Richard Crouse

I’ve been covering the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 of the 50 years of its existence. I’ve dusted off some memories from those years as a personal look back at the fest’s first half century.

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2024: If you look at photographs of me taken during the film festival, I am virtually always doing the same pose. Not sure where it came from, not sure why I do it, but when someone goes to snap a photo of me, I lean forward, smile and point at the camera. The Crouse Point. Last year at a party celebrating the release of the documentary “The Last of the Sea Women” I had the opportunity to meet Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who produced the film. As we posed for a picture together, I hit the pose, and so did she, making one of the more memorable festival pics I’ve ever taken.

2005: Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake showed up at the suite together to talk about their crime thriller “Edison.” The movie is a dud. So much so that years later co-star Kevin Spacey responded to a Twitter asking people to “name one bad Kevin Spacey movie,” with one word, “Edison.” My interview was scheduled on the last day of the festival. Everyone was feeling a little giddy, including my producer, Liz, whose birthday we were about to celebrate once we wrapped up for the day. We got to celebrate early, however, when I mentioned it was her birthday, and Justin Timberlake sang a version of “Happy Birthday” that I remember more fondly than the movie he was there to talk about.

2014: Repairing Dustin Hoffman’s watch. During a roundtable interview for “The Cobbler” the alarm on his watch went off several times. He gave it to me, and I looked up the instructions on how to fix it on Google. “How did it you look it up online? They have instructions to fix Timex watches online? I don’t automatically go to those things,” he said. During the interview he said: “I was told to take acting. Nobody flunks acting.” Later he said that it wasn’t such a bad choice because, for instance, “No one ever says, ‘I want to be a critic when I grow up.’”

2018: The press conference for “A Star is Born” was a star-studded affair. Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliot, Dave Chapelle and Anthony Ramos were all backstage chatting as Lady Gaga arrived. She flitted around the room, saying hello to everyone with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Elliot was on the phone. His majestic voice filled the room. Gaga, without interrupting the call, gave him a squeeze and a quick peck on the cheek. He smiled at her, and in that voice said, “Thank you, darlin’,” confirming my hypothesis that he could say almost anything and make it sound poetic.

2009: In the first decade of covering the festival I viewed it as an endurance test as much as a film fest. Always overscheduled, I didn’t want to miss a thing. Most often the hectic pace worked in my favor, because nothing ever happens on schedule at a giant festival like this. Once, however, I was late, quite late for an interview with Michael Caine. I ran to our interview room and was horrified to find him sitting, waiting for me. Sweaty, out of breath and more than a bit frazzled, I apologized. He looked at me and said, in that instantly recognizable voice, “You look like you need a break.” I smiled, he sat back, and we chilled for a few minutes. He read the newspaper; I pulled my act together and afterward we had a lovely chat. Stars of his magnitude are rarely that magnanimous, and I’ll never forget it.

2001: The 2001 festival was a somber affair post September 11 but there was a steeliness uncommon at the usually glitzy event. We gathered, watched films, communicated and healed, sending a message that the uncertainty of the times would not prevent us from expressing ourselves, from sharing stories. Years later I think back to those days and realize that terror didn’t win on 9/11. As long as we don’t allow ourselves to go silent, and we breathe life into our stories and experiences on film and elsewhere, we won’t and can’t live in fear.

2006: Jennifer Lopez came by our hotel room suite to shoot an interview for her “El Cantante,” based on the life of the late salsa singer Héctor Lavoe. Before she arrived, a publicist came in the room to ensure that we had all switched our cell phones off. “If the cell phone rings while we’re doing this interview, Jennifer Lopez woke it up and walk out of the room.“ We all turned our phones off, and sure enough about two minutes into the interview a cell phone went off, ringing loudly and disrupting the shoot. I looked around at all my staff, they’re all grimly, shaking their heads. No, it wasn’t me, and then we realized that the cell phone disrupted everything was Jennifer Lopez‘s publicist’s phone. We got to finish that interview.

2012: At the beginning of the press conference for “Cloud Atlas,” I started things off by wishing Hugh Grant a happy birthday, who turned fifty-two that day. Tom Hanks began a rousing version of “Happy Birthday,” which the panel, including Halle Berry, Ben Wishaw, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon and many others, and a room full of reporters joined in on. When it was over, Grant, who looked uncomfortable with the whole thing flashed a grin and addressed the press, “That’s very, very nice. Thank you very much. That’s the first nice thing the press has ever done for me.”

2008: The most ironic dinner of 2008 award goes to the Maple Pictures fete for the movie “Hunger.” No, the waiters didn’t walk around with empty plates and yes, everyone gobbled up every last bit of bison and salmon on offer. The paradox of eating $45 entrees in celebration of a movie about a hunger strike hung heavy in the air, but the chance to eat something other than sweaty cheese cubes and the usual TIFF party food was too enticing. Incongruity be damned… the bison was delicious.

2002: I took a crew with me to Nick Nolte’s hotel room to shoot an interview about his film “The Good Thief.” We set everything up, place two chairs in the middle of the room three feet apart, one for me one for Nolte. I asked the first question and then another and another. Each time he would start off speaking at a normal volume, and then his voice would disintegrate into a whisper. Each time I edged my seat slightly so that I could hear what he was saying, and by the end of the interview, I was literally almost sitting in his lap.