Every Actor Is a Director Now at TIFF. They’re Just Not Good at It.

“It’s crazy the way it feels to be a director and [at] your first premiere,” said Patricia Arquette, introducing the world premiere of her directorial debut Gonzo Girl on the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Academy Award winner was just one of several noteworthy actors who brought their first film to this year’s TIFF. Joining her in those ranks are Chris Pine (Poolman), Anna Kendrick (Woman of the Hour), Kristin Scott Thomas (North Star), and Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk (Hell of a Summer). The results so far have been a mixed bag.

With the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes preventing the kind of Hollywood presence that TIFF audiences are used to, these films directed by actors seem like a shrewd attempt to bring name-recognizable stars to draw in festivalgoers. Along with the debuts, the festival also delivered the first look at directorial efforts from actors who have previously made other films, like Viggo Mortensen and Michael Keaton (yes, both have previously directed films you have likely never heard of), as well as Scandal’s Tony Goldwyn (justice for his debut A Walk on the Moon).

Arquette’s film was one of several independent productions that received a SAG interim waiver allowing the cast to participate in TIFF, as was Wolfhard and Bryk’s ensemble horror comedy Hell of a Summer. Despite hand-wringing over the optics of interim agreements with the ongoing battle for fair wages for entertainers, the appeal of the festival as a launching pad also persists. As Wolfhard told his and Bryk’s premiere crowd, TIFF loomed large in their hopes for the film during production: “If we could premiere here, that would be the dream.”

Still some of these films kept their talent on the picket line. Stuart Ford, producer of both Pine’s Poolman and Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, told Deadline “studio and streaming buyers are outwardly balking at the notion of acquiring films that come with the IA [interim agreement] baggage.” The options, he states, are “turn up and promote your film under an IA but risk alienating buyers or instead have your key talent stay away from the festival in order to protect the sales prospects on films that are carrying millions of dollars of investment risk.”

In a statement before her film, Kendrick said that not being present for her premiere was “heartbreaking” but added “as proud as we are of this film, we are equally proud to stand with our union in demanding fair wages.”

But does any of that matter if the films themselves don’t deliver? Is a film like Scott Thomas’ wedding-dramedy-but-also-somehow-Royal-Navy-advertisement North Star any less middling because its headliner Scarlett Johansson greets the audience before and after the film?

‘Poolman’: Chris Pine Desperately Wants to Be ‘The Dude’ From ‘Big Lebowski’

While TIFF has historically welcomed world premiere films by actors making their first directorial forays, the past decade provides a slew of critically dismissed examples that were quickly forgotten. Does anyone remember Brie Larson’s Unicorn Store, or Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral adaptation, or Andy Serkis’ Breathe? Bryce Dallas Howard made a documentary called Dads about dads? The critics that saw each of them at past TIFFs will largely tell you that you didn’t miss much. (Safer territory might be Venice, where debuts like Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born and Regina King’s One Night in Miami had their first showings.)

Unfortunately for Arquette, her Gonzo Girl looks to follow that trend. With Willem Dafoe as a fictional stand-in for Hunter S. Thompson overpowering a young female writer taking a job as his assistant, the film’s tepid reviews (“a thinly etched adaptation,” said The Guardian) and wildly disjointed tone do not spell distribution success.

Ditto to Scott Thomas’ semi-autobiographical but unintentionally cringe-inducing North Star, which also debuted with a thud on opening night. Wolfhard and Bryk’s Hell of a Summer might have some hope thanks to its genre and played well to the always-amped Midnight Madness crowd. But in the real world, it’s hard to imagine wide audiences being excited by its campground slasher cliches. Despite any earnest creative attempt, these seem safe additions to TIFF’s ever-growing and historied heap of vanity projects.

And then there’s the case of Poolman, Pine’s incongruous and cartoonish noir comedy where he directs himself as an anxious pool cleaner on a mission to save Los Angeles. Repeatedly referencing Chinatown, Pine aims for a tone somewhere between The Big Lebowski and Animaniacs. The premiere screening had a number of walkouts and scant laughs from the audience and it’s tough to imagine a major distributor biting, even with the draw of Pine and a cast that includes Danny Devito and Annette Bening.

‘Woman of the Hour’: Anna Kendrick and a Serial Killer Go on ‘The Dating Game’

If any of these films might defy TIFF’s track record for launching actor-directorial debuts, it may just be Kendrick’s terrific period thriller Woman of the Hour, which tells the true-crime story of a serial killer who competed on (and won) The Dating Game. “Kendrick exhibits astute directorial instincts from the opening moments,” noted The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager. The film currently stands at 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and was the first major deal of the festival, selling to Netflix for $11 million.

As of now, none of the other films have been picked up for U.S. distribution. Whether they become quickly forgotten or get a second chance with general audiences remains to be seen.

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