Actor Benedict Cumberbatch speaks during a press conference for "The Imitation Game" at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014.Hannah Yoon/The Canadian Press
One effect of the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to run only premieres for the first four days is that a greater number of high-profile films are running in its second week. That includes three films that are at least somewhat Oscar-buzzy, and provided for a Tuesday afternoon of star-packed press conferences – and lots of idol banter.
These include The Imitation Game, which had a premiere at Telluride and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the wartime code-breaker Alan Turing who undergoes "chemical castration" because of his homosexuality, as well as Cake, which stars Jennifer Aniston who undergoes a makeunder to play a chronic pain sufferer with disfiguring facial scars. Lastly, there's director Ramin Bahrani's real-estate drama 99 Homes, which had its premiere at the Venice film festival last week.
Press conferences are an odd ritual in which the cast and director praise each other and say the same things that are in the press kits, while journalists occasionally manage to irk them into going off-script.
When Cumberbatch was asked why is he often cast as a genius – Sherlock Holmes, Julian Assange, Stephen Hawking – he growled "urggggh," like the monster in Frankenstein (whom he has also played).
"It's a question for directors and friends," he said. "It's very flattering, but one can only aspire to the level of intelligence of characters I'm lucky enough to play … I get asked that quite a lot, and I'm really tired of it."
Later, The Imitation Game's Norwegian director, Morten Tyldum, snapped at a reporter who asked why, for a movie about homophobia, he hadn't found a gay star. Tyldum called the question "ludicrous."
An hour later, the press conference for Aniston's Cake was a love-in, despite the film's dark subject matter: a difficult, angry woman who goes on a quest to find why a member of her support group took her own life.
Director Daniel Barnz (Phoebe in Wonderland) declared Aniston ideal for the part because, as mean as her character Claire is, audiences will always sympathize with her. The actress confirmed her good nature, praising her director, cast mates and the intelligence and good taste of audiences in Toronto, who gave her film a standing ovation.
Indeed, Barnz could not find enough good things to say about (and to) his star: "I've been staring at Jen's face for months now – one of the most beautiful women in the world – without a stitch of makeup on," he all but gushed, "but because of the beauty that comes from the inside, I've never seen you more beautiful."
"Let's get married," Aniston suggested jokily.
"No one saw this coming," said Barnz (who has been with his husband for almost two decades).
As the world knows, Aniston was married to actor Brad Pitt, who strayed with another actress, Angelina Jolie, leaving Aniston with the spurned-woman label, courtesy of the tabloids. One reporter stepped close to the line when he quoted Aniston's character in the film describing something as "a sad story."
"Do you have a sad story?" he asked ingenuously.
"My sad story?" responded Aniston, wrinkling her nose in thought for a moment. "I once did a Bob's Burger commercial. That was pretty tragic."
A real tragic story is 99 Homes, writer-director Bahrani's drama about the after-effects of the subprime mortgage crisis. The film stars Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man) as a young Orlando father struggling to get back the home he was evicted from by working for a ruthless real-estate broker (Michael Shannon.) Throughout the press conference, Bahrani, who had lost his voice, spoke in an ominous whispers about the "insanity" of the global income gap.
The press was on Bahrani's side, though Garfield grew impatient when asked about the bushy beard he was sporting. "A beard's a beard and this is one of them," he bristled. "Maybe we'll talk about it another time without wasting people's time."
Apparently, the actors find these meet-the-press rituals every bit as surreal as the spectators do.
"This is very far from my personal life," Shannon said. "Coming here and doing things is like going to Pluto. It doesn't have anything to do with my existence, except for my job, which I love."