Prolific but popular

       Movie stars. Cant live with them.Cant have a film festival without them.A slightly frantic army of studio executives, publicists and agents in Los Angeles was fretting through the intricacies of George Clooneys presence at the Toronto International Film Festival.
       Would there be just one news conference, for his Overture Films movie, a paranormal comic thriller,Men Who Stare at Goats ? Or would there be a second,for his Paramount picture,Up in the Air , which was scheduled for a public screening the next day?
       Would Clooney make the Overture party? Would there be time for reporters?Cast and crew dinners? Or just smiles on the red carpet and a few bows from the stage?
       Somehow, it worked out. Because there was Clooney, flashing his Cary Grant grin for the media gaggle.
       If he had a paranormal power in real life, asked one female reporter in the crowd of about 100, what would it be?
       Im doing it right now, Clooney said with a leer.Wow! Congratulations!His right hand, he explained, was wrapped in a clump of white bandages because he had slammed a car door on it.
       I probably should have known in my mind I would do that, he said.
       If all goes according to plan, Clooney will go through the ringer again at a matching news conference for Up in the Air . That movie opens in cinemas on November 13, just a week after the commercial debut of Men Who Stare .Ostensibly, film festivals are all about films. But the big festivals, and Torontos is one of the biggest, get their energy from movie stars, the bigger the better.Yes, Vera Farmiga is here, doing her bit for both Up in the Air and The Vintner's Luck . Abbie Cornish made it in from the set of Sucker Punch , which is just starting production in Vancouver, to help plug her Bright Star . Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, a husband-and-wife team,walked the red carpet before an openingnight presentation of their Charles Darwin movie,Creation .We did our make-up together, said Connelly, tossing off a tidbit for the video crews.
       But nothing matches the excitement that comes with one of Hollywoods true royals, especially when he or she has a couple of pictures on the line.
       And Clooney is actually stretched across three films this season.
       Men Who Stare at Goats , which is directed by Grant Heslov, finds Clooney in character as Lyn Cassady, an operative of the First Earth Battalion of psychic warriors who try to kill goats just by staring at them.
       The movie is darkly comic, as is Up in the Air , which is directed by Jason Reitman and has the spotlight. In that one Clooneys Ryan Bingham is a corporate consultant who builds a near-perfect life around firing people.
       Also somewhat dark, and somewhat comic, is Clooneys voice work as Fox in the director Wes Andersons Fantastic Fox , an animal fable based on Roald Dahls childrens book of the same title.The film, from 20th Century Fox, is not screening in Toronto, but it is showing at a film festival with the other two in London and has added to the demand for Clooneys services at cinematic gatherings around the world.
       Possibly the hardest thing for any star is to know when fans will have had enough, or, worse, a bit too much. That is an especially ticklish problem for Clooney, who is generally game when it comes to promoting his films, much like Brad Pitt, with whom he appeared here last year on behalf of Burn After Reading , or Matt Damon, who is on hand this year with The Informant!,directed by Clooneys old business partner, Steven Soderbergh.
       The unusually long awards season,stretched by the Oscars move from late February to a March 7 broadcast date,will test the limit for any star. Last year Kate Winslet seemed on the verge of wearing out her audience with the constant appearances on behalf of Revolutionary Road and The Reader . But she came up with an Oscar for her performance as Hanna Schmitz, the former German camp guard, in The Reader . This year, with no film in contention, she has given it a rest.
       I dont think thats really been planned yet, Reitman said of the long promotional haul that may lie ahead for both himself and Clooney this year.(Reitman is also a producer of Jennifer's Body and an executive producer of Chloe ,which are both screening in Toronto.)
       When it came to shooting Up in the Air , said Reitman, working with Clooney actually was not much different from his experience with slightly less luminous stars like Aaron Eckhart on Thank You for Smoking and Ellen Page on Juno .But things do get brighter on the promotional side. On returning to Los Angeles from the Telluride Film Festival,Reitman said he was surprised to see a blazing electronic billboard for Up in the Air , with Clooneys name sparkling on top.
       Ive never had an outdoor billboard for one of my movies, he said.