“Both were done so tastefully,” she said, comparing them with an air of clinical detachment. They were “very separate experiences,” but in the end she felt the delicate French kiss with Megan Fox was more uncomfortable to watch. “It was kind of creepy because it went on too long. And I guess it was just weirder watching myself put my tongue in someone’s mouth.” It didn’t bother her that she was nude in Chloe’s sex scene, she added. “It was shot so stunningly and you believe everything is really happening.”
Later, en route to the bar, I bumped into Atom Egoyan’s father, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Leonard Cohen. He asked me what I thought of his son’s film.
“I liked it a lot.”
“Yes, but is it . . .”
“Is it commercial?”
“Yes.”
“Very much so. If it gets the right promotion and distribution.”
A little while later, just as I was about to have a word with Atom, there was a sudden commotion in the room. Egoyan’s father had collapsed. He had toppled straight backwards, his fall broken by Elvis Mitchell, former film critic for the New York Times, who caught him in his arms. As he lay unconscious on a couch in the VVIP tent, I saw that my 26-year-old son, who has first aid training, had rushed to his aid. Then Egoyan ran in and took over as my son dialled 911. In a few minutes, the director’s dad had revived, but he was taken to hospital for tests (and released the next morning in good condition). It’s not the first time an elderly guest has collapsed in the excitement of a TIFF party. Simone Urdl, one of Chloe’s producers, remembers that three years earlier Gordon Pinsent was rushed to hospital after passing out at the party for her film Away From Her.
At the Chloe party, after Egoyan’s father was whisked away, my son—who was underdressed in jeans and a T-shirt—was ordered by security to leave the VVIP tent. By then, there was virtually no one left inside, important or otherwise. Even though he’d just tried to save the director’s father, he was wearing the wrong coloured wristband. Crazy.
