The Kitsch And Famous
Sun Herald
Sunday August 5, 2001
British commentator Zoe Heller recalls her night out as a squashed and humiliated nobody VIP.
MY BOYFRIEND was a screenwriter on Tim Burton's new film, Planet Of The Apes, so the two of us attended the Manhattan premiere last week.
The studio sent a car, which was nice, but getting into a limo in my Brooklyn street turned out to be a faintly cringe-making business. The waiter in the diner across the street came out and gave friendly cat-whistles. The Chinese laundry woman who had, that very morning, sewn up the hem on my skirt, shouted through her open doorway: ``Where you going, then?"
By the time we made it into the car we had lost all kudos with our driver, who clearly believed that we had won this outing in a competition on the back of a cereal box.
``You're going to be able to get quite a few autographs tonight!" he remarked kindly.
When we emerged from the car on to the red carpet, 100 photographers swivelled expectantly in our direction and then turned stonily away. ``Nah, it's nobody," one of them yelled.
The premiere was massively over-attended and there was a long delay while the publicity people tried to get everyone seated. We whiled away the time ogling the celebs. The enormous and rather morose basketball player Shaquille O'Neal arrived in his customised minibus, with gold-plated, shag-piled interior. Sean ``Puff Daddy" Combs lurked in a corner, bent and slack-mouthed.
The highlight for me was the appearance of Kris Kristofferson. When we were living in Los Angeles last northern winter, my boyfriend took me on a film set just so I could meet Kristofferson. I planned to tell him how much joy his work as a musician and actor had brought me over the years.
But when the moment came and his manly hand was shaking mine, I went blank and reverted to the Englishwoman's default demeanour of vague disdain. ``Oh, helleh," I said limply, then ran away.
I knew I would do no better this time round, so I contented myself with gazing lovingly at him from afar.
When we did actually sit down, we found ourselves seated just in front of Charlton Heston. Heston, who starred in the original Planet Of The Apes and makes a cameo appearance in the new film, was with his elderly and rather frail wife and his middle-aged daughter.
``I can't believe you made me come to this thing and now we've got these lousy seats," the daughter kept whining. ``Now honey," Heston said placatingly. But she wouldn't let it lie.
After a while, the wife began breathing in this rather terrifying, asthmatic way. ``See? See?" she said to the daughter. ``See what you're doing to me?"
For an eavesdropping devotee like me, this was like striking gold. I sat chewing popcorn, praying the Heston family aggro would go on forever.
Then the lights went down. To attend a premiere with a person directly involved in its making is rather a tense business. You end up not so much watching the film as watching everyone else watching it gripping your beloved's thigh whenever the audience laughs or gasps in the right places. Completely exhausting.
``Did you see how much P. Daddy enjoyed it?" someone said to me when it was all over. ``Oh yes," I said loyally. But actually I had been sitting just a few seats away from Mr Daddy and knew that any mirth or interest he had manifested had been prompted not by the film but by the messages he was studying on his mobile phone.
The party afterwards was held at a club that had been done up to resemble the ``Ape City" in the film. There were lots of potted plants and people in ape suits standing menacingly on polystyrene rocks. Up on a stage, several women, in tattered suede and fur mini-dresses, were cavorting provocatively inside cages.
A rather revolting banana-flavoured cocktail called an ``ape shake" was being served in plastic tumblers. And just to complete the hellish scenario, there was an incredibly loud club remix of the film soundtrack booming out on the sound system.
The VIP section of the party was at the far end of the room, watched over by a hysterical gaggle of PR women wearing headsets. You had to make a considerable effort and undergo no little humiliation to gain entry (``Could you please look again? I'm positive I'm on the list") and, almost as soon as you did, you realised your mistake.
About 200 famous people and the people who love them were squeezed into a narrow enclosure that wouldhave comfortably held only 50. There was nowhere to sit and nothing to do, really, other than try to avoid having famous people stamp on your feet. As I stood, I could hear grumpy photographers on the other side of faux-bamboo fencing pleading to be let in. ``If you're not letting me in, then I'm going home right now," one of them said.
Going home sounded like a swell idea to me and I was just about to suggest as much to my boyfriend when suddenly Mark Wahlberg the star of the film together with his large retinue of groupies and guards and muckers, appeared in front of us.
``Hey, man!" he said, embracing my bemused boyfriend, warmly. ``Howya doing? Great to see ya, man." For one strange moment, the Wahlberg retinue trained its slightly blank gaze on my boyfriend. Wahlberg has long since transformed himself from a bad boy rapper with a penchant for clutching at his own member into a rather solemn, Armani-clad actor. He's very big on being ``gracious" now.
``This is the writer," he yelled over the music to one of his chums. ``The waiter?" the man yelled back. ``Nah, the writer," Wahlberg said. ``Oh, cool!" the friend exclaimed, patting my boyfriend on the back. ``That's cool, man. You did good."
Wahlberg smiled, and raised his hand in presidential farewell. We stood, slightly stunned for a moment, as he and his flunkies moved off, parting the crowd with their royal progress. Then we put down our ape shakes and went out to find our limo driver and some aspirin.
Planet Of The Apes is releasedon Thursday.
© 2001 Sun Herald
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