If you've ever wanted to know what it's like to walk the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival, you can ask Miguel Anthony.
He did it last year, along with a group of friends, in order to sneak into an exclusive party and hand his friend's movie script to one of Hollywood's top producers: Harvey Weinstein.
But it cost the group. Specifically, it cost $10,000. They rented a Cadillac Escalade, placed a TIFF symbol on the side, made posters for a fake movie starring Anthony, dressed up in nice suits, and did everything they could to make it look like they belonged.
Some of their friends pretended to be bodyguards; others planted themselves in the crowd, holding the fake movie posters and cheering on Anthony.
"We created a celebrity," Anthony said. "We made myself into a movie star."
Anthony is actually a part-time actor, and works in security. Maybe the combination of the two skills helped him pull it off. While walking the red carpet, he was stopped to do an interview with reporters covering the event.
"I signed autographs," he said.
When Anthony made it inside the party, he moved to Phase Two of the plan: give the script to Weinstein.
Movie critic Richard Crouse said that was probably the toughest part.
"(Producers) are usually surrounded by people who are supposed to protect them from people with scripts," said Crouse.
Weinstein got the script, and apparently was even impressed with the whole stunt. Whether the script will ever get made into a movie, that's another question.
But the friends have a new pitch: a television show explaining how they crashed TIFF.
With a report by CTV's John Vennavally-Rao in Toronto
