Rene Russo Asked Me To Lie In Bed With Her During An Interview

Earlier this week, I published a film festival preview in which I told quite a few behind the scenes stories about what it's really like covering a major film festival as press – the good and the bad. The one I didn't share in that piece, but I will share now, is my favorite story to come out of the Toronto International Film Festival, which is where I am now, as I type. (Now, my favorite film festival story ever is the time at Sundance that I accidentally created a movie starring Kristin Wiig called AbracaDeborah that does not exist, that went viral enough she was asked about it on Watch What Happens Live.)

Rene Russo asked me to lie down next to her on her hotel bed during an interview. This is something I would not know how to explain to myself when I was a freshman in high school. "Hey, so, you know how you think Lynn in Major League is pretty? So, I've got some news for you..."

I know what you're thinking, oh, this sounds cool. It's kind of cool to reminisce about, which I will, but in the moment I did not feel "cool."

But, yes, this is true, in high school I most definitely had a celebrity crush on Rene Russo. I don't think this is a particularly controversial thing to say as this describes most teenage boys from this era.

Before we get to that, as I type, I have seen two movies while at TIFF (I've seen others playing at the festival, but their TIFF premieres haven't happened yet.)

I saw Sian Heder's Being Heumann, her first film since CODA won Best Picture. Ruth Madeley (who is terrific) plays the very real Judy Heumann, a disabled activist who leads multiple protests across the United States in an effort to enact a policy that would require government buildings and resources to be accessible to disabled people. By this point in the 1970s, the law had already been passed, but it had not been enacted due to costs. It's a nice story! And it made me a little sad watching a film about a time when government officials could still be shamed into doing the right thing.

I also saw Club Kid, which I loved. I don't think I'm Jordan Firstman's target audience, but I do know him as the annoying influencer, playing himself, in Rotting in the Sun (a movie I like quite a bit). S0 that's why seeing him play such a tender role is ... pretty shocking. Firstman plays Peter, a kind of fun mess of a guy who likes drugs. Peter lives in New York City, he can't hold a job, yet he has a huge apartment from an inheritance. Peter finds out that he has a 10-year-old son named Arlo (Reggie Absolom, who is great) that resulted from a drugged out night that also happened to be the only night he ever had sex with a woman. And Arlo's mother has died, so now here he is.

Yes, this sounds somewhat like the plot of Big Daddy, but only if A24 made Big Daddy and exists to make you cry. And it is quite the emotional ride as Peter discovers he has something to life for and to be good for – then has to fight to keep this thing he didn't know he had or wanted. A Jordan Firstman movie should not make me cry, but it did.

“Do you want to do an interview in bed? It’s never happened. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

These were the words of Rene Russo aas I entered her Toronto hotel room to interview her for Nightcrawler. I thought she was joking. She was not. I still can't believe this happened...

(The Hard Pass only exists because of paying subscribers and I do need to have posts just for them. If you decide to become a paying subscriber today, there is plenty left to this story, plus a lot more like the story I was told about Tom Cruise that is now my favorite Tom Cruise story, approaching Philip Seymour Hoffman to ask him about Along Came Polly, and the time Larry King called me a "freak" and asked if I was "a nerd.")