TIFF 2013 - A night with the Jasons

Jason Reitman's live read was one of the coolest experiences of TIFF last year so I was very excited for tonight's reading of Boogie Nights.   As he's been doing for the past several years (mostly in LA) and brought to TIFF for the first time last year, Reitman gathers a group of actors to read a script of a movie while he conducts the party reading off the non-dialogue portions of the script.  This year's effort was the screenplay of Boogie Nights and starred the following:

As Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) - Jesse Eisenberg (how's that for avoiding type casting)
As Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) - Olivia Wilde
As Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) - Josh Brolin
As Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) - Jason Sudekis
As Reed Rothchild (John C Reilley) - Dane Cook
As Rollergirl (Heather Graham) - Dakota Fanning
As various other characters - Scott Thompson, Jordan Hayes, Jarod Eihnson and Marc-Andre Grondin

As expected, it was a highly entertaining effort.  Highlights included Eisenberg's singing, Wilde and Fanning doing to the coked up scene and pretty much any time Sudekis or Cook were involved in the scene (these two are obviously very used to performing live for an audience).   I really hope that Reitman continues to bring one of these to TIFF every year.

After that we went outside and straight back into line at the Ryerson for Bad Words, the directorial debut of Jason Bateman.  Bateman also stars, as a foul mouthed 40-year old high school dropout and possible genius who enters a spelling bee competition (via loophole obviously) and sets out to win for reasons of his own, destroying the dreams of many children and parents in the process.   His co-stars include Philip Baker Hall and Allison Janney as spelling bee brass, Kathryn Hahn as the reporter following the story and newcomer Rohan Chand as a fellow competitor.

Bateman has described the movie as the "Bad Santa of spelling bees" and the description is an accurate one.  I thought it was quite funny (and judging by the reaction of the crowd I was in the majority) though fairly predictable.

Bateman, Hahn and Chand took the stage for a Q&A after the movie and he was as charming and lovely as I have grown to expect over the past few years of TIFF appearances.  There was a great deal of discussion around how far you can push the envelope in the name of comedy and a charming answer when youngster Chand was asked about the material and he said that his parents had said that the script was "a little advanced" and that his script often had much of the dialogue blacked out.  Bateman pandered to the Toronto audience in the nicest way possible, saying that it was his goal as a director to make it to this festival and said that he hoped to move into more directing in the future.

News first thing this morning was that the movie was acquired by Focus Features so it will likely be hitting theatres sometime next year.  It's worth checking out: B+