Hey guys. Anyone thinking about hitting up TIFF? I'm seriously considering trying to get tickets for The Master but have never attended a major film festival so I don't really know how it works. What are the chances of a regular Joe like myself getting tickets? Would buying a TIFF membership off their website help? Anything you guys can tell me? Thanks Xi-bros.
I think the availability of tickets for something like The Master is going to be largely dependent on how many screenings they hold. If they screen it a few times, which is not uncommon for TIFF, you stand a good chance of getting in to see one of the later ones. The premiere will be almost impossible to get into. You can try, but tickets will go very, very quickly and line-ups for rush tickets (if any remain) will be HUGE. To give you some idea, the rush line last year for the third or fourth screening of Ron Fricke's Samsara (so, while not obscure, nothing nearly so high profile as The Master) was something like three hundred people long.
I don't mean to discourage you. You can chance in to all kinds of awesome screenings. That's the beauty of film festivals, and TIFF is especially generous to the general public (relative to what I've heard about Cannes and Venice, etc). It's up to you whether you'd want to buy a pass for the festival, which is expensive but guarantees that you will see a lot of movies, or if you want to buy tickets to individual screenings. They should be posting a schedule soon if they haven't already. You can either call or purchase the tickets/passes online. You could also try to go by rush tickets. You will wait in many lines and you may not get in to things, but I've done it in the past with reasonable success. It is by far the cheapest option.
I don't want to jinx myself, but it looks like this year I might be given a VIP pass for the festival, which would enable me to get into any screening so long as I show up before rush tickets are sold. I would also get to attend the TIFF gala and rub elbows with Ben Affleck and such. Sorry for the sort-of brag. I'm not an important person, let alone a very important person. Just incredibly lucky.
