Elton’s raw honesty on fame, sexuality a Toronto film fest highlight

Fuelled by a visiting horde of Hollywood A-listers, the promotional mouse-wheels of the annual Toronto International Film Festival could keep us all in free electricity, if only we had the sense to plug them in.

But this year’s festival – known to locals as TIFF – brought a different kind of energy to Hollywood’s often-superficial marketing machine. Some people laughed. Some people cried. And everybody suddenly got honest – including British singer-songwriter and pianist Elton John.

Elton John waves from a purple golf cart which delivered him to the red carpet in Toronto.Credit: AP

“Fame is a dangerous thing if you don’t have something else ... and if you don’t have honesty to go with fame, then you’re going to be in real, real trouble, like I was before I got sober in 1990,” John said, taking a typically promotional question-and-answer session down a more candid path.

“It took me so long to tell the truth [about my sexuality], and it made me so unhappy,” John added. “It was so stupid, the amount of years that I lost by not telling the truth and by fooling myself. And when I stopped fooling myself, my life turned around.”

Elton John: Never Too Late, directed by R.J. Cutler and John’s husband David Furnish, mixes a trove of footage from John’s early career, between 1970 and 1975, with footage of the lead-up to his retirement, and his final US concert at Dodger Stadium in 2022. The film will be released in Australia on the streaming platform Disney+.

Joined by Elton and David on stage, Cutler let loose another surprise, revealing the couple will appear as themselves in the upcoming Spinal Tap sequel, in cinemas in 2025. When Cutler mentioned it, there was an awkward silence. “Is it not announced?” Cutler asked. “It is now,” replied Furnish. “The f---king idiot,” John added, laughing.

Pamela Anderson arrives at the premiere of The Last Showgirl in Toronto.Credit: AP

Meanwhile, across town, a former Baywatch actress was earning rave reviews and rapturous applause for her work on one of the surprise hits of the festival, The Last Showgirl. Directed by Gia Coppola, it is about a Las Vegas dancer who, in her 50s, is dealing with the closure of her show, and coming to terms with the rest of her life.

Speaking after the screening, Pamela Anderson said she had spent her life preparing for the role. “It’s the first time I’ve ever read a good script,” Anderson said. “I never felt something so strongly about something. It was, do it, just be it, and I did it.”

But the screening took an emotional turn as co-star Jamie Lee Curtis broke down in tears talking about the difficulty for people working on the rough side of the entertainment business. “It’s really hard for people in Vegas. A really hard life. The dreams become a really harsh f--king reality, especially for women,” Curtis said.

Another co-star, Billie Lourd, who like Curtis grew up in a showbusiness family, said the film had given her a new understanding of her mother, actress Carrie Fisher, and her grandmother, actress Debbie Reynolds. “I got to understand my mum on a deeper level,” Lourd said.

Unstoppable … Jennifer Lopez on the red carpet in Toronto.Credit: AP

And there were more tears at the premiere of Unstoppable, the film based on the life of college wrestler Anthony Robles. The film won a standing ovation from its audience and one of the stars, Jennifer Lopez, wiped away tears as she took a bow for the audience.

“When I read the script I felt like so many women, including myself, could relate to the struggles that she had gone through in her life,” Lopez said. “The story, being a Latino story, being so inspiring, it was just something that just grabbed me.”

The film is a co-production between Lopez’s company Nuyorican Productions and Artists Equity, a production company founded by actor/filmmakers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Lopez and Affleck remarried two years ago, but recently separated. Damon attended the premiere, but Affleck did not.

The Toronto International Film Festival is held every September in Canada. Though it is not principally a film sales market, it has facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in film rights deals.

In 2023, for example, Netflix bought Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, starring Glen Powell, for US$20 million after its screening here. To get a sense of its scale, in just under two weeks more than 480,000 people will pass through its turnstiles.

And while the emphasis is on film, high-profile television series also premiere here. The Stan original series, Thou Shalt Not Steal, is buzzing with writer/director Dylan River and one of the show’s stars, Heartbreak High actress Sherry-Lee Watson, in attendance.

The festival’s “Primetime” television slate puts Thou Shalt Not Steal in the spotlight alongside Alfonso Cuarón’s new series for Apple TV+, Disclaimer, starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline and the near-future thriller Families Like Ours, from Thomas Vinterberg.