Tony Angellotti distinctly remembers when he knew “Green Book” might go all the way.
The public relations executive and awards consultant was at the first public screening of the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, when the audience began to react, even before the movie ended. “Explosive is how you’d characterize it,” he recalled in a recent email. “Tears, howls of laughter, spontaneous applause and a prolonged standing ovation.”
Universal, “Green Book’s” parent studio, had for months been assuming that the Ryan Gosling space adventure “First Man” would be their best Oscar bet. But, Angellotti noted, Toronto upended that calculation and made “Green Book” a contender “right there and then.”
The Toronto International Film Festival – or TIFF, as its fans lovingly call it – was founded 43 years ago with no discernible ambitions to be a Hollywood kingmaker. Known as a “best of the rest” festival, the week-long program focused mostly on movies that had premiered elsewhere, giving local Canadian audiences a chance to catch up with what the rest of the world was watching.
Nearly half a century later, TIFF is still a great catchall for films that have shown at Sundance, Berlin and Cannes. But it has expanded – both in time frame and curation – to become whatever its 400,000-plus attendees need it to be, depending on their tastes and tasks at hand.
TIFF, which this year will show more than 300 movies during its run of 11 days, is as valuable to programmers of arcane, experimental work as it is to theater owners looking for straight-up crowd-pleasers. It has become a popular destination for studios staging publicity junkets, as well as a gathering place for high-minded cineastes who wouldn’t think about anything as grubby as marketing.
Agents, producers and distributors still converge on TIFF to wheel…