Eeee!
TIFF Tasks
Shaking hands with a smoker
Jen Gerson, today at 2:54 PM EDT
He looked too attractive not to be famous but I'll admit to a fatal flaw: I'm terrible at recognizing faces. I'm reasonably sure that I have that face disorder where the brain can't register the width of cheekbones or the arch of eyebrows. This is a considerable handicap for a journalist to have, especially one whose job it is to track down a celebrity. It's led to a few hilarious blunders involving bosses that still get tossed around as cautionary tales for journo interns.
I make up for it by not being ashamed to ask obvious questions, and by acting charming and flustered.
A few feet and a stanchion away, Elizabeth Mortimer is chatting on a cell phone, Callum Keith Rennie and Lisa Ray are smoking like fiends.
At the table next to mine, on a sun-lit patio on which I dare not wonder how much this mediocre coffee is costing me, there is a strikingly symmetrical middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair, unkept beard and wide blue-green eyes. He's wearing a t-shirt, a stressed leather jacket and has spent the last hour switching between French and English and chain smoking. So, not attractive in the least.
When he's alone, I catch him:
"Have a light?" I ask.
"Of course."
He lights my cigarette.
"You know, I have a terrible mind for faces, but you look terribly familiar," I said.
"Well, I'm an actor so you've probably seen me in films," he said.
A ha, Actor-Dar is active.
"What's your name?"
"Roy Dupuis*," he said.
"What movies have you been in?"
"The Legend of Rocket Richard," he said.
"Oh. Yes. I've seen that. I totally recognize you."
Completely lying.
Dupuis is in town for tonight's screening of Shake Hands With the Devil, an adaptation of Gen. Romeo Dallaire and his account of the Rwandan genocide. For some reason I had no problem recognizing Gen. Dallaire when he walked in. Dupuis, Dallaire and a few others are sitting next to me, chatting in French and drinking coffee.
You may not want to take my word for it, but the actor and his subject look nothing alike.
* Which is totally that guy from La Femme Nikita, and also the guy who gave Callum his Genie for Last Night.
Found at GlobeandMail.com.