By Julie Miller, Vanity Fair
During a Toronto film festival press conference for Cloud Atlas on Sunday, star Tom Hanks used a question about the power of celebrity as an opportunity to formally lodge a complaint with event organizers.
"I got a question about the Toronto International Film Festival," the Oscar winner told the room, containing T.I.F.F. staff members and volunteers in addition to press. "Why do you run your celebrities through a pen like we're bulls on the way to slaughter? It's like the narrowest kind of entrance to a theater I've ever had. I thought someone was going to be there on the other side with a prod they were going to put through my head. It was a very, very scary enterprise."
While he was calling out the festival employees, the actor also used the literal podium to obliquely insult the reporters in the room.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Hanks braced his audience, after being asked about his favorite experience while filming Cloud Atlas. "But I loved playing [African-American gangster/author] Dermot Hoggins because he got to throw a critic off a balcony to his horrible crushing death. [Laughing] That was my favorite part. Oh god how I loved it."
But back to the power of celebrity!
"If I truly had power, I'd be water skiing right now," Hanks revealed. Unofficial bumper sticker of T.I.F.F. '12?
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