DARK CIRCLE
Where have all the flowers gone? All at once, Hollywood seems to have shrugged off last season’s happy little prints in favor of some red-carpet understatement.
At the recent string of West Coast movie premieres, just about everyone turned up in black — even the sweet peas like Julia Stiles.
“At times, I thought I’d never walk again,” Stiles said about her turn as a millennial Jennifer Beals in “Save the Last Dance,” which premiered Tuesday night in Hollywood. Although a body double was on hand for the high kicks, Stiles, now a freshman at Columbia, trained 14 hours a day. “In a strange way, I liked the pain,” she laughed.
Wednesday night’s stormy weather was perfect for a sharp black suit and a visit to the premiere of “Antitrust,” the thriller about a corrupt computer mogul, played by Tim Robbins, and his genius protege, Ryan Phillippe. Even Reese Witherspoon admitted to a few prescreening jitters.
“I still get really scared and excited,” she confessed. “Ryan will say, ‘Can’t you see the fake blood?’ But I’m still a naive spirit.”
At the after-party at Eurochow, Rachael Leigh Cook sipped champagne beneath the corporate logo of the film’s evil software company and laughed, “Is this Capitalist Party headquarters? I don’t think so.”
Across town, “A Girl Thing,” Showtime’s new miniseries about a Manhattan therapist and her patients, premiered to a girl-heavy crowd that included Mia Farrow, Kate Capshaw, Angela Bassett and Elle Macpherson. Macpherson gave up the bombshell act to play an ultraconservative lesbian, and Stockard Channing learned a thing or two for her role as the shrink.
“Women tend to talk about sex, family, marriage and more sex,” said Channing. “Men tend to talk about inanimate objects.”