Into a party full of downward-facing damsels decked out in their Handmaid’s Tale robes, lined up in two little queues, and a fluttering of big orange baby Trump balloons, throughout the room, came he: David Hogg.

Not the precise shell of celebrity I was expecting to see when I set off for the requisite night of parties, on a night of TIFF, but possibly the only celebrity that might have left me significantly more star-struck than any mere Gosling or Gaga.

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The resistance, happening at a party past the stroke of midnight at a place possibly ironically named Speakeasy 21 (and just down the street from where the no-longer-Trump Hotel once stood, on Adelaide), was made complete when Hogg — the media-savvy boy who has become the “spokesperson for radicalized young America,” as New York magazine has put it — went on to me about the lack of “balls” most politicians in Washington have to stand up to the gun lobby.

Flanked by two of his Parkland buddies, and now-compatriots in a movement — among them Ryan Deitsch, the kid who hid in a closet when the tragic shooting began at their schooling earlier this year, and famously filmed which was amazing — they had surprise-showed at the world premiere for Moore’s all-new Fahrenheit 11/9 at Ryerson Theatre earlier. At the Q&A, following the film, Hogg, roused the crowd of Canadians when he asked: “Who’s ready to save America?”

Dressed in jeans and a hoodie that read Space X at the back, and seeming quietly coiled, personality-wise, he looked not unlike any clean-cut dude who might work at the Genius Bar at Apple, say. But, of course, he is not. Watching him as he negotiated a bunch of people trying to solicit selfies, I asked him if he has at all gotten used to the fact that strangers want to take photos with him. “I have,” he answered honestly.

But, said the guy who has hitherto appeared on the covered of Time this year, plus appeared on Jimmy Fallon, and has been name-checked on Twitter by everyone from Captain America, Chris Evans, to Cher herself, he did think, in terms of selfie-strategy, it was important for someone as long-limbed as him to “just grab the phone yourself,” instead of getting the other person to fiddle around. It saves time.

Focused now on the “mid-terms” coming up in the U.S. electorate, he talked to me a little more about his laser-focused plans, driving home the point, more or less, that he had tweeted himself not long ago: “People call us snowflakes. What happens when all the snowflakes vote? That’s called an avalanche.”

And when I suggested that his “plan B” could very well be to move to Canada, if worse comes to worst — this, as Moore posed for photos with Handmaids around us — Hogg told me, yeah: “I might just have to do that.”

Meanwhile:

Mom was the word at a dance-mad party happening around the same witching-hour at Soho House for the film, Monsters and Men, in which John David Washington gives a star-turn. Having watched his way-famous dad navigate the wilds of fame — he is the son of Denzel Washington, and he is effectively trying to be the Kiefer to his Donald, or Kate to his Goldie — he was actually most laudatory about his mother, Paulette Washington, when we spoke.

“My mom is a great artist,” the buoyant John told me, looking good in his purple suit (real men wear purple). It is a point that he has been making quite a bit, while answering the inevitable son-of questions while on the media hustings (he also starred in the recently-opened Spike Lee movie, “BlacKkKlansman”), famously cutting off one interviewer recently who wanted to only talk Denzel, by name-checking his mother, a classically trained pianist who went to Juliard, and “who was earning more money than he was when they married.”

“My father taught me how to hunt, my mother taught me how to love,” is also what he said then.

As signature drinks went around us in this Grey Goose-hosted party — fresh lime juice, and mint leaves, anyone? — and he and his super-fun crew of friends descended into a full-on jam session to the DJ’s hip hop playlist into the late night — I asked John if he has any other projects on the go. Nah. He is still trying to find the right thing, he told me. You should do theatre, I told him! He nodded. But his dream — he went on to mention — is to do a big production (or possibly even movie) of Taming of Shrew. “I want to play Petruchio,” he said.

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Finally, pssst...:

Among the torrent of party-hopping planned for this weekend, it is nice to hear that bombshell Monica Belluci, and the rest of her cast-mates for the world premiere of the film Nekrotronic, plan to do do it civilized by having “cassoulet de mer,” among other dishes, at a sit-down nosh. The dinner is planned for Bacchanal, one of the most quietly assured new restaurants in town.

Shinan Govani is a freelance columnist based in Toronto covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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