Movies Archives

New York, July 28, 2009 – The Cinema Society held a star-studded screening of Adam, the little film that was a big Sundance hit.  Star Hugh Dancy has spoken earnestly about portraying this character with Asperger’s Syndrome, but noted that he also sees humor in the role.  “The nature of the condition is all about miscommunication and taking things literally,” he told us.  “While we tried to be careful about that and not make the character the butt of the joke, we also tried to make the most of that humor, and the lightness, and balance the more serious aspects.” 

Dancy is winning in the role, as is co-star Rose Byrne as his love interest.  Amy Irving, who plays Byrne’s mother, doesn’t remember much about the shoot.  “I was just home from a very blissful honeymoon, and I was extremely happy and I’m a little foggy about what I did when I was out there,” Irving said.  “I was about three feet off the ground during it.”  The man who shared that honeymoon, Ken Bowser, was by her side at the screening. 

Claire Danes, Duncan Shiek and Eva Amurri joined fashionistas Zac Posen, Yigal Azrouel, Charlotte Ronson and Rachel Roy for dinner later at the Gramercy Park Hotel. 

New York, July 7, 2009 – We were surprised to see that Sacha Baron Cohen was, for once, not in character as Brüno when he appeared on the David Letterman show to promote the movie.  Cohen arrived at the taping dressed in a suit, and to the disappointment of fans waiting outside, dashed inside without fanfare. 

After the taping concluded, fans waited…and waited…and waited for Sacha Baron Cohen to come back outside.  What could be taking him so long, they wondered.

Finally, after quite a long time, the comedian emerged from the studio and it was clear what had taken so much time – he had changed into full Brüno regalia.  And then, Cohen proceeded to camp it up to the maximum, posing suggestively, signing autographs up and down the street, and basically putting on a show.  “I was laughing so hard, I nearly dropped my camera,” one photographer told us. 

Atlantic City, NJ, June 21-26, 2009 – Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler were both ensconced at the Water Club all week, where they were shooting scenes for their movie The Bounty Hunter at the Borgata Hotel & Casino.   

Aniston had dinner with the movie’s director, Andy Tennant, at Bobby Flay Steak, and one evening she hosted eight people in her suite for dinner, served by the hotel’s butler staff.  While guests and staff at the hotel reported Aniston to be approachable and friendly, she was anything but when we caught up with her on the set on Thursday, June 23. 

Crew members merely shrugged as Aniston required take after take to nail the scene in which she drove a boardwalk pedicab while Gerard Butler pursued in a vintage Oldsmobile Delta 88.  A production assistant mentioned that the budget allowed for so many retakes. Aniston was openly hostile to photographers near the set.

Butler also filmed a scene at Borgata’s Porte Cochere with co-star Jason Sudekis of Saturday Night Live. 

Both Jen and Gerard checked out Friday morning and headed to New York. 

New York, June 16, 2009 – Kathy Bates didn’t prepare much for her role as a courtesan in Belle Epoque Paris in the movie Cheri.  “I literally flew into Paris on a Sunday, arrived on Monday morning, went into costume fittings and started shooting on Tuesday,” she told us at the Cinema Society screening.  Bates said that director Stephen Frears does not like to rehearse, but he denied that, saying that Bates simply got there too late.  “If she’d come earlier, she could have rehearsed,” Frears said.  “It’s not my fault.  I’m innocent.”  The director was in a playful mood at the screening; Michelle Pfeiffer looked shocked when Frears nonchalantly walked past her on the red carpet.  “Oh my god!” she exclaimed, and then spotted him.  “I should have known it was him,” Pfeiffer said.  “Who else would come up to me and run their finger down my back but Mr. Frears?”

New York, May 11, 2009 – For a movie starring Jessica Biel, Colin Firth and Ben Barnes, the Cinema Society screening of Easy Virtue seemed a bit light on celebrities at first.  But afterward, at the Gramercy Park Hotel dinner party, more and more stars arrived as the evening wore on.  After 11 PM, Biel arrived with her man, Justin Timberlake, who had been in New York hosting Saturday Night Live over the weekend.  We saw Bob Saget and Rupert Everett; Karolina Kurkova and Michelle Monaghan shared a table; designer Marc Jacobs was deep in conversation with fiancé Lorenzo Martone, and we bumped into Sting, who cheerfully admitted he’d missed the screening.  “I just gatecrashed the party,” he told us

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Photos: Caroline Torem Craig

New York, April 22 - May 2, 2009 – Cheryl Hines called it a “small miracle” that she pulled together such a cast – Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, Justin Long and Kristen Bell – for her directorial debut Serious Moonlight, which screened at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. She’d worked with Adrienne Shelley on Waitress, and was offered the Moonlight script by the late actress’s husband, Andy Ostroy.  “So suddenly, I was offered this golden opportunity that I knew would only come once in my life, and I read the script and I absolutely loved it,” Hines told us. 

Hines did not meet with Meg Ryan in person to discuss the project. “I was actually on location shooting something else, but we had a lot of conversations on the phone.  And it was the first time I’d ever met her; I had never met her before this film,” Hines told us.

Ryan said what Hines brought to the director’s chair is humor.  “When you have someone behind the lens who is funny and who knows what funny is, you can relax.” Ryan said.  We couldn’t resist asking the When Harry Met Sally star if she ever goes to Katz’s Delicatessen, the setting of the 1989 movie's most infamous scene.  “I just got a t-shirt,” Ryan said, laughing.  “They finally sent me one.”

Despite rampant rumors, there is no Jackass 3 movie in production.  “We’re not working on it right now,” Johnny Knoxville told us at the Tribeca Festival screening of The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, which he produced with Jackass director Jeff Tremaine. “It’s been on imdb for the last two years, but it’s not true,” said Tremaine.  “If we decide to make one, we’ll make one.  But we have not decided to make one yet,” he added.

Gary Coleman, who says he’s embarrassed that he was in the movie Midgets vs. Mascots, nonetheless showed up at the film festival to promote it. Director Ron Carlson says this classy production was the brainchild of a marketing company.  “A couple of people decided, you know, we could have two teams put together and compete against each other, and have it just outrageous. And, uh, little people and mascots really seemed to be like, the right mix,” Carlson explained.  He got the job after the producers had approached 40 different directors.  “I was probably the only one that said yes.” 

Photos: Dennis Van Tine & Joy E. Scheller

New York, April 27, 2009 – It was difficult for everyone at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s tribute to Tom Hanks.  Finding anything to say about the movie star is almost impossible.  “It’s going to be tough tonight,” John Patrick Shanley warned us early in the evening.  “Because he is sort of uniformly a great guy, does his work, never freaks out,” Shanley said. “Anecdotally, he may fall a little short.”

Of the multiple projects they’ve worked on together, Steven Spielberg says Hanks never so much as showed up late or hung over.  Charlize Theron insists that while directing her in That Thing You Do, Hanks never once lost his cool.

Tom Hanks really is that nice guy he seems to be. 

Nora Ephron summed it up: “It’s pretty depressing because then what are you going to say?”  Ephron said if she had a funny anecdote, she’d be saying it in her speech later in the evening. 

Instead, Ephron invented an alternative life story, telling the crowd that Hanks was actually born Pinchus Greenblatt on Long Island, and spoke only Yiddish.  “He realized that since there were already too many Jewish actors – Dustin, Paul Newman, Cary Grant, Whoopi Goldberg – he would have to find another way,” Ephron said in her tribute speech.

So you get the drift – Hanks is a great guy, and roasting him is not easy.  So Julia Roberts solved this dilemma, taking the stage with: “All right, it’s late and I’m paying my babysitter overtime and I have to pee, so...everybody f---ing likes you.”

New York, April 23, 2009 – Obsessed is Beyonce’s first non-singing movie role, and at the premiere everyone was speculating about what she would wear.  Even co-star Jerry O’Connell was curious.  “I’m very excited to see what Beyonce is going to be wearing tonight, because I know she a lot of times wears things from House of Dereon, but lately has been wearing things from other houses,” O’Connell said, to our astonishment. “I’m sure she’s going to look amazing,” he added.  O’Connell explained that he gets exposed to fashion thanks to his wife, Rebecca Romijn, a former model.  Romijn was off shooting a movie in Canada, so couldn’t be at the premiere. 

And then, we nearly died when B showed with a train trailing behind her Balmain dress, that she said she found on Style.com and had to have. 

Anyway, B took the role seriously, said director Steven Shill.  “I think the result came out really well.  She made my job really easy, I have to say,” Shill told us.  Ali Larter stalks Beyonce’s husband, played by Idris Elba, and the two women have a cataclysmic knock-down fight.  “We were shooting this fight scene for like a week,” Larter said.  It’s a catfight, and Larter says both actresses got equally bruised up while shooting.