September 11, 2001 at the Toronto International Film Festival: A reminiscence.

As some of you who have fol­lowed my work over the years may have noticed, not only am I not at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, but this is the first time I haven’t been at the Toronto International Film Festival in many years. And hence, it is the first time I’ve spent September 11 in my home base of Brooklyn, New York since well before September 11, 2001. It’s odd. To be per­fectly blunt, I would have been happy to spend September 11 of every year until the day I died in Toronto, for reas­ons that are both com­plic­ated and, I will insist, not unpat­ri­ot­ic. I’m not in Toronto now because the trip there just would­n’t have made sense in my cur­rent situation—just got back from anoth­er trip, too much work at home, and so on—and that’s the way it goes. But Toronto has a spe­cial place in my heart, or per­haps to be less soppy I should say my con­scious­ness, on account of hav­ing been there on September 11, 2001, and for many days after that.

I had seen some pretty fant­ast­ic films pri­or to that day. Claire Denis’ cata­clys­mic mini-apocalypse Trouble Every Day, Eric Rohmer’s stately, quirky, acute The Lady and the Duke, and Catherine Breillat’s sear­ing Fat Girl par­tic­u­larly stand out in my mind. As does Kiroshi Kurosawa’s Pulse, which ended (almost) with the image of an unmanned plane fly­ing head-on into a build­ing. I remem­ber after Fat Girl a bunch of us walk­ing out, utterly shaken, try­ing to work it out by say­ing, “Boy, that end­ing was a little arbit­rary, was­n’t it?” September 9 was Première’s party at the pop­u­lar Italian res­taur­ant Prego. The party had begun as a sub­dued cock­tail hour in an isol­ated upper room of the place, but my col­leagues Jim Meigs and Kathy Heintzelman had help build it up to THE party at the fest. Now Jim was gone; Michael Solomon had taken his slot as editor-in-chief, and I don’t think he’ll mind me say­ing that now he was reap­ing the bene­fit of the work that had been done before his ten­ure. David Lynch showed up with his two Mullholland Drive stars, Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring. “Thanks for the four-star review, Glenn!” Lynch shouted at me as he took a bite from a slice of Prego’s Sicilian pie. “Hey, great pizza!” I actu­ally had the stones to ask Harring about her turn in Lambada:The Forbidden Dance. “That was actu­ally the film that began my love affair with the dance,” she said with all sin­cer­ity. Even I don’t believe how I worked the room that night. I chat­ted up Harring, then Jennifer Love Hewitt (in town to shoot The Penguin with Jackie Chan), then star­let Zoe Saldana (who had just wrapped Crossroads with Britney Spears); then I met a beau­teous young colum­nist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, one Leah McClaren, who I intro­duced to Mr. Richard Harris, who was seated on a couch, draw­ing from a seem­ingly bot­tom­less glass of red wine, next to none oth­er than Ms. Sissy Spacek. By this time I had sweated right through my shirt. (My boss Mr. Solomon was duly impressed; he later marveled to a col­league, “Glenn really has remark­able con­fid­ence with women.”) I told Mr. Harris that I had encountered Jimmy Webb, of all people, at the food court of LaGuardia Airport before set­ting out to Toronto. He said: “Jimmy Webb!!! Hahahahahahah!!!” It was so great. As was the even­ing of September 10^th, when I had a din­ner with Lady and the Duke star Lucy Russell, who had been in Christopher Nolan’s Following and who, god­dam­mit, should be a major film act­ress today. Sweet, smart, great com­pany, and the star of what I still con­sider a great film. I swear to you, then, that on the early morn­ing of September 11, as I flossed my teeth in the well-appointed bath­room of my room at the Toronto Park Hyatt, I actu­ally was telling myself how blessed and happy I was. I was see­ing great films, meet­ing great people; my new boss was get­ting into the swing of things; it looked to be a beau­ti­ful day; God was in his heav­en, and so on. It got bet­ter. The 8:30 a.m. screen­ing was of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, a com­plex and ulti­mately buoy­ant film. I don’t think many will argue when I say that every­body com­ing out of that press screen­ing had a spring in his or her step. My cheeri­ness hit a glitch when I came out of the screen­ing and saw my friend Maggie Murphy, then of Entertainment Weekly, pretty much sob­bing into her cell phone. I swear—again!—to you, my first thought was, “Oh, my. Did an uncle of hers die or some­thing?” I approached her to ask what was wrong and if there was any­thing I could do. “They bombed the World Trade Center,” she said. I grabbed her and we ran down­stairs our of the Manulife Center. There was an HMV, or somesuch­th­ing, across Bloor Street, that had lots of TV mon­it­ors through­out the store. We rushed in. “Do you have cable?” I shouted at one of the clerks—all the mon­it­ors had music videos run­ning on them. “No, we don’t,” the clerk sputtered. “Do you know why I’m ask­ing?” I shouted. “Yes, I do,” he said. We ran back to the Park Hyatt, gathered back in my col­league Kathy’s room and watched the tele­vi­sion. Pretty much silent, except for an odd “Oh my God.” Soon I went upto my room and began frantic­ally call­ing friends—my Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg was liv­ing on Pearl Street at the time so I was par­tic­u­larly (as Pete Puma would say) worrrrried about him—and get­ting a busy sig­nal every time out, even when I called rel­at­ives in Jersey. You know what worked? Freaking AOL worked. Once I got reas­sur­ance via that con­duit that most of my nearest and dearest were okay, I slithered from my room. My then-boss Michael Solomon was a real champ through­out. He left it open for every­one at Première who was there: Do what you have to do. If you want to go home now and you can, do it. If you want to hang out in Toronto on Première’s dime, do it, no strings attached, even though the Festival was now sus­pen­ded. He picked up a very expens­ive, very somber din­ner for the staffers who had­n’t yet ren­ted cars and high­tailed it out of there that night. I figured I’d stay. I was unat­tached at the time, except to my cat; and my live-in land­lord and his wife were look­ing after him at the time and they repor­ted that, aside from hav­ing been a little freaked by the noise, he was fine. Might as well stick around and do my job, as much as I could, if and when they star­ted up the fest again. Next after­noon fest­iv­al head Piers Handling announced, respect­fully, that the fest­iv­al would in fact go on. I thought it was, finally, the right decision; by the same token, if I ever see the guy who stood up and star­ted clap­ping as the announce­ment was fed through video mon­it­ors at the Hyatt, I will break his neck. There had already been some “chick­ens come home to roost” com­ment­ary on Canadian TV; but the Torontonians I met on the streets, in the bars, wherever, were uni­formly gen­er­ous and kind. The afore­men­tioned Leah McClaren treated me to a lav­ish din­ner at Toronto’s best sea­food res­taur­ant, and we talked the night away. The bar at the Park Hyatt was a scene out of a post-modern Casablanca—a mot­ley crew of inter­na­tion­als wait­ing to get out, and mak­ing the most of it while they could­n’t. Particularly con­spicu­ous was the all-star cast of Fred Schepsi’s Last Orders. I was talk­ing to a fel­low U.S. cit­izen at the bar when Ray Winstone, recog­niz­ing our Yank accents, came up to us, draped his arms over both our shoulders, and said, “We’re with you, mates!” Then there was Winstone’s cost­ar David Hemmings, a far cry from his sleek Blow-Up days indeed, at the bar doing magic tricks, of all things, an artic­u­lat­ing his at the time ton­ic, hil­ari­ously bel­li­ger­ent polit­ic­al philo­sophy: “I say bomb ’em all…starting with Northern Ireland!” And he’d laugh this obscenely bois­ter­ous laugh as he tucked in to anoth­er round. I told him how much I loved Profondo Rosso, and he was delighted: “Dario Argento? The maes­tro? Nobody ever brings him up…” Now I’d always been a fan, but God, I did fall in love with him on those nights. God rest
his soul. And then there was the quiet, bril­liant, ter­ribly sym­path­et­ique Claire Denis, with whom I and anoth­er film writer spent many hours, hanging in the back room of the Hyatt’s bar, watch­ing CNN on the crappy rear-projection TV.Her film was called Trouble Every Day; that had been a Zappa/Mothers song about Watts; but she had her favor­ite band, the unearthly Tindersticks, come up with a very differently-toned but equally insinu­at­ing song of the same name for her film. And we crawled into our cups togeth­er and rumin­ated that now, yes, there would be trouble every day. By the 16^th or so I was able to get on a train from Toronto to New York; Richard and Mary Corliss were on it, and I nod­ded to them, but mostly I just wanted to smoke and bury myself in the volume of Kingsley Amis’ let­ters that I had bought at Indigo. And when I got home I saw the smoke rising, and smelt the smell, as I got out of Penn Station; and I got home and com­for­ted my pacing cat; and went to my loc­al and found that one of my fel­low reg­u­lars was only alive because he had been late to work, and that all of his col­leagues were dead, and that he had been drunk ever since; and more. I think very often about all the people I men­tioned above, and I’ve always been grate­ful to them for their fel­low­ship and com­fort, and that’s, sort of I guess, the reas­on I’m miss­ing Toronto right now. And, need­less to say, I no longer con­sider the finale of Fat Girl to be arbitrary.