Robert Altman made Gosford Park at the supple age of 76. Martin Scorsese, at 71, proved to be nothing less than a one-man Ritalin prescription he when trotted The Wolf of Wall Street on the world. Woody Allen - with varying degrees of pomp, but an output that can not be denied – is 79, and has been been at it, like clockwork, with a movie every year for 40 years.
And, so, when an ace septuagenarian appeared before me last night, I clutched my opportunity and cornered him: Well, hello, Ridley Scott. The 77-year-old – in town bowing The Martian, a Fox film that's been dubbed “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” - is earning some of the best notices he's had in a while. And, by all accounts, there's no one who's enjoying this “comeback” more than this man who has the rapt eyes of a shark moving with purpose, ceaselessly swimming forward.
“I see it as like being a athlete,” Scott told me, at a mellow pre-party for his premiere, held in the slim glassed atrium of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. “You can't let yourself go soft.”
Not in the script? Retirement, any time soon, for the master behind such visual treatises as Blade Runner, Alien, and Gladiator.
Matt Damon, who was caught in another conversational hubbub next to us at the party, is probably only too elated to hear this: Thanks to Scott, he's in the Oscar convo for the first time in a long time. Good Will Hunting was back in 1997, lest we forget. And, well, he may want to catch up with his Argo-triumphing pal, Ben Affleck. Though Damon is always a steady presence, and was pretty nifty in that small-screen production of Behind the Candelabra, “it's been a while since Damon led a notable big-screen hit,” as New York Magazine just pointed out, and The Martian is going to give him just that.
Riffing a little bit about his move from film to digital, and his use of 3D, Scott acknowledged that a lot of artists – particularly novelists and painters – do some of their best work in their twilight years.
“Well, you're still a pup compared to Clint Eastwood!” I snapped, referring to the director who - at 84! - put out both the musical Jersey Boys and the runaway hit, American Sniper, in the same year.
“It's true,” he seconded. Shortly after which, it was time for Scott to slip off into the evening lights of the city, and go walk the glimmering slope of red carpet for another space adventure, another night.
Oh, and...
A perennially interesting sidebar about romping through TIFF is inspecting up-close the geometrics of celebrity coupledoms. Whether by the presence of a plus-one, or by their absence, it often says much. Take Rachel Weisz, who never shows up to premieres with her husband, and who had a jaunty retort to the question, “What's it like being married to James Bond?” when asked just that at the unspooling here in Toronto of her film, The Lobster. Actually, she told the reporter, “I'm married to Daniel Craig.”
Taking another tact: Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Much more openly synergistic when it comes to hitting celebrity dos together, he's been by her side as she begins the promo for Sicario, in which she gives one of TIFF's top-shelf performances. “John showing face means Emily's ready to start campaigning for Oscar,” is how a post on LaineyGossip.com put it, reading the tea-leaves and I concur. I watched John dutifully stand in a corner at a party held for Emily's movie at Soho House, hosted by Grey Goose – close, but not too close, letting his wife do her thing, but there in a pinch. “She's amazing in the movie,” he told me when we briefly spoke. Booster-in-chief!
Then, there's Elizabeth Olsen and Tom Hiddleston, a couple in the movie I Saw the Light, and also getting quite a bit of attention for their relationship off-camera. They merried together at the post-premiere party, held at The Addisons Residence on Wellington. They definitely have cute on their side.
Finally, but, hey not least, there was the stop-the-presses arrival of George Clooney to Toronto on Friday. While he was everywhere pressing the flesh, and being professionally charming – even courteously asking for his own tequila, Casamigos, while he stopped for drinks in the lobby bar of the Shangri-La – his superhero missus, Amal, was in Sri Lanka, meeting with the prime minister, after spending a few tense days in the Maldives where the international human rights lawyer is involved in a fight to defend its deposed president, Mohamed Nasheed. Not for nothing did George admit to being Amal's “arm candy” when he appeared on Stephen Colbert's Late Show earlier this week. When congratulated on his coming first-year anniversary, Mr. Smooth joshed, “And they said it wouldn't last.”