The King's Speech - TIFF

The sales department in the company I work for has tickets to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to give away to the consultants and brokers they do business with.

There were some tickets left over. Two tickets were available for this evening's 6:30pm gala premiere of The King's Speech (with Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush) so I took them.

The King's Speech tells the story of the man who would become King George VI, the father of the current Queen, Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George ‘Bertie’ VI (Colin Firth) reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded nervous stammer and considered unfit to be King, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country into war.

When Gord and I got there about 6pm, there were lots of people gathered by the red carpet area waiting for the stars to arrive.

This was our first TIFF so we waited for a bit too. I started talking with a woman who had come in from Waterloo (a couple hours away) to take pictures of Colin Firth with her 20x zoom camera. She comes every year to see him and sounded a bit fanatical about him (which made her interesting to talk to!).

"Nobodies" were arriving so we left to go to the theatre (Roy Thomson Hall) to get a seat. Though we had "priority" tickets, they weren't assigned seats. We managed to get two seats together (barely).

Before the movie started, the director, Tom Hooper, talked about the story. He told a comical story of how the writer had written to the Queen's mother thirty years ago for permission to do the film. She said yes but only after she was gone as the memories were still too painful. He agreed not knowing the Queen's mom would live to a hundred and two! He then introduced Colin Firth. It was Firth's 50th birthday today so the audience sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

Then Geoffrey Rush came out ...

It turns out that they were sitting right above us to the left during the film.

Crappy picture, I know, but I wasn't expecting them to be there so didn't get my camera out quick enough.

The movie was really good ... I'd recommend it. It was almost two hours but it didn't seem long. I find that part of history interesting ... the fact that King Edward abdicated for Wallace Simpson and Queen Elizabeth II's father sudden had to become king. I didn't know that King George VI had a stammer. The interaction between Bertie and Lionel is funny, not what I would have expected considering one of them was a king.