Hello, my name's Justin McClure and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, oh man, it's festival season.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Jump into your limos, drive down, wave to the paparazis as you go see the new premiere of, I don't know, what movie's premiered at Tift that's here? Glass Onion. Yeah, I was there at the press screening. That was surprisingly not full. I guess people don't have knives out fever. Yeah, here we are on Festival Street. We're looking around. All the stars are here and passing us by. There's Brad. There's Julia. There's George. Did Festival Street used to last all week? Because this year it lasted like a couple days. I think it's only always only lasted a couple days. I'm sorry, we're getting into the weeds already, but we're talking about this year's Toronto International Film Festival. And Festival Street is when for a couple of days during the festival, they turn King Street into a... They just block it off. Yeah, they block it off. So no cars, no TTCC. Tons of brand activations, as they're called in lineups and stuff like that. Stand in front of like the TIF letters and take a photo in front of them. Who wouldn't do that? I guess me. I didn't do it. Yeah, I didn't do it either. But anyway, we're talking about the Toronto International Film Festival. Justin and I, we are Toronto residents. We have been going to the festival for many years, a long and storied relationship with the festival. And this year, we both had press or industry passes. Did we do an episode on TIF before? I forgot the check before started recording. We did an episode on the festival in general, just the idea of the festival a long time ago. But we've never done one where we talked about the year itself. This is TIF 2022. We both saw a ton of the new movies, some of the big blockbusters, your award season favorites, the stuff that's going to be out for a little man called the Oscar this year. And we're also very arty people, so we definitely checked out the less populated screenings to take in some of that stuff that you won't see anywhere else. We also felt some of the ghouls and goblins and things that go bump in the night at the Midnight Madness Program. We tried to get a broad range of the festival. We tried to keep our finger on the

pulse of what's happening in the zeitgeist of international cinema. And by that, does it mean that I had a list of like 45 movies that was preparing to see? And then I had a sudden moment of lucidity and I cut it down to 20 movies. Yes, that is what happened. Yeah. So for the first two days of the festival. I saw like four movies each day, and it was great. I loved it. I just loved, like, going from dream world to dream world, like all sorts of different places, just feeling, just feeling being immersed in movies. And then after a couple of days, I thought, okay, I got to, I would like to still be present at home during all this.

When you're looking at the movies and you're like, ooh, and you like close your eyes, I'm just going to rest them for 30 seconds. And you wake up and the credits are playing. Well, Sunday morning when we went to see Fableman's, which we'll get to, I was like, okay, it's over. I wonder if there are any other movies I can see.

Dollyland?

I guess I could see that.

And then I thought, why don't I nap instead?

Why don't I go? I wonder if there are any other movies I can see. I'm Dollyland. I guess I could see that.

And then I thought, why don't I nap instead? Why don't I go home for a nap? Yeah. And you've been hitting some midnights too. So I know disrespect to Mary Heron. But yes, I have been hitting some midnights, which is hard for me these days. I'm an old man. Especially that all the big, you know, popular movies, Tiff very specifically puts them at like 8 a.m. to weed out the people who would come and see it. Oh, my God, I was up at an ungodly hour to see the new film by your friend in mine, Steven Spielberg. Some of the nights, I just didn't go to sleep. And I would go to midnight, come back, stay up until I have to leave till 6.30 to get in line like an hour, an hour and a half early before the movie starts. Then I went home and I died. This is all post-life ghost talking where I just do the podcast forever. So, yes, we had press passes, which was really fun. So I had an industry pass, which gets me less stuff than a press pass does.

Yeah, that's probably true, because we had to be in a different line for the Fablements. People don't care about this. No, you were just ahead of me, that's why. Oh, was it? Okay, here's the thing, folks. I was very interested to go to TIF this year because I haven't been for the last few years. It's been a hybrid festival in the pandemic year.

It was all online.

And to me, a hybrid festival in the pandemic year. It was all online.

And to me, a film festival and this film festival in particular is about being there. It's about

being on the streets and seeing your buddies, seeing your friend Justin walk past, seeing, I don't

know, the other celebrities like Josh from the Slezoids and whoever else, whoever the other

podcast high-rollers are. And other high rollers are. And George and Julian and Brad and the stars. George Clooney. Oh, yeah, he probably has his own podcast now, right? That's right. That's right. So it was great to be back at TIF. It felt a bit like Tiff's comeback year. That's what I would write if I

writing a press release for Tiff. Yep. And what's this? Will just got a job as the media for Tiff.

So let's start with, I know a movie that both of us saw, Weird the Al Yankovic story.

So this was the first movie at this year's Midnight Madness Program, the lineup for cult movies and

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