We here at Torontoist don’t get invited to many red carpet roll-outs. And when we do, we get plopped near the back, packed in tight with all the other eager “online media” folk, our sight-lines blocked by a six-foot CBC camera, consigned to the journalistic short bus. But last night’s premiere of the Toronto-shot, Toronto-set late summer blockbuster Scott Pilgrim vs. the World wasn’t your average red carpet. (Can anyone even ask Michael Cera who he’s wearing? What’s he going to say? Eddie Bauer?)
The cast and crew of Edgar Wright’s maximalist everyman epic ran the media gauntlet at the Winter Garden Theatre last night for a screening of Pilgrim, a film that is being preemptively hailed in various circles as the defining film of the NES generation, and the film poised to put Toronto on the map (though, if you look really closely, you can find Toronto on some maps, sort of partway between Buffalo and Kingston). Some fogeys are also de-riding it as the précis of hyperactive, flashy film-making for the attention-deficit generation. For what it’s worth, we saw it earlier this week and think it’s just great. Also in attendance was Bryan Lee O’Malley, the decamped Torontonian and former Beguiling employee who developed Pilgrim’s geeky urban mythology over the course of six comic digests.
If you live in Toronto and have eyes that can see things, you’ve probably seen these posters around town.
As realized by Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World achieves moments of awkward romantic poignancy amidst its frenzy of Virtua Fighter–influenced melee combat. It’s also an exuberant celebration of Toronto’s youth culture, one which permits the assumption that Lee’s Palace, Sonic Boom, and Pizza Pizza are just as cool as any NYC hipster hot spot.
“It was amazing being here,” Wright told us. “I think it would have been a disaster if we shot anywhere else.” Wright’s made something of a second home in Hogtown during the filming of Pilgrim, setting up shop last year at The Bloor for a series of screenings. Now that he’s back in town, Wright’s hunkering down at the Toronto Underground Cinema for three more days of screenings, including the apropos coming-of-age double bill of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Rushmore, starring Pilgrim baddie Jason Schwartzman.
“The night before we started shooting, me and Michael Cera watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” says Wright. “It was kind of our good luck charm.” While Cera was too busy being made visibly uncomfortable by the press outlets nearer to the front of the line to speak to us, we did hear him say “Thank you” after another reporter told him that he’d played many teenagers and twentysomethings in films. Which is actually really funny.
So, enjoy our fabulous pictures. It’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to this kind of glitz and glamour. We know it’s the closest we’ll ever get.
Photos by Remi Carreiro/Torontoist.
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