Everybody wanted to be Shirley MacLaine's buddy last night at the 14th annual Best Buddies gala. Before the appetizer had even been cleared, a half-dozen people had approached the screen legend and doled out the praise. Co-chair Danny Greenglass happily let me sit beside Ms. MacLaine as he circulated among the tables.
Best Buddies was founded by Mr. Greenglass and Penny Shore to foster friendships between the intellectually challenged and high-school and university students.
“I have a deep interest in what constitutes as challenged,” Ms. MacLaine told me. “Because the ones who are so-called challenged are the masters of love. What they do is enable the helper to find the aspect of love that they didn't know was there.”
In addition to announcing two major new sponsors, Audi and Indigo, Ms. Shore told the 500 attendees that a new national awareness campaign will soon be launched and that, thanks to Indigo, every buddy now has a new book. Dinner chair Barry Avrich first met Ms. MacLaine after he made a documentary about the late Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman.
When asked to name her best buddy, Ms. MacLaine diplomatically answered, “Everyone here in this room.”
Then she told me to get my hair out of my eyes because she wanted to see them. “They're so beautiful,” she said. “You need a bobby pin.” Only a buddy (or a mother) could say that.
WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
“I like your outfit,” said Paris Hilton to me at the InStyle and Hollywood Foreign Press Association party on Tuesday night. “It's hot.”
And with that, I knew that my film festival coverage had reached its zenith.
When I last signed off, Sir Ben Kingsley and an effortlessly handsome Jim Sturgess had just arrived.
What I neglected to mention was that upon my own arrival, likely a half-hour before the buzz began to build, a certain silver-screen siren stepped out of the festival's ubiquitous Cadillac Escalade hybrids.
It was Catherine Zeta-Jones and she looked stunning (how could she not) but perhaps a bit safe, as if she was deliberately trying to fly below the radar.
And it worked because I never saw her again the rest of the evening.
Meanwhile, the banquette alcoves that run both sides of the grand room within the Windsor Arms Hotel began to resemble lunch at Michael's, the famed New York restaurant where every table boasts a bold, bolder and boldest array of names.
Tim Robbins and posse took one next to Ethan Hawke, who sat alone for what may have felt like an eternal few minutes before being joined by Mark Ruffalo, his co-star in What Doesn't Kill You, which premiered last night. Adrien Brody completed the bro-friend clique. On the other side of the room, Sophie Bush, who may just take this year's Geoffrey Rush Prize for Most Ubiquitous Partygoer, got a banquette of her own, as did Sir Ben, who, as promised, did not stay too late.
Some celebs are natural standers. I have yet to see Rachel Weisz sit down. Granted, if I were wearing a bandage-tight Herve Leger dress, I wouldn't either. The Brothers Bloom beauty stood within arm's reach of Mickey Rourke, who's in town for The Wrestler. The actors may have engaged in meaningful conversation but, as far as looks were concerned, ne'er the twain shall meet.
Joseph Gordon Levitt also kept both his feet firmly planted on the ground. Perhaps literally, depending on your feelings about mixing parties with politics. Well-dressed in black from head to toe, his one accessory was a Barack Obama pin. “I think it's important to show support wherever I am,” said the 27-year-old actor, who has a role in Spike Lee's film, Miracle at St. Anna. When asked whether Canadians seemed to care, he answered, “Some. I feel like it's more of an international community here.”
