If the Toronto International Film Festival has a public face it currently belongs to Cameron Bailey. The artistic director of the festival since 2012, Bailey was recently promoted to co-head of the institution with the news that Piers Handling was stepping down as director and CEO after 25 years. Bailey’s new counterpart is expected to be announced soon, but he is the future of the festival and how it responds to the changing global festival landscape is in his hands.
TIFF almost always has the big films premiering at Venice and Telluride, but this year they have more highly anticipated world premieres in some time with Steve McQueen’s “Widows,” Felix Van Groeningen’s “Beautiful Boy,” Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Neil Jordan’s “Greta,” Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria Bell,” Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “A Million Little Pieces” and Claire Denis’ “High Life,” among others. 2017 was the first year since Bailey was named artistic director that TIFF did not have a world premiere nominated for Best Picture (last year’s winner, “The Shape of Water,” did screen at TIFF, however). That seems unlikely this Oscar season.
Bailey took some time during his busy schedule to jump on the phone and discuss this year’s festival, the impact of #MeToo, the inherent difficulties in nailing a television section, what under the radar movie you shouldn’t miss and more.
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The Playlist: In April, you were promoted to co-head of the festival. How has that actually changed in your day to day?
Cameron Bailey: It hasn’t changed really yet. It doesn’t take effect until after the festival, in the fall. But, we’re aware that the transition will happen in the next few months and this is Piers’ last festival in his role as CEO. He’ll be moving on and I’ll be taking on the role of artistic director and co-head as well. We’ll be announcing the other co-head shortly, so there is a sense this year of a kind of passing of the torch. Piers hired me many years ago and he’s been a real mentor, and a colleague, and a counsel for many years. I can often go to Piers and ask his advice on things and he’s got great wisdom because he’s been doing this for a long time. I’ll miss him and I’ll miss having him here to do that. I’m looking forward to the new responsibilities and to moving into our future with the other co-head of the festival and the organization.
Are there any new additions or major changes to the festival that attendees should be aware about this year? Anything that they should really pay attention to?
I wouldn’t say new additions, but we always have an addition [with] all of the films. This year we’re doing an anniversary screening of “The Joy Luck Club.” We’ll have Wayne Wang back, in the very same theater where we presented it 25 years ago, the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, so excited about that. We’ll have some of the cast here as well. Of course, with the success of “Crazy Rich Asians” and just the appetite that is clearly out there for a wider range of movies, and frankly for Rom-coms, because I don’t see any movies about love. We could use more of those. We’re thrilled to be able to bring that back, and I think people will gather, reunite, recite the lines and cry, and all of those things. That’s one of the things that we try to do that’s special every year.
I know so many festivals think about, “We want to get the world premieres from the big auteurs,” how often do you think to yourself, “We need movies that the audiences are going to love or crowd pleasers?” That might obvious, but is it something you guys have to remind yourselves of sometimes?
I don’t think we have to remind ourselves [about] it. I mean, we’re, I think, the leading public festival in the world and our People’s Choice award has really become the most coveted award at our festival, and so we’re really aware of the value of our audience. In fact, many people in the industry will tell us, filmmakers [and] sometimes the companies that are bringing us films, they want that Toronto audience reaction. So, we’re really aware of the audience here and how they can sometimes shape fortunes with how they respond to films. But the audience here, it doesn’t mean that it’s a kind of a crass, lowest common denominator reaction at all. The audience here is very informed, they love movies, they know movies, but they’re ready to be wowed. They walk in not ready to hate the movie, but ready to love it. I think that is a big difference. When we see that reaction, as we have, we saw it to “Moonlight,” we saw it with “The Shape of Water,” we see it with so many different movies where people really fall in love with a film here, and sometimes, even during the festival, will see that same film multiple times. That is really gratifying when you see that. You try to anticipate it in some way, but you can’t ever try to predict it because audiences will respond to what they respond to, and we can’t tell them what they’re going to love. They’ll find that for themselves.
It was only a few weeks after last year’s TIFF when the current incarnation of the #MeToo movement was born.
Yes.
How has that event shaped this year’s festival?
Well, I think it is reshaping the film industry as a whole. It goes beyond the film industry as well, I think in a number of ways. We’re all more aware now that there has been harassment and abuse going on in the film industry and it hadn’t been spoken about enough for all kinds of reasons. People were punished for speaking up about it and I think that’s now beginning to change. We have had a code of conduct in place at our festival for many years. We’ll be making that more visible and everyone who attends will be expected to adhere to that code of conduct. That’s one thing that we have done to make sure that we’re providing a safe environment for everyone who’s participating in the festival.
We’ve also been made aware of how the push for gender parity in the film industry has a serious obstacle in the form of harassment and abuse. So, we started an initiative last year before our festival called Share Her Journey. It was a fundraising drive to raise money to help support women in the industry, get them into mentorship positions and advance their projects through script development and just raise awareness around the need for more stories told by women. But, #MeToo has reshaped that as well because we’ve got to address harassment and abuse before we can talk about trying to strive for gender equity because it doesn’t happen until those barriers of abuse are reduced, removed entirely if possible. That’s been a big part of it.
This year, during the festival, we’ll be hosting a women’s rally on the first Saturday morning of the festival which is an attempt to really bring together some of the people and some of the momentum that’s gathered around these initiatives. We’ll have Dr. Stacy Smith from University of Southern California, who’s been leading the Annenberg Inclusion Initiatives, she’ll be speaking at that rally. There have been some parallels to what’s happened in the US here [in Canada] with some people after #MeToo, parallels in Europe as well. So, we’re bringing together a lot of the international voices in this area to speak about the change that has been made so far and just what else needs to be done.
I just saw that rally announced today. Where did the initiative to hold it come from?
It was a combination of things. We had been talking about what we could do to recognize the changes that have happened since our last festival. We were also in touch with people in the industry, in the US especially, who were active in the #MeToo and the Time’s Up movement, and then our colleagues in Europe who were involved in similar things, so I think everybody wanted to do something. We have an opportunity, a platform, to really raise awareness. Instead of doing a number of disparate things we decided that we would use the rally to bring all of these voices together.
From a personal standpoint, how competitive do you get when it comes to landing world premieres? Is it hard not to get into it when there are three other major festivals in sort of the same sphere of time? Is it something you get energized about?
Yeah. What I think I never want to do is to be competitive for the sake of competition. This is not a race we’re trying to win or we want to be just top of the podium. It’s not like that. We pursue great films in the same way that our colleagues at other festivals in our part of the calendar do. We’re all, I think, looking for the same kinds of things, that “wow” moment when you see a film that really inspires you and you think will inspire your audience as well. At the same time, I try to always remember what is the kind of the special sauce of Toronto. We have this remarkable public audience that responds to films in a way that I think that no other festival audience has. We also have, in addition to that, most of the major representatives of the global film industry who converge on Toronto every year and we’ve got a significant press corps that is increasingly as diverse as our audience in Toronto. That combination of this incredibly informed, enthusiastic audience and the media that’s here, and the industry opportunities that are here, I think that’s what we could offer. When we think we can offer that in a way that a film really can use, that no other festival can offer it, that’s when it makes a lot of sense to have the world premiere in Toronto.
You have some noteworthy television programs in your Primetime lineup, but when looking at all the major festivals it seems like nobody’s really quite figured how to knock it out of the park yet. Do you think it’s just a learning process? Is it convincing the television industry it’s worthy of their time?
You know, I think film festivals and television started as totally distinct areas and we’re slowly coming together and converging. Part of it is around the filmmakers who are working between small screen and big screen quite comfortably now and audiences who are easily watching as much at home as they are maybe in movie theaters. That kind of convergence makes a lot of sense, but we can never show, in most cases anyhow, all of a TV show. It just doesn’t make sense in a festival context. So what we’re giving people in our Primetime program is a taste of a show like “Homecoming” which we’re premiering here. Then they will go off and live with that show as they watch it elsewhere. But what we do want to do is offer that show what we offer to our films, which is kind of that bright spotlight of the premiere, with the red carpet and the audience excitement. But it’s different because then a film goes off and has a different life than a TV show does. There are some distinctions that I think won’t change, I think that’s fine. The size of our Primetime program is also quite modest compared to the number of films we have, so that’s partly going to explain just the presence that it has within the festival. But I think for us, the important thing is understanding that our audience wants to see this work as well. It’s a part of their lives, in terms of having consumed stories, and we want to be there with them.
One last quick question, what’s one movie that’s under the radar that you think someone should see at TIFF this year?
“Wild Rose” by Tom Harper.
Look for complete coverage of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival beginning on Thursday, Sept. 6 through Sunday, Sept. 16.
