What’s happening at TIFF: ‘I Play Rocky scores a knockout and a victory lap for ‘Obsession’
TORONTO: The 51st Toronto International Film Festival is underway, with steady parades of premieres running like traffic jams through downtown Toronto. Here are glimpses of what’s happening on the ground, and what festivalgoers are talking about.
‘I Play Rocky’ scores a knockout
Eight years after “Green Book” took the Toronto International Film Festival by storm, Peter Farrelly may have done it again.Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky,” a boisterous tale about the making of Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky,” was an immediate crowd-pleasing hit Saturday night at TIFF. Its raucous reception at the Princess of Wales Theatre suggested Farrelly may have again thrown a dark horse contender into the Oscar race.
At the least, “I Play Rocky” is sure to be a top contender for TIFF’s top prize, the People’s Choice Award, given how enthusiastic the festival crowd jumped to its feet to applaud the movie. In 2018, Farrelly’s “Green Book” picked up that festival-goer-voted award on its way to winning best picture at the Academy Awards.”I read this script and I thought it was the greatest script I’d ever read,” Farrelly said of Peter Gamble’s screenplay in a brief Q&A following the screening.
“I Play Rocky” chronicles Stallone’s quixotic journey to write and star in his 1976 breakthrough film. In Farrelly’s telling, it’s a comic underdog story and an affectionate ode to moviemaking — the kind of tale Hollywood tends to love. Some of its best supporting performances are P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell as producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and Tracy Letts as a composite studio chief.But Anthony Ippolito, who plays Stallone, drew the warmest cheers Saturday for a role the 27-year-old Long Island native had dearly sought. The actor, who played Al Pacino in the Paramount+ series “The Offer,” sent in audition tapes of himself performing scenes in his grandmother’s basement before Farrelly had even begun the casting search.
“I looked at it and the search was over,” Farrelly said. “That’s the guy. We didn’t have to go any further.”
Amazon MGM will release “I Play Rocky” in theaters Nov. 6.Everything changed for me. I am now in rooms that I could not even imagine,” Navarrette said. “I’m now pitching my own projects and am hopefully able to produce and direct my own stuff. It’s been really, really exciting because I love cinema and I love filmmaking and being a part of Midnight Madness last year lit that fire for me.”
Barker, 26, and Navarrette spoke in a staged talk at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, not far from the theater where “Obsession” debuted. In the year since, Barker said he has realized that his movie now belongs to audiences.