By my count, there were only 12 Irishmen in Toronto for the film festival, yet five of us turned up in a hotel elevator at the same time one afternoon.
Pierce Brosnan, attending the world premiere of Seraphim Falls, said yes, he will go to see Casino Royale and he wishes Daniel Craig well as his 007 successor. Liam Neeson, who plays Brosnan's nemesis in the American western, is taking time out from movies while his wife, Natasha Richardson, joins her mother Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette and Claire Danes in Fateless director Lajos Koltai's new drama, Evening.
Gabriel Byrne, meanwhile, was in Toronto for Jindabyne, Lantana director Ray Lawrence's Raymond Carver adaptation co-starring Laura Linney. Byrne returns to Canada next month to join Susan Sarandon as childhood Holocaust survivors reunited 40 years later in Emotional Arithmetic.
Completing our Irish quintet was David Flynn, a Dubliner who started out as a production assistant on Braveheart when it shot in Ireland, worked as an agent with ICM and is now a producer in his own right with Seraphim Falls, which has a fourth Irish connection in Angelica Huston as a medicine hawker. There hasn't been a more Irish western since John Ford's heyday.
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