TORONTO - The dirty little secret of the Toronto International Film Festival is that it can provide a somewhat tortured viewing experience, especially for the paying public.
“Do you mean to tell me everyone here is paying $40 to wait for this movie?†That's what one woman asked a festival volunteer while standing in line for the North American premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's “The Master†at the Princess of Wales theater in Toronto on Friday night.
Well, yes, she was told.
Actually, adult tickets for the premium screenings cost $38.27 in Canadian dollars. Having paid the price, the questioner and her companion, about a third of the way down a long, winding line, waited two hours on the sidewalk for a 9 p.m. screening for which the doors finally opened at around 9:30.
That was better than Thursday night's showing of Walter Salles's “On the Road,†which ran about an hour late. But it was not quite so timely as Ben Affleck's “Argo,†for which the lights dimmed on Friday at 6:38 p.m., just eight minutes past the planned showtime.
At the Princess of Wales screening of “The Master,†Cameron Bailey, one of the festival's top officials, finally appeared onstage at 9:49 p.m. He welcomed the crowd, noted (but did not explain) the delay and thanked a technical crew that had specially equipped the theater to handle the 70-millimeter format that is strongly preferred by Mr. Anderson.
In truth, the glories of a large, 70-millimeter frame will have been lost on at least 30 or 40 customers, who were seated at the back of the main floor under a balcony that cut off the top of the screen. From there, the viewing experience was about the eq uivalent of watching Mr. Anderson's masterwork from beneath the overhang of the concession stand at a drive-in theater.
On the bright side, Mr. Anderson himself showed up to welcome a crowd that was getting restless, but cheered him.
“Have a great time. It's a beautiful theater. Thanks for bringing us to Toronto,†he said, and finally the night got under way.
Then again, almost nothing gets under way here - certainly not the premium public screenings - without further delay, as the festival screens a long string of promotional spots. The “Argo†screening was preceded by at least nine, plugging a James Bond celebration, the Bell Lightbox, the festival's People's Choice awards, its own volunteers and a string of sponsors who push their products and services with cinema-themed ads that are sometimes entertaining, at least the first few times you see them.
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