Ben Stiller Says Making Movies in Canada Is an “Amazing Experience” as Toronto Fest Kicks Off
The Toronto Film Festival on Thursday returned post-strikes with Hollywood star wattage as Ben Stiller and director David Gordon Green gave a glittering lift-off for their opening night film Nutcrackers.
Gordon Green introduced Stiller to the crowd at Roy Thomson Hall in the Canadian city that looked primed for film fest fun with the opening night comedy. The Zoolander and Tropic of Thunder star then recalled making movies in Canada.
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“When people will talk to me sometimes about the Night at the Museum movies, they’ll say, Wow, what’s it like to shoot in the Museum of Natural History? And I’ll say it was actually a warehouse in Vancouver,” Stiller recounted.
“I’ve made a bunch of movies in Canada, and it’s always been an amazing experience,” Stiller added. His comments followed Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau touting Canada as a foreign location destination for Hollywood. “Our cities can sometimes sub in for American cities, but, quite frankly, more and more frequently they get to be actually set in Toronto or Vancouver or other places,” the Canadian leader said.
“But more than that, we’re one of the few places in the world that really understands that diversity and differences can and most be a source of strength,” Trudeau added about inspiration for homegrown movies exported to the world.
Director Gordon Green told the first-night Toronto audience when introducing Nutcrackers that showing his films at TIFF “is like a rite of passage, it’s like a birth for so many of the films I’ve made. It’s amazing to be here.” Later, during a post-screening Q&A, he explained that, after a run of making dark-themed movies, his latest film, a heartfelt comedy, answered an inner need for “some lightness.”
Gordon Green also argued Hollywood movies currently lack “warmth” and Nutcrackers looked to fill a gap in the theatrical movie business. “We’re in a comedic drought,” he added as Gordon Green looked to feed his own creative needs and what he hopes is a market demand for family-themed movies.
For his part, Stiller said after some years only directing or producing projects, he had been looking for a movie that really grabbed his interest and could get him back into acting. Then the script for Nutcrackers landed in his email.
“For some reason, I read it right away and intuition really hit me. I said, I want to make this movie, I want to meet these kids, I want to be a part of this experience,” Stiller recalled as Arlo Janson, Ulysses Janson, Homer Janson and Atlas Janson — the four real-life brothers who starred alongside Stiller in Nutcrackers and were seated as well on the Roy Thomson Hall stage for the Q&A.
“This movie was made because of you guys,” Stiller added to warm applause as he turned to the Janson brothers, who as actors were making their feature film debuts. “I just want to thank you all for watching our movie and being here,” Homer Janson told the first-night audience to applause as he spoke on behalf of his brothers.
Written by Leland Douglas, Nutcrackers follows Mike (Stiller), a straight-laced workaholic who has to travel to rural Ohio to care for his four nephews after their parents die in a car accident. After weeks of farm-life mayhem, Mike realizes he won’t have to find a new home for the orphaned children. They found a new home for him.
The ensemble cast for Nutcrackers includes Linda Cardellini, Edi Patterson, Tim Heidecker and Toby Huss. The comedy opening TIFF marks Stiller’s first starring role in a movie since Mike White’s Brad’s Status and Noah Baumbach’s Netflix family drama The Meyerowitz Stories in 2017.
Launching this year with a mainstream Hollywood comedy in Toronto comes as Roy Thomson Hall is typically filled with ordinary moviegoers (and not only industry people as in Cannes and Venice).
Stiller’s crowd-pleaser marked a change of pace in Toronto from 2023 when Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Boy and the Heron kicked off TIFF’s more solemn 48th edition.
Earlier on Thursday, TIFF featured red carpet premieres for Eddie Huang’s Vice Is Broke, the documentary about Vice Media going from boom to bust; Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By the Tides; and Samuel Van Grinsven’s Went Up The Hill, starring Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery.
Toronto also opened Thursday with debuts for Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse, starring Chloe Sevigny; Samir Oliveros’s The Luckiest Man in America; and a Midnight Madness premiere for The Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat and starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley on hand at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
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