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Sep 12, 2024
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Cate Blanchett at 49th Toronto International Film Festival

Cate Blanchett attended the 49th Toronto International Film Festival, she participated in In Conversation With… event and was presented with the TIFF Tribute Share her Journey Award on Day 4 of the festival, Alfonso Cuarón’s  DISCLAIMER* (on Apple TV+ beginning 11 October) and RUMOURS (in US/Canadian cinemas on 18 October) premiered on Day 5.

One of our admins is lucky to have attended these events, so we’re going to share some of the talking points of the In Conversation With… event, and reaction on RUMOURS.

In Conversation With…

TIFF usually upload the In Conversation With… event on their YouTube channel weeks after the festival. At the start of the conversation, audience members were informed that clips from some of Cate’s works will be shown which led to her jokingly asking if there is a barf bucket.

On how working in theatre, the training and technique she developed in theatre transforms as she began to act for film — she said she’s often asked that question then proceeded to answer: “I don’t see the two medium as being mutually exclusively… There was a very celebrated production designer who worked a lot with Mahler, coincidentally, back in the 1900s who said that the stage is not a picture, it is made meaningful by the movements of actors. I see the frame of cinema as being exactly the same thing. Actually years and years of working in the theatre, I’m grateful because I feel like it’s enabled me to understand how to use a frame better, how to use a wide shot. And also consequently, I think working large auditoriums on stage, having known the intimacy of close up and that direct relationship with an audience, how you can bring that intimacy onto a big stage so, you know, to reduce the overacting.”

After watching the clips from THE AVIATOR, where Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn are playing golf, and ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, where Elizabeth I confronted the Spanish Ambassador, Cate said that she keeps waiting for Rupaul to ask her “to go on the Drag Race”.

Before showing clips from I’M NOT THERE where she played a version of Bob Dylan, and CAROL where she played a lonely housewife who had a relationship with a younger woman working at department store, Cate said that Todd Haynes is an “endlessly, fascinating genius director”.

On her working relationship with Todd Haynes: “His skillset is extraordinary and multifarious. He always feel like he is making film for the first time. In a sense that it’s a true experiment. He is one of the most deeply collaborative people I have ever worked with and he absolutely invites you into all layers of his thinking… Obviously I devoured his work right back to Superstar [The Karen Carpenter Story] which is an astonishing film. I watched a bootleg copy because he couldn’t get the rights of the music from the Carpenter estate for obvious reasons. But we met and he had this huge mood board for Dylan and there was a soundtrack that was very particular… when someone ask you to do that [play Bob Dylan in his electric era] the ask is so strange, perhaps, less strange now but it certainly was unusual at the time, you always say yes to the project and the opportunity to work with.

[Like] with Carol, he sat Rooney [Mara] and I down and he went through all of Vivian Maier’s work and Saul Leiter’s work. Ed Lachman who shot both of those films, you know we talked at length what was it’s gonna look like and feel like. He is the most non-hierarchical director I’ve ever worked with that way. You’re all there to make the thing, some of you are in front of the camera, some of you are behind. So, there is a trust [that] developed, and respect. There’s no question too stupid or no suggestion too crazy, and so, there’s a fluidity to working with him, it’s like dancing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’m always kind of the first to buy ticket to go and see anything that he’s made.”

“One night we were shooting a scene in Carol, the house was kind of a strange abandoned house we were shooting in that was really hard for Ed [Lachman] to get the light in to light the scene properly. It was really complicated. You could tell Todd [Haynes] was finding it really difficult. You expect a director to have everything together and hold it together all the time. Sometimes they’re the ones that need a hug. And you need to say, ‘Why don’t you step away and clear your head a little bit?’ In the way that he’d make the space for the actors to do that, we make space for them.”

Blanchett recalled that Haynes obliged her suggestion, and that “he stepped away so we could figure out a different way to position it,” stressing that “you always want to do the best for a director like that” so that the work can come together in the end.

“It was quite fluid, but there’s no conflict with him. He’s sort of conflict-averse. That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to agree,” she continued. “There’s a sort of misconception somehow that making a film, when it’s great, is like summer camp. I’ve been on a couple of those, and the films have been f—ing awful. Polite disagreement, respectful disagreement is super important in the creative process, and know you’ve got a healthy relationship with someone when you can really fight for things, but then allow your mind to be changed.”

While the film [Carol] came out not even a decade ago, in 2015, Blanchett said it took five years (and multiple directors) to make it because it was “so hard” to get the project funded.

“At one point, another director was going to do it, and he got sort of taken off the project,” Blanchett said. That prompted her to step away as well, until Haynes expressed interest in the project and got Blanchett back on board. “It was a five-year period, because no one wanted to fund it at that point. No one wanted to see … who was going to watch a film with one woman, let alone two women, falling in love?”

She added, “We do think about how much still has to change within the industry in terms of equity, inclusion and making films more sustainably. But, you know, we have made huge advances.”

Blanchett remarked that the last several years of film have been “vibrant” because “the voices are less homogenous.”

“It was a risky endeavor at the time, unfortunately,” she said of “Carol.”

On TÁR: “It was one of the most exquisitely written scripts I’ve ever come across, it was all there. I kind of just threw it across the room, I think partly out of terror and then had to sort of pick up and put back together. I started with the music, because that was her lifeblood, what kept her alive… She’s a very ambiguous character I think like a lot of us are, a lot of characters are. I remember my husband, years ago I was playing Hedda Gabler, I was saying “She’s so ambiguous. I don’t know how to play her” and he said, “Well, ambiguity is playing one moment and then you play the next moment entirely different and the audience will make a meaning between those two things. You don’t have to try and make sense of things.”

We don’t try and make sense of things, there is no clear linear narrative into our day, let alone our lives. But I knew she [Lydia Tár] was quite hidden from herself and as we all are kind of really. Who she thought she was, was perhaps not who she was. Or the thing that I really held on to was, and I do feel this, I think the further that you go down the line, and developing what could be called career, the more you start thinking about the impediments of the creative process.”

On producing other people’s works: “I’ve always been interested in the whole. I feel like executive producing or producing is an extension of the care that one has. I think as an executive producer and I learnt this from working with my husband running the Sydney Theatre Company which is the largest of the state theatre companies [in Australia]. When I was in rehearsal room, I was there as an actor… I feel as an executive producer, its an extension of what you are to a director as an actor, you’re a sounding board… Look at the deep creative relationship Christine Vachon has with Todd Haynes, they have been making it for so long. She carves the space to protect him in certain environments and the challenges in other environment. I suppose that’s what I see my role as executive producer to be an ally of the creative vision of the people who want to make the thing.”

On what is guiding her choices in working in new projects: “I think in the end I’m always driven by the ask of the director. Talking about working with Alice Birch, which I’m super, super excited by. She’s written this extraordinary script that I would have never imagined playing a role like that. Those asks are terrifying but they’re also compelling… at least the process of making it is going to be interesting but also I know that the producers behind it are really invested in getting it made and will take care of it right down.”

An audience member asked her on the positives and negatives of AI:

“I’m very proud of the industry, actually, for going on strike about it,” Blanchett said, prompting applause. “We’re a very front-facing industry. And if you think about before the strike, people were talking about [AI], but it was not a dinner table, mainstream conversation. I think it’s really important to discuss any new technology. I think we should be very cautious with it, because innovation without imagination is a very, very dangerous thing.”

She assured the Canadian audience that AI is “not just going to affect the [entertainment] industry. It’s going to affect everybody.”
“The thing I do feel profoundly, though, about AI is that the thing we fear most and disregard most and put to the back of our mind most is our mortality. We know that our time here is finite, and that is something that AI will never understand. It can imitate it, but it doesn’t understand that deep existential dread, and it doesn’t understand the preciousness of each moment in its cellular makeup, not that it necessarily has cellular makeup yet. That is something that can’t be replicated.”

Blanchett remembered calling her agent and asking what the agencies were doing to protect artists.

“The voice is going to be replicated first, as we’ve already seen, and then the image will take a little bit longer to catch up,” she said.

Blanchett then emphasized the need across all industries and people to “prize the authentic.”

“When you prize the authentic, then we start to make a parallel lane where AI can exist — and there are many positive things we can get from it — but it is not authentically human. It is inauthentic in that way,” Blanchett said.

She finished by saying that instead of passively waiting for AI to determine the future, we must “actively prize the human connection” by participating in events like this one, with thousands of people gathered together in a theater.

“The things that we can touch, the gathering, the caring, the genuine face-to-face conversations … that can be replicated. The smell of someone’s breath — that can’t be replicated! All of the positives and negatives about public gatherings, I think it’s really important to elevate and remind ourselves. It’s right back to the ancient Greeks.”

Disclaimer*

The first three chapters, as Cuarón likes to call them instead of episodes, were shown at TIFF. During the post premiere Q&A, it was announced that all episodes will be screened on Sunday, 15 September. Cuarón and Blanchett explicitly asked the audience to not spoil the series.

Rumours

RUMOURS is bonkers, and an absurdly hilarious movie. Cate Blanchett is not afraid to be silly and has perfect comedic timing. Watching this with Canadian audience who erupted to laughter throughout the movie made it the more delightful experience. It is great to have this as part of Blanchett’s oeuvre.


Full video can be watched here.

 

@filmtvrate

when cate blanchett looked back at me in the end ? #CateBlanchett #cateblanchettedit #tiff24 #filmtok #redcarpet #fyp

? enjoy the silence – ?

@filmtvrate

ladies and gentleman, HER >>>>>> #cateblanchett #cateblanchetttiktok #cateblanchettedit #filmtok #fyp?

? original sound – spidyy

 

@diegorovv

Cate blanchett at the TIFF tribute awards

? New Bottega – Torren Foot & Azealia Banks

@filmtvrate

the elegance she exudes is unreal ? had the privilege of joining the cast on the red carpet of Rumours film premiere at TIFF24. ? #cateblanchett #cateblanchettedit #mother #fyp #viral

? original sound – Uncyphill

 

In Conversation With…
TIFF Tribute Awards
Disclaimer* TIFF Premiere
Rumours TIFF Premiere

Sources: EW, Variety, Variety -AI,

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