(instrumental music)
- Hello, and welcome
to Stay-at-Home Cinema
brought to you by TIFF and Crave.
We're streaming live on
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
and on our website at tiff.net/stayathome.
My name is Keith Bennie,
I'm the Director of Audience
& Community here at TIFF.
Tonight, in partnership with Pride Toronto
as part of this year's virtual festival,
we're watching HBO's The Normal Heart,
starting at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time,
4:30 if you're on the West Coast.
And we're so thrilled to have
Golden Globe Award-winning
actor and star of the film
Matt Bomer here to introduce.
I'm joining you from Treaty 13 territory
and I'm grateful to the Indigenous peoples
who have been taking care of this land
for thousands of years.
And, as it's Pride Month,
I'd like to acknowledge
and celebrate our Two-Spirit community.
To learn more about the Two-Spirit
community here in Toronto
I recommend visiting the Tkaronto
Indigenous Peoples Portal,
which you can find online.
We wanna thank our key partners
the Government of Canada,
the Government of Ontario,
and the City of Toronto.
Huge thank you, as well,
to our corporate partners:
our Lead Sponsor, Bell,
our Major Sponsors RBC,
L'Oreal Paris, and Visa.
All of these partners are
supporting us right now
while our building is shut down
and we are very grateful for that support.
We'd like to give a shout-out
to frontline workers
who are keeping us safe, fed, and healthy.
A special mention to one
of our Community Partners
that does frontline work,
the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation,
who are tirelessly working
to support their members
at this critical time.
We'd also like to give a
big thanks to our members
and donors for supporting
us and keeping us going.
TIFF is a not-for-profit
and like many other cultural institutions,
we have been hit hard recently.
To ensure we can get through
this time and come back strong,
we've created the For
the Love of Film Fund,
and if you have the means,
I invite you to consider
making a gift today.
You can make a donation
at tiff.net/loveoffilm.
If you're watching via YouTube,
some Matt Bomer fans perhaps,
you can donate through
the upper right-hand side
of your screen, and thank you.
Released in 2014, HBO's
The Normal Heart is
a tremendous achievement.
This long-awaited and
long-in-development adaptation
of Larry Kramer's Tony
Award-winning play documents
the beginning of the
HIV-AIDS crisis in New York
in the 1980s and the community
organizing that sprang up
in its wake by the very
community that was under siege.
Kramer passed away last
month, but his legacy
as a playwright, as a screenwriter,
as a ferocious activist
is what we celebrate tonight.
Directed by Ryan Murphy, the
film features an all-star cast
including Matt Bomer, Jim
Parsons, Mark Ruffalo,
Taylor Kitsch, Julia
Roberts, Joe Mantello,
Jonathan Groff, and BD Wong,
a whole host of amazing actors and talent.
A shout-out to our friends at
the Inside Out Film Festival
where The Normal Heart
had its Canadian premiere,
at the Lightbox.
It went on to win the Primetime Emmy
for Outstanding Television Movie
and Matt Bomer won a Golden
Globe for Best Supporting Actor
in a Series, Miniseries,
or Television Film
for his heartbreaking
portrayal of Felix Turner.
Matt Bomer grew up in Texas
and learned his craft at Carnegie Mellon.
In 2009, he was cast as the lead
in the highly popular series White Collar.
Since then he has starred in Magic Mike
and Magic Mike XXL, Viper
Club, and Papi Chulo,
which premiered at TIFF in 2018.
Most recently, you may
have seen him starring in
the Will & Grace reboot,
as well as The Sinner,
two incredibly different roles,
which showcases his amazing range.
He's also someone who gives
back to his community,
having a received the New
Generation Arts and Activism Award
for his work in the
fight against HIV-AIDS,
at the Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards.
It's such a pleasure to have
him here with us tonight.
Matt Bomer, welcome to
Stay-at-Home Cinema.
- Hey, how are you?
It's so good to be here with you.
- It's good to see you.
Thanks for joining us.
- I'm happy to be here.
I'm happy to see you,
talk to some Canadians.
I miss it.
I wish I were in Toronto right about now.
- Yeah.
- And it's always good...
I'm still pinching myself that I got to be
a part of this movie so I
always enjoy talking about it.
- Fantastic.
We're here in June in Pride
Month, virtually this year.
In re-watching The Normal Heart,
I was struck about the present moment
and, you know, a different
crisis of course,
but the same fears,
anxieties, and uncertainty.
How are you processing
this current moment?
- Well, first and foremost I'm so grateful
that our family has been
able to stay healthy
and use the time together
to really grow closer,
and, you know, my job is
so transient by nature,
this is the longest I've
gone without having to be
on an airplane (chuckles) in a long time,
so it's been nice to get
some real quality time
with my family.
And you know, I'm just
trying to do everything I can
and help use my voice
in whatever way I can
to raise awareness,
to thank people who are out there working,
the frontline responders certainly,
and to help, you know,
contribute to charities
and raise people's awareness
about certain charities
that help with COVID
and everything going on with
Black Lives Matter, as well.
It has been resonant in
terms of The Normal Heart
and everything that happened
with Larry and ACT UP
when they rose up and took
to the streets as well.
- So going back maybe to the start,
when did you first
encounter The Normal Heart
and enter Larry's world?
- (chuckles) Well, the
first play of Larry's
that I encountered was
actually The Destiny of Me,
which was the next play,
it was kind of a sequel to
The Normal Heart in some ways
and it just, I mean, it floored me.
You know, I was living
in semi-rural Texas,
in the Bible Belt.
No one was really talking
about what was going on.
I knew - even though I wasn't
out, really even to myself
at that time -
I knew that it was a part
of my community somehow
that this was all affecting,
and it just opened my eyes to so much.
I didn't know anything that was going on
other than kind of salacious
headlines that I'd read
in tabloids when I was at
the supermarket with my mom,
you know, so it opened my eyes.
It humanized so much of
the experience for me,
and it just moved me, the
way it moves people on stage
to this day.
So then I got further into his
work and Terrence McNally's
and it was the first
time I kinda saw people
from my community, you know,
drawn three-dimensionally
in terms of their roles,
and it just opened my eyes
to everything going on
at that time.
- Yeah, it's been a really striking year
for queer playwrights.
You know, Larry and Terrence
McNally, as you mentioned,
and Mart Crowley, and,
yeah, we've lost a lot of giants recently.
- Yeah, I mean it was just like...
I mean, I was really having
a hard time there for a while
between Mart and Terrence and Larry.
It was just, it was too much at one point,
but you know, all the heroes
are leaving the building
this year and thankfully,
we have a new crop of great playwrights
who are gonna come in
an keep their voice...
use what they learned from their voices
and keep their voices going.
But I certainly miss all those folks
and it's very sad to have
lost them all back-to-back.
- The film was in development
for many, many years,
much to Larry's frustration, I'm sure,
and it finally found a home though at HBO
with Ryan Murphy at the helm,
and I read that you campaigned
really hard to get the role
so I'm wondering what it was
about Felix that spoke to you?
- I didn't even campaign so
hard to get the role of Felix,
I just campaigned to be a
part of the project period,
and I think that's the role
that Ryan Murphy saw me in,
and I think one of Ryan's
great gifts is that
he is willing to take risks
on artists who, you know,
he'd never seen me do
anything like Felix before
and he somehow saw in me
and pulled it out of me
and believed in me,
and I think it's a real
testament to who he is
and what he does on a consistent basis
with other artists as well.
I mean, if you look at Darren
Criss playing Andrew Cunanan,
you know, it's just like he
sees these things in people.
So I had seen the play on Broadway
and was just floored by it again,
and when I heard he was making the movie,
I just reached out to my representation
and just begged just to
get a meeting with him.
We had a meeting, we hit it off,
and it was really almost like this sort of
two-year dance we did.
'Cause initially, it was just a film.
And so I did a guest spot on Glee
and I did a guest spot on The New Normal,
and I was kinda coming into the Ryan-
dipping my toe into the Ryan Murphy world,
and I think they were kinda
my screen tests, in a way,
just so he could kinda see who I was.
I had a great time on those,
and then, you know,
eventually HBO came on board,
and at that point I'd
already engaged with Larry
and kinda passed muster with him.
And I remember-
- What was it like to meet
Larry after, you know,
encountering his play at
14 and getting to meet him?
- You know, I mean, really surreal.
I mean, look, if you're really...
If you're lucky enough in this industry,
you get to meet so many of
the people you've idolized
or lionized or learned
from or been inspired by,
and you know, often times
you know there's a reason
why they say never meet your heroes.
But Larry was certainly not that case.
He exceeded my expectations.
He was not, at the time he was not really,
even though he still had the
fire and the passion in him
and was still working
furiously as a writer,
he was not a firebrand, you know?
There was something gentle
and sweet about him,
and he had this great artistic curiosity
that I find in most of
the really great writers
that I encounter.
They all have a really...
They're really curious about
people and the human condition,
and he definitely had that in spades.
- Yeah, it's something
that's always struck me
about the play is that
for as angry as he was,
it's not agitprop theater,
it's not didactic.
There such a human level
to that, to the text.
- Yeah, it's just bringing
you into the real experience
that the community is going through
from the frontlines, you know.
And I think as an audience member
certainly watching the
play and even reading it,
you know that's what moved
me and opened my eyes
is that I felt you gain
a new sense of empathy
and compassion for what
we all went through.
- Mm-hmm, and I think it's clear,
we know that you're an
actor who puts in the work
so what kind of research
did you do to prepare
to step into the role of Felix.
- Oh my gosh, it was years, you know,
and through the development
process I was just trying
to keep, you know, keep it all alive.
But, you know I studied
everything from journalism
at The New York Times -
I spent a day at The New York Times,
I think with Jacob Bernstein.
He kinda showed me the ropes there,
like what a typical day in
Felix's life would have been like
at the time.
I mean obviously a lot of it's changed now
'cause they're much more
reliant on computers
and things like that, but...
So everything from his day to day life.
I went and visited his
hometown in Oklahoma
and just to get a sense
of where he came from.
I hired another actor to
just do the scenes with me,
just for fun, just so I could
explore and do scene work
and investigate the character.
And I just tried to stay
as prepared as I could be,
because when it did
eventually start filming
I was actually doing White
Collar at the same time,
and so I would sometimes do
White Collar in the morning
and the early afternoon
and go straight to set on The Normal Heart
and finish there late at night.
And they were really
great at orchestrating
the whole schedule, but there were times
when it did work out that way.
And thankfully it all worked out,
but I just wanted to be
as prepared as possible,
- Yeah.
- And obviously I did an
incredible amount of research
in terms of (sighs) what the
diagnosis meant at that time
and how that manifested physically
and how it affected
the community, as well.
- Yeah, and you really get
the sense from the film too
and from other films like
How to Survive a Plague
about the medical knowledge
that these men had to
really develop on the fly.
- Yes, yeah, and I watched
all those documentaries
and obviously spoke to Larry at length.
Yeah so, it was a lotta research.
But then I felt like
once we started filming
it was all really worth it.
I think the first scene we filmed,
which we filmed before
anything else started,
was filmed on a Sunday,
it's my character's first scene,
when Ned comes to visit
Felix at The New York Times,
and I just had so much fun
working with Mark and I thought,
"Oh wow, this is really special."
- People talk a lot about
your physical transformation
in the film, which is striking,
but that emotional journey,
too, is really pronounced,
you know from those early scenes, you,
as a closeted journalist, to
your relationship with Ned.
How did you develop the
kind of emotional fortitude
to step into that really
huge kinda character arc?
- Oh man, well you know, it
was one of those situations
where I was really glad I had
the script for a long time
because, you know, it is
a big journey to go on
and a lot of the journey
happens before the diagnosis
so there were sorta these
points that we had to hit
in the relationship and
what was going on with Felix
in terms of his trajectory,
and then thankfully, you know,
when you get to work
with somebody like HBO,
as opposed to doing this
as an independent film,
you know we got to shut
down for three months
while I lost 40-whatever pounds and...
40-50 pounds, I can't
remember how much. (chuckles)
I can't remember, I don't wanna remember
how much weight I lost but.
And yeah, so we got to shut down
and then I kinda got to
change, shift my focus.
You know, the last thing
I filmed was the diagnosis
and then I went back and finished
the season of White Collar.
Started losing the weight the last month
of that season of White Collar
and then really just shifted.
I mean I went off basically
by myself for like a month
to lose the weight, 'cause who
really wants to be around you
when you're having to
lose all that weight.
You're not very fun.
And it ended up being this
really kinda spiritual,
monastic experience to where,
my goodness, I was so...
I just thought about it so
much and focused on it so much
that by the time I got back to
set, I was just, you know...
I felt like I was ready to go.
- The play and the film are such important
kind of intergenerational
texts between, you know,
the generation we lost and
the generations that come back
after that to know what happened.
How has being a part of it
informed your own activism
and your own voice in the community?
- Oh goodness.
I mean look, you know, these
were the first gay voices
that resonated with me were
people who were standing up
and, you know, taking action on their own
and taking to the streets.
And you know, I don't put
myself in the same echelon
as someone as Larry Kramer
in terms of activism.
I'm nowhere near him, but
I think because I engaged
with this kind of drama early on,
you do feel a sense of responsibility as,
with whatever platform you
have, however small it may be
or big, whatever, to use your voice,
to not climb up the mountain
and look down on others
but to kinda reach your hand down
and help other folks up too.
You know, you see it in the
streets in America right now.
Everyone rightfully
marching and protesting.
It's awe-inspiring to see and
I've even gotten out there
and done a little bit myself.
Not to pat myself on the back at all
'cause there's so many people
doing so much more than I am,
but you wanna engage in change
for the better that's needed,
and that's certainly what
Larry and ACT UP were doing
in the '80s.
- I wanna get to an
audience question here.
Ken Ventry who's a TIFF
Contributor Circle member asks,
"As an out actor, are there
still roadblocks or pushback
"to playing non-gay characters,
and how far do you think
"the industry has come?"
- Yeah, there are.
Oh goodness, you know I always...
I don't want to be
politic in answering this
but I also don't wanna be
Pollyanna about it either.
Yeah, it's tricky.
You do run into roadblocks and
often times the characters -
and it's happening less and less -
but often times the
characters that are well drawn
or given a great deal of dimension
or given to a straight
celebrity or whoever it may be.
So I think we're all just looking
for opportunity, you know,
and I think it's getting better.
I think we still have a
ways to go for everyone
in the LGBTQ spectrum,
Trans community as well.
We gotta keep going and pushing forward
and giving everyone the
opportunities that they need.
At the same time, I
can't complain, you know.
I studied theatre from the
time I was, I don't know,
14 years old so to me, I never
just thought of playing roles
that were gay characters.
I just thought of, like,
what's the interesting role?
What's the human condition
that we're investigating,
and what's the story that
we're trying to tell?
So I try not to just winnow it down
onto one or the other, I guess.
- It's why it's so important
we have people like Ryan
who are able to create these
three dimensional characters
for actors like-
- Yeah, Ryan's incredible
in giving opportunities
to every member of the LGBTQ spectrum,
and he uses his platform
well because, you know,
oftentimes in a movie
they're looking for financing
when they're casting somebody and
different people come
with different price tags,
especially in these little indie movies
that are maybe 1 or 3 million dollars.
You have to cast someone
who's going to get the money
for the movie otherwise the
movie just doesn't get made,
but we have an entity like Ryan Murphy
where the brand is already there,
the audience is already there,
so he's using his platform
to give opportunities
to others and help them to tell stories
as authentically as possible.
- Deborah Henderson, who's
viewing on YouTube, asks,
"What was the most difficult
part of playing Felix?
"What scene scared you the
most when you read the script?"
- Oh goodness.
I don't...
You know, I mean there's
so many challenging scenes
but they're also, to an actor,
they're so meaty, you know.
They sorta like what you
always dreamed of getting to do
as an actor telling a story
that you feel like is bigger than you,
that is more important
than just you, you know.
If you're having to get outside yourself
and let your ego go and
just try to let the story
tell itself in many ways but
there's such great stakes
to the scenes.
So yeah, they're really, really scary.
I think one of the harder
scenes, for me, was when...
ah, there's a scene where Felix
and Ned are at their house
in the Hamptons and he's trying,
Felix is trying to figure
out how to tell Ned
that he's found this spot on his foot.
And he goes into this monologue beforehand
and there was so much going
on underneath the scene
and you don't wanna
overplay your hand there.
It just has to be there going
on underneath the scene.
So I would say scenes
like that were probably
more challenging and then
some of the other scenes
that are so iconic.
When Ned is upset with Felix
and he's throwing milk at him
and things like that.
You know, you're just
trying to be in the moment
with a great actor like Mark Ruffalo
and see what happens, you know.
- Yeah, there's so many levels
and beats to those scenes
in the cottage that, you know,
have all that subtext underneath.
- Yeah.
- There's a great question
from TIFF member Mikael Dam,
which is a nice one to end on.
He asks, "What did Larry Kramer teach you
"that we need to carry into the future?"
- (sighs) Well, for me personally,
I love Larry's sense of
humour and his curiosity,
but I think for all of us, as a community,
it is to stand up and raise our voice
and make our voice heard,
and to speak out and come
together as a community
when we need to and to love
and honour and accept ourselves
and treat ourselves,
regardless of what anybody else tells us,
as deserving of everything
that any human being is deserving of,
and to take pride in who we are.
- That's a really great message
and reminder for all of us
not able to celebrate
Pride physically this year
to tell ourselves.
So I think I can speak for all of us
when I say we look forward
to seeing you in The Boys
in the Band (indistinct).
- Oh fantastic.
- We hope.
But tonight to mark Pride Month
in this digital way we
return to The Normal Heart.
Here in Canada, we'll hit
play on the film at 7:30
on the East Coast,
4:30 if you're watching on the West Coast.
We're watching on Crave here in Canada,
but wherever you are, you
should seek out The Normal Heart
and watch with us.
We'll be using along using
the hashtag #TIFFAtHome.
Matt, thank you for being
a leader in our community,
for helping us to connect
to a whole generation
that we lost, through Felix.
- I appreciate that.
I don't know if I'm any of those things
but it was real honour of
a lifetime to get to be
a part of a movie like this.
And thank you for having me,
and thank you for showing the film.
- Thank you for joining us
for Stay-at-Home Cinema.
