surprisingly, he said it didn’t bother him at all. Bosco has a Tony award and five other Tony nominations to show for his work in theater, but until now has nothing of note to boast for his work in film, in which he has primarily played character parts in movies like Trading Places (1983, which he enjoyed because Jamie Lee Curtis shared a dressing room with him and “has big tits!”), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1986), etc. Now, he is receiving the first real movie awards buzz of his career, and says he feels “sort of puzzled by it” because he does not have a “great scene” to pinpoint, unlike his co-stars (citing co-star Hoffman’s exasperated “Death is piss, and shit, and…” scene as an example). At the end of the day, Bosco’s awards prospects may come down to one question: are there enough older voters in the Academy who are familiar with his stage accomplishments to push him over the top? As for Bosco, he couldn’t care less, since he is more than satisfied with his current recurring gig on Damages, a new television show on FX starring Glenn Close, which he shoots at the Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York—if the show is picked up, he will become a regular.
Before heading for the airport, I stopped by a few places to say goodbye and thanks, and spotted fellow awards aficionado Tom O’Neil (of the Los Angeles Times’ TheEnvelope.com), whose work I always enjoy following, and with whom I had a nice brief chat.
And so ends my 2007 coverage from the Toronto Film Festival… though that is not to say I won’t keep a tab on things from afar. What a fun, well-run, invigorating event—I look forward to being back for years to come.
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