What a difference 16 years makes.

The last time the Filmfest saw fit to host a gala tribute to the career achievements of a screen legend, it was a huge, flashy, stage-managed 1984 event for Warren Beatty, a more Hollywood-than-thou fete that, legend has it, almost bankrupted the festival.

Last night, the fest got back in the tribute business with an evening honouring the terrifically eclectic director Stephen Frears, who's jumped genres so often (The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Hi Lo Country, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, The Van, High Fidelity) that he risks chronic shin-splints.

This public event at Roy Thomson Hall, by contrast, was anti-Hollywood. None of the biggest names rumoured to be showing up to sing his praises did (John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman and George Clooney were absent, while John Cusack was present but didn't take the stage to speak).

Not that most of the crowd, who'd paid $60 and up to attend the tribute, were necessarily disappointed. Over-calibre star power wouldn't seem quite right for the legendarily self-effacing filmmaker with the quiet dry wit. And the procession of respected writers, actors and producers grilled by CBC talking head David Gilmour painted an intimate picture of Frears' loving collaborative alchemy. Among the extollers: John Hurt, authors Roddy Doyle, Donald Westlake and Christopher Hampton, producers Laura Ziskin (As Good As It Gets, Pretty Woman), Jeremy Thomas (The Big Hit) and Linda Miles (The Commitments, The Van, The Snapper), High Fidelity co-stars Jack Black and Natasha Gregson Wagner, and writers D.V. DeVincentis and Steven Pink.

There were tales of Frears' legendary self-doubt. "I knew I was in the right hands," said Hurt of his work on the indie Brit gangster film The Hit, "when he came up and asked, 'John, what would a real director do in this situation?' That definitely broke the ice."

Westlake, who wrote The Grifters, told of approaching Frears at the movie's New York opening party and congratulating him: "He put his arm on my shoulder and said, 'We got away with it.' " Black said, "He would constantly groan, 'I'm too old to direct this picture.' " And DeVincentis recalled, "He'd always refer to the movie as a 'mission of folly.' "

Others told affectionate tales of the director's oddness. "I first met Stephen at the Dublin airport, where conveniently he was getting off the plane and I was there to meet him," said Doyle, about getting together to film The Snapper. Doyle drove the director "up on a railway bridge where he looked around and said, 'This is fine,' and he went back to the airport and flew home."

For his part, Frears took the stage at the end and offered his own take on his success and his rapport with actors and writers. Why do actors like him? "I don't think they're idiots. Of course, that might be foolish on my part," he quipped.

"I tend to think of my films as sort of being a guest in people's lives," he said. "If I make a film in America, I'm surrounded by Americans, and it would be impertinent to tell them how to play Americans."

Or maybe Jack Black had a better take on his string of critically-acclaimed films. "It's his warlock eyes. Everybody's afraid to say it, but he's got warlock eyes. They're dark pools, and they're the source of his power and talent."


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