Anyone looking for evidence of economic recovery at the annual InStyle magazine/Hollywood Foreign Press party at the Windsor Arms on Tuesday night must have come away disappointed. Magazines have been hit a lot more immediately than movies by the economic downturn, and signs of cutbacks were everywhere.
Gone were the lavish food stations, replaced by a modest buffet of prosciutto and sushi, and an odd table covered with jars of candy. (You know things are bad when they're plying guests with cheap sweets.) And gone were the decadent goodie bags, which had been such a coveted staple that guests were issued little tickets to make sure they didn't take home more than one. This year's bag didn't even say InStyle; it was a simple Sephora shopping bag containing one bottle of body wash and one small package of lip glosses. (I know, cry me a river, but these are signs.)
Director Rebecca Miller (left) and actress Robin Wright Penn, in a va-va-voom short black dress, arrive at the InStyle Party Sept. 16.— 2009 Getty Images
People may have been celebrating the sale of Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man , to the Weinstein company for $1-million (U.S.), but it was the first big sale at TIFF, and $1-million is a whole lot less than the $30-million paid for Little Miss Sunshine at Sundance a few years ago. Plus, supporting Tom Ford is a no-brainer: The former Gucci head is a media magnet, and his film stars Colin Firth, who in addition to being extremely dishy is also a master line-deliverer. “It's not the film of a stylist,” Firth told me. “It's the film of a man with something to confess.” (Harvey Weinstein, you have your tag line.)
Firth has a second film at TIFF, Dorian Gray , which has been less well received – partly because it gets melodramatic, but mainly (for me, anyway) because Firth's face is obscured behind a forest of facial hair.
“The hair was really mine,” he said. “Well, mostly mine. I had to keep it for two months, but it was more my wife suffering it than I. Shaving it was a great day. And even better, because I age in the film, was scraping off the prosthetic wrinkles. Though there are one or two that didn't come off.”
Firth was just one of many Brits at this bash – in fact, the place was so lousy with them, I wondered who was back there minding England. There was Sarah Ferguson in one banquette (later, I watched as she and Firth met for the first time), sporting lots of cleavage, with her famous red hair down around her shoulders, talking about her new role: a producer on the closing-night gala film The Young Victoria , which stars Emily Blunt. “I've been wanting to make this film for 15 years,” the erstwhile Duchess of York told me. “I've written two books about the young Victoria, and it's a such a beautiful love story, this teenage girl falling in love. And I fell in love with a great prince, so I know.”
Clive Owen was wandering around with George MacKay, the 17-year-old actor who plays his son in The Boys Are Back , in which a family reunites after a death. “I'd never seen the film with an audience before and I was so glad to hear them laugh,” Owen said. Later, he secluded himself in a banquette, and politely avoided eye contact with a weird army of scantily clad fembots who appeared out of nowhere and spent half an hour displaying themselves by his velvet rope.
