Hayden Panettiere died Sunday at 36 years old. On this coming up Friday she would have been 37. Thirty-seven.

There will be tributes. There will be photographs of the beautiful little girl who grew up before America’s eyes, clips from Heroes and Nashville, recollections from co-stars, and inevitable examinations of the final days of her life. The more uncomfortable question isn’t how Hayden Panettiere died. It is how she lived—and what the rest of us accepted as normal while watching it happen.

Panettiere was found unresponsive Sunday in Greenville, South Carolina, and pronounced dead despite attempts to save her. Authorities have said there were no signs of foul play. Her death remains under investigation, and no official cause has been announced. Reports that emergency dispatchers referenced a possible overdose should remain exactly that—reports—until medical authorities determine what happened.

Her father, Skip Panettiere, called his daughter an “incredible light” and a “force of nature.”

She was also a woman who had spent years publicly telling us that something had gone terribly wrong.

Panettiere began working before she could possibly understand what work was. Her career started in infancy.

By childhood she was appearing on soap operas. At 17, she became internationally famous as Claire Bennet, the indestructible cheerleader on Heroes. Then came Nashville, Golden Globe nominations, films, magazine covers and the peculiar machinery through which Hollywood transforms a human being into something everyone believes they know.

But Hayden Panettiere was not indestructible. She told us that herself. Only months before her death, she published This Is Me: A Reckoning, a memoir in which she wrote candidly about addiction, depression, abusive relationships, motherhood, fame and the enormous cost of growing up within an industry that had been employing her since she was a baby.

This isn’t the moment to turn her struggles into another cautionary celebrity tale. It is time to ask what we could have done differently. What does it do to a child to learn that being charming, beautiful, precocious and professionally useful earns applause before she has had the opportunity simply to discover who she is? Hollywood has been asking that question for decades without apparently becoming sufficiently interested in the answer.

We have watched child stars struggle again and again. Some survive it beautifully. Others spend adulthood trying to understand where the person ends and the product begins. Every time something terrible happens, we discuss the pressures of childhood fame as though we have discovered them for the first time.

We haven’t. We knew. Panettiere also spoke openly about postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter Kaya in 2014 and about her struggles with alcohol and prescription medication. She sought treatment. She spoke publicly. She attempted to rebuild. She returned to acting. She wrote the book.

She also endured another devastating loss when her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, died suddenly in 2023 at only 28 from complications related to an enlarged heart. How much can one human being carry before we stop praising her resilience and ask why she has been required to be so resilient in the first place?

We use that word constantly…..strong. She was so strong. She was a fighter. She was brave. She kept going, until she couldn’t

There is a danger in continually celebrating someone’s ability to survive. Eventually we can become spectators to the survival rather than participants in making the life more survivable. Being a celebrity makes that easier. We consume people’s breakdowns as content. Their weight changes become photographs. Their relationships become headlines. Their relapses become exclusives. Their pain becomes engagement.

Then, when somebody dies, the machinery abruptly changes tone. Suddenly everyone becomes tender. Tenderness arriving after death is simply too late.

That doesn’t mean the public could have “saved” Hayden Panettiere. We should resist that comforting arrogance as well. Addiction is complicated. Depression is complicated. Human beings are complicated. Love cannot guarantee another person’s survival, and neither fame nor money insulates anyone from suffering.

At this moment, we don’t even know what caused her death. We do know enough about her life to ask better questions about our culture. What protections do we owe children who work in entertainment? What happens when a child’s identity becomes inseparable from her ability to perform? Why do we reward people for revealing their deepest wounds publicly and then continue consuming those wounds as entertainment? Why do we confuse access to someone’s story with actual knowledge of the person? And most importantly: Why are we so much better at memorializing people than noticing them while they’re still here?

Panettiere’s death feels especially cruel because she appeared to be attempting another beginning. Her memoir was released in May and became a New York Times bestseller. She had returned to work and recently starred in the 2026 psychological thriller Sleepwalker. Three weeks before her death, she posted a photograph with a friend captioned simply, “Good times and good friends.”

None of that tells us what was happening privately. That’s precisely the point. We never know entirely what another person is carrying. Fame doesn’t change that. Beauty doesn’t change it. Success certainly doesn’t change it. Maybe what the world could have done better for Hayden Panettiere is what we could do better for one another.

Stop assuming the person who looks fine is fine. Stop turning suffering into spectacle. Stop demanding that people transform their wounds into inspirational stories before we consider those wounds worthy of compassion. Stop applauding resilience so loudly that we fail to notice exhaustion. Stop waiting until somebody dies to tell the world how extraordinary they were.

Hayden Panettiere was 36. She was a daughter. She was a sister who lost her brother far too young. She was a mother. She was an actress who had been performing almost from the beginning of her life. She was a human being who repeatedly told the world that being successful and being okay were not remotely the same thing.

We heard her. The harder question is whether we really listened.

For most of musical theatre history, getting a Broadway musical onto the big screen meant Hollywood had arrived to transform it. Sets became locations. Stage actors were frequently replaced by movie stars. Songs disappeared, new scenes appeared, orchestrations expanded and the musical that audiences had loved in the theatre could emerge from the process either gloriously cinematic—or almost unrecognizable. But something fascinating has happened over the past year.

Hollywood is once again mining Broadway for material, with Kiss of the Spider Woman and Wicked: For Good reaching movie theatres and adaptations including Octet and Merrily We Roll Along underway. Yet simultaneously, another model has moved decisively into the mainstream: don’t adapt the Broadway show at all. Film the damn thing.

Hamilton went to movie theatres. Suffs went to PBS. Frozen went to Disney+. Hadestown went to cinemas. And this weekend, SIX The Musical Live! arrived on American movie screens.

Suddenly the interesting question isn’t simply which Broadway musical Hollywood will adapt next. It’s whether some Broadway musicals need Hollywood at all.

Kiss of the Spider Woman: Prestige Doesn’t Guarantee an Audience

Bill Condon’s film of Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman arrived October 10, 2025, starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna and Tonatiuh. On paper, it made enormous sense. Condon understands movie musicals. Lopez possessed exactly the old-fashioned movie-star glamour required for Aurora, and the show’s fantasies seem almost designed for cinema. Audiences, however, largely stayed home.

The result demonstrated one of the persistent problems facing Broadway adaptations: theatrical prestige doesn’t automatically translate into mainstream recognition. Theatre people know Kiss of the Spider Woman. That doesn’t mean millions of moviegoers were waiting for it.

Sometimes Broadway’s enthusiasm exists almost entirely inside the Broadway bubble.

Wicked: For Good: When Broadway Becomes a Brand

Then there was Wicked: For Good, released November 21, 2025. Wicked presented Hollywood with the opposite situation. After more than two decades onstage, Elphaba and Glinda had escaped Broadway long before Hollywood came calling. “Defying Gravity” was already part of popular culture. The characters were recognizable. Generations had grown up with the musical.

Hollywood wasn’t introducing Wicked. It was delivering something audiences already believed belonged to them. That distinction matters enormously when trying to understand why some Broadway properties explode cinematically while others disappear.

Hamilton: Broadway Invades the Multiplex

Perhaps the more consequential development came September 5, 2025, when Disney finally put the filmed original Broadway production of Hamilton into American cinemas. Audiences had been able to watch the production on Disney+ since 2020, but the theatrical version added “Reuniting the Revolution,” a special prologue featuring new interviews with Lin-Manuel Miranda and members of the original company reflecting on the show’s extraordinary cultural journey.

Suddenly something filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2016 was playing movie theatres nearly a decade later. Think about that. No Hollywood recasting. No attempt to turn Revolutionary America into a sprawling location shoot. No replacing Broadway actors with stars considered more commercially recognizable.

There was Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Jonathan Groff, Anthony Ramos, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Okieriete Onaodowan and Miranda—the people who created the phenomenon. Hollywood wasn’t remaking Broadway. It was exhibiting it.

Frozen: Broadway Comes Home to Disney

Disney made a similarly interesting decision with Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical. Rather than create another movie adaptation of a stage musical that was itself adapted from a movie—a cultural hall of mirrors if ever there was one—Disney captured the West End production starring Samantha Barks as Elsa and released it on Disney+ in June 2025.

It preserved something audiences outside London might otherwise never have experienced while allowing Disney’s stage version—with its additional songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez—to exist independently from the animated film that created it.

Suffs: PBS Does What PBS Has Always Done Best

Then came Suffs. Shaina Taub’s Tony-winning musical about the American suffragist movement was recorded during its Broadway run in December 2024 and premiered on PBS’s Great Performances on May 8, 2026.

That recording preserved Taub, Nikki M. James, Jenn Colella, Hannah Cruz, Grace McLean, Emily Skinner and the Broadway company rather than allowing those performances simply to disappear after the production closed. Suffs particularly demonstrates why filmed theatre matters. Broadway is expensive. Geography is limiting. A production can run for months and still be inaccessible to most of the country.

PBS effectively removed the theatre walls. Suddenly a musical about American history wasn’t available only to people capable of buying a Broadway ticket and getting themselves to West 45th Street.

Hadestown: Don’t Reinvent It—Capture It

That argument becomes even stronger with Hadestown. Anaïs Mitchell’s folk opera depends upon theatrical artifice. The musicians, lighting, movement and physical descent into the underworld aren’t limitations cinema needs to overcome. They’re part of the language of the piece.

Preserving performers intimately associated with the show’s original Broadway success gives audiences something Hollywood adaptations frequently take away: the performances that helped make people fall in love with the musical in the first place.

Perhaps some shows don’t need to become more cinematic. Perhaps cinema needs to become better at capturing theatre.

SIX: The Queens Have Entered the Building

Now comes SIX The Musical Live! The live capture opened in American cinemas August 14, reuniting the six original West End Queens—Jarnéia Richard-Noel, Millie O’Connell, Natalie Paris, Alexia McIntosh, Aimie Atkinson and Maiya Quansah-Breed—at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. Of all Broadway and West End musicals, SIX may be particularly suited to this treatment because it has always existed somewhere between theatre and pop concert.

There is comparatively little cinematic realism to gain by transforming it into a conventional movie. The audience is part of its electricity. The lighting is part of it. The band is part of it. Six women standing on a stage behaving like Tudor history’s most improbable girl group is the concept.

Why dismantle something that already works? Film it beautifully and let another audience into the room.

Octet: Of All the Musicals…This One?

Hollywood, however, isn’t abandoning traditional adaptations. Perhaps the most intriguing forthcoming example is Dave Malloy’s Octet.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is directing the film with a formidable cast including Amanda Seyfried and Jonathan Groff. I admit it: strange choice. Octet is an intimate chamber musical built around a cappella singing and people confronting their relationship with technology. It is deliberately enclosed, cerebral and theatrical—not exactly material screaming for panoramic cinema. Which may be precisely why Miranda finds it interesting.

A conventional adaptation of something already cinematic presents one challenge. Taking a piece that seemingly doesn’t want to be a movie and discovering its cinematic language presents another.

Octet’s examination of technological dependency certainly hasn’t become less relevant since its stage premiere. Strange choice? Absolutely. But potentially a fascinating one.

Merrily We Roll Along: Ask Me Again in Twenty Years

Then we have Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along. Linklater is filming it across approximately two decades so Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein actually age as the film moves through its characters’ lives.

It sounds insane. It could also be brilliant. Merrily has always been about what time does to people—how ambition, compromise and disappointment gradually transform the idealistic young people we once were. Allowing actual time to alter the actors could give Sondheim’s musical something makeup and prosthetics never could.

There is only one obvious drawback. Some of us would actually like to see the thing.

And Still Waiting in the Wings…

Adaptations of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Sunset Boulevard, Once on This Island and Guys and Dolls remain somewhere in Hollywood’s famously elastic development process. Some will happen. Some may not.

Sunset Boulevard remains the most wonderfully absurd proposition of all: Billy Wilder made a movie about Hollywood, Andrew Lloyd Webber turned the movie about Hollywood into a Broadway musical, and Hollywood now wants to make a movie of the Broadway musical based on the movie about Hollywood. Norma Desmond really is ready for her close-up.

The Real Revolution May Be the Pro-Shot

The most significant development may not be any individual adaptation. It may be the increasing legitimacy of the professionally filmed stage production. For years, theatre fans begged producers to film Broadway shows before they closed. The answer was invariably some combination of economics, union agreements, rights issues and the fear that a filmed version might cannibalize ticket sales. That thinking appears to be changing.

Recent pro-shots are demonstrating that filmed theatre can itself become commercially valuable, with Hadestownreportedly surpassing $20 million theatrically and SIX adding further evidence that audiences will pay to experience captured stage productions on movie screens.

That changes the equation. A Broadway production no longer necessarily has to choose between being ephemeral and becoming a Hollywood movie. There is now a third possibility: Preserve the Broadway production itself.

Let someone in Iowa see what New York saw. Let a teenager who cannot afford a $200 Broadway ticket encounter a performance that might change what they believe theatre can be. Let extraordinary performances survive beyond closing night. Let future generations see not merely what Hamilton or Suffs or Hadestown was, but something remarkably close to what it felt like when those actors stood on that stage.

Hollywood will continue adapting Broadway, and it should. Some musicals genuinely demand the possibilities of cinema, but others don’t need helicopters, locations, movie stars or $100 million budgets. They need the actors. They need the orchestra. They need the stage. They need someone to have the foresight to turn on the camera before the lights go out.

G.H. Harding

VALLI COME, VALLI GO? — The big media news in the last few days has been whether Frankie Valli has officially retired. The 92-year-old singer canceled the remainder of that he’s his tour this year and has been picture in the media in a wheelchair, looking terrifically frail.

His brother Bobby issued a statement that Frankie would indeed be retiring then rescinded it a day later after an apparent admonishment from Frankie himself.

What gives?

Rumors abound that his wife, his fourth, Jackie, wants him to go on, most likely due to the amount of money a Valli-performance makes. From what I’ve been able to source, Valli never really made tons of money as the songs were written by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe (“Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like A Man”), and it was only when the play (and movie) Jersey Boys happened, that the dollars started flowing in. That said, if the man is in pain and poor health, he should address that first and foremost. No question.

Read more from The Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.com/tvshowbiz/article-16054101/Frankie-Valli-92-touring-future-canceling-concerts-health-issues.html 

Whatever develops, he’s had a miraculous career and his songs are forever in the great American song book.

SHORT TAKES — For all you Odyssey fans; the Hollywood Reporter reminds that here was a 1997, four-hour miniseries on NBC, starring Vanessa Williams as Calypso; Isabella Rossellini as Athena; Bernadette Peters as Circe; and Armand Assante as Odysseus. Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, it earned 5 Emmy noms and two wins and had no less than some guy named Francis Ford Coppola as a producer. Wild! …

Dave Marsh

The legendary Dave Marsh passed Friday and left quite the memory. From Creem Magazine to Bruce Springsteen to the Kristen Ann Carr foundation he was a passionate advocate of the arts and a terrific writer. The story about Creem’s Lester Bangs throwing a typewriter down the stairs, turns out to have been about Marsh, per writer Susan Whitall. He was a tough guy to get to know, but his passion was amazing. RIP Dave and condolences to Barbara Carr …

Copilot

Tom Cuddy turned us onto the band Copilot from Massachusetts and after several visits to their site, came across their music video for their absolutely compelling “Let Me Down.” The band is sensational and lead singer Maggie Hall is simply superb. What a voice! Check the video out here:

… Here’s a shout-out to Deadline for one of their best headlines ever: Holy cow! Or whatever kind of Holy is yelled out in a comic book, but Sony/Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed the $2 billion global mark, becoming the second fastest movie to do so and the eighth movie to ever cross that benchmark ...

Micky Dolenz on Chris Carters’ Breakfast With The Beatles on SiriusXM /Beatles Channel, September 6, discussing his new EP Timeless which features “Terri” and the just-released “Waiting For Day”  … Watched Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) again; what an amazing picture with star performances from Christian Bale; Gary Oldman; Morgan Freeman; and Gary Oldman. I saw it when it first came out, but after witnessing his genius in The Odyssey, I think I appreciated it a lot more this time around. And what a standout performance from Heath Ledger as The Joker. Positively chilling … Happy BDay to Russ Titelman and Madonna … RIP Arlene Smith.

NAMES IN THE NEWS — Ty Burr; Keifer Sutherland; Harrison Ford; Bill McCuddy; Gary Graff; Katie Couric; Cory Robbins; Eddie O’Loughlin; Bill Adler; Kevin Mazur; Chuck Pulin; Manny Bella; Josh Fellner; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Hal Wilner; Lou Reed; Andy Greene; Jon Landau; Chris Ortiz; Lisa Warren; Amanda Naylor; Mark Bego; Dave Marken; and CHIP!

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G.H. Harding

LIONESS — Taylor Sheridan’s epic series Lioness, has taken a fierce new turn for its third season as Zoe Saldana’s character Joe has been outed and captured initiating a fierce plan from Nicole Kidman and Michael E. Kelly.

This season started off more like the movie Sicario, which Sheridan wrote in 2015, and two episodes in shows no signs of slowing down. The plot for this season had been written all through Season Two, but still, to see it unfold is somewhat alarming.

Morgan Freeman returns as a somewhat shadowy government figure … along with the always reliable Bruce McGilll, but it’s Kelly who delivers just an amazingly good performance as another government figure, the mysterious Byron Wesfield, who arguably controls the entire Lioness-program.

I got burnt out on Tulsa King, and even Dutton Ranch I couldn’t watch, but this one, shines like a star. Read more from Collider: https://collider.com/lioness-season-3-review-taylor-sheridan-zoe-saldana/

HUSTLER MEETS A HIPPO — I only went once to Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club on West 51st in NYC. I found it ironically lifeless and to be candid, the people there I felt I needed to exit from very quickly. Just not my scene.

Now, something called Peppermint Hippo (???), which sarcastically (I think) bills itself as the leading men’s club establishment around, is taking over the space. I guess there’s still a market for clubs like these. Scores still exists, but I couldn’t give you 5 friends who would even entertain going there.

Growing up in Long Island, I’ll never forget when I was about 17 or 18, a topless bar (heaven forbid!) was about to open in nearby Port Washington. Summoning all my courage, I went with some others, and was really turned off in every way. I saw many older patrons behaving in a way that I found offensive.

Read more from Phil O’ Brien’s W42 sheet:https://w42st.com/post/larry-flynts-hustler-club-hells-kitchen-peppermint-hippo/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=30bdbf5cf2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_08_12_11_59&utm_source=W42ST.nyc&utm_term=0_-30bdbf5cf2-561746079&mc_cid=30bdbf5cf2&mc_eid=b59263acd0

SHORT TAKES — Micky Dolenz, resuming his Monkees 60th Anniversary tour next week, hits LA’s KTLA on September 3 … Paramount/Skydance’s David Ellison has formally threatened to move the studio (and, possible Warner’s too) out of California if the proposed merger remains stuck. That’s where daddy-David Ellison is based. Stay tuned ….

Alden Ehrenreich

(Via Deadline) Following his first Tony win earlier this summer, Alden Ehrenreich has zeroed in on his next big movie role and it’s a high-profile project. Sources say he is set to join Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler in Universal Pictures’ Miami Vice ’85, an original take on the classic 1980s drama series. Joseph Kosinski is directing the pic from a script by Dan Gilroy… PR-pasha David Salidor at Titan. The newly opened Mexican-eatery under the Brooklyn Bridge …

Bob Iger

Just in: Disney’s former-chief Bob Iger and Thrive Capital boss Josh Kushner, just bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion and is Barry (Killer) Diller buying CNN?

… Not a huge Mamdani-devotee, but giving away 2,000 free theater tickets, with TDF, is utterly brilliant.

Per The PATH Fund’s Cori Gardner: “The arts are not extra! Theater, music, dance and all art forms should be accessible and for everyone. I appreciate Mayor Mamdani making this happen, and getting more young people into Broadway shows.” Bravo! … Watched Katseye on NBC’s Today Show yesterday. Are they the K-Pop Spice Girls? Boy, thank God for backing-tracks. Fun, but musically, a producer’s folly … And, per Deadline: Disney+ is not proceeding with its live-action Power Rangers series. The project, written and executive produced by Percy Jackson and the Olympians executive producers/showrunners Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz, was set up for development at the Disney streamer about a year and a half ago with sibling 20th Television as the studio. It will not be going past the development stage … Happy Bday August Darnell; Nancy Quinter Blanc;  and Scott Stevens.

NAMES IN THE NEWS — Copilot; Frisker Jones; Anthony Pomes; Raspin Stuwart; Adrian Niles; Bill Evans; Deb Caponetta; Melissa Davis; Anthony Noto; Judy Cachese; Herb Corsack; Chris Blackwell; Herb Rosen; Neil Cooper; Paul Cooper; Melissa Davis; Jeffrey Vogel; Steve Leeds; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Chuck Darrow; Gary Graff; Donna Dolenz; Melinda Newman; Tessy Hart; Chris Ortiz, Lisa Warren, William Schill; and SADIE!

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I have my press pass firmly in hand, a TIFF schedule finally staring back at me, and suddenly September 10 is more alive than ever. After weeks of announcements about films I want to see and with barely enough time to process the expanse of it all, the full schedule for the 51st Toronto International Film Festival has finally gone live. And with it comes that familiar moment when TIFF stops being an idea and becomes a calendar full of decisions. Where will I be at 8 in the morning? How quickly can I get from one screening to another? Which films will become the ones I absolutely have to see? Which discoveries will come completely out of nowhere?

Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine.

The full Official Selection now stands at 293 titles, with 11 more films announced alongside the schedule. There are World Premieres, Canadian Premieres, North American Premieres and an International Premiere spread across Special Presentations, Gala and Centrepiece. Among the new additions are Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard“, Nanni Moretti’s “It Will Happen Tonight“, Guy Nattiv’s “The Liberation“, Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s “The Road Not Taken” and “Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple“, the new Canadian documentary from Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn. There is also “Wild Horse Nine“, Martin McDonagh’s latest, while Cody Fern’s “Closing Night” arrives as a World Premiere. And then there is “Trees are Watching” from Bahman Ghobadi, a World Premiere joining the Centrepiece programme.

That is enough to make the schedule reveal feel like an event all on its own, but TIFF has managed to add another temptation to the day. Alongside the full schedule comes the announcement of this year’s In Conversation With…programming, bringing Lee Min-ho, Rachel Morrison, Chris Rock, Andrew Scott and Hudson Williams to the Festival for live conversations about their careers, creative journeys and craft. I have to admit that I have never actually attended one of these talks. Somehow, amid the constant scramble of screenings, I have always treated them as something happening elsewhere in the Festival. But now I have a press pass, and Andrew Scott is sitting on that list. That might be enough to change my habits.

Simon Stone’s Elsinore.

Scott arrives at TIFF ’26 with “Elsinore“, where he stars as actor Ian Charleson in a story centred on Charleson’s final years and his determination to perform Hamlet at London’s National Theatre while living with AIDS. TIFF notes that Scott has been part of the Festival before, first appearing in 2014 with “Pride” and returning in 2025 with “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” and Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon“. His screen work has travelled through “Fleabag“, “Sherlock“, “All of Us Strangers” and “Ripley“, and this conversation promises an opportunity to hear directly from an actor whose career has moved through wildly different corners of film and television.

Then there is Hudson Williams, whose presence on the schedule feels particularly timely for a Festival audience that watched ‘Heated Rivalry‘ explode into the cultural conversation. Williams will take part in Making Waves With… Hudson Williams, part of TIFF Next Wave’s programming centred on under-25 creators and audiences. He will discuss his work in YAGA and ‘Heated Rivalry‘, as well as the upcoming independent feature “Apparatus“, while looking back at the short films, collaborations and creative community that helped shape his career. There is something especially appealing about that idea of hearing from a performer while his career is still taking shape, rather than waiting for the retrospective conversation years down the road.

The other conversations have their own reasons to make room in a TIFF itinerary. Lee Min-ho arrives in Toronto for the World Premiere of “The Assassin(s)“, bringing nearly two decades of Korean popular culture with him and making his first North American onstage appearance in more than a decade. Rachel Morrison returns following her TIFF ’24 debut with “The Fire Inside” for the World Premiere of “Love of Your Life“, while Chris Rock brings “Misty Green” to the Festival and joins the series for a conversation about his work as a director, writer, actor, producer and comedian.

And now comes the part I always find both thrilling and slightly terrifying. The schedule is no longer an abstract collection of dreams. It is a map of possibilities, with early morning press screenings, impossible transitions, films I already know I need to see and discoveries I haven’t even imagined yet. TIFF Members begin buying tickets by level on August 21, with single tickets going on sale to the public August 31, and I’ll be trying to snag a few for me and my buddy while penciling in as many press screenings as I can manage. Suddenly, the Festival that has been building through announcements all summer is something I can actually plan, and perhaps this is finally the year I stop walking past In Conversation With… on my way to the next screening. Andrew Scott may have already made that decision for me. Now I just have to figure out how much TIFF I can possibly fit into eleven days.

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