February 2nd, 2006

   We attended many Golden Globe parties which were scrunched into a tumultuous four-day weekend. When we spoke to screenwriter Diana Ossana at the Focus Features NBC/Universal party, she said she was overwhelmed and gratified by the mass nomination attention for Brokeback Mountain. The party was held atop the Beverly Hilton hotel’s garage. That of course was before her film came out as the evening’s most honored movie with four G.G.s, including one for her and her co-scripter, Larry McMurtry. So our congrats to the film’s producers and director, Ang Lee.
Though Diana Ossana’s words were spoken before all the gold was mined, they resonate even more in retrospect: “I never expected any sort of widespread recognition for what was really a sort of small film, one that we always felt was very powerful and with a lot of potential. We never for one minute doubted the power of the screenplay.” That a film like Brokeback Mountain would be honored so lavishly while embracing a gay theme, one that also runs with Capote, does not surprise Diana. “The gay aspect of it is merely coincidental in my frank opinion. Our movie and Capote found their way because the stories were extremely well told and have been backed by great passion. We had to be passionate and energetic and relentless to get it made after working on it for eight years. I like to think the movie is winning awards because it is an exceptional piece of art not because of its theme.”

“I cannot figure out if this is the best time for this to be happening, because my life is already so full with Heath and our new baby [Matilda],” Michelle Williams enthused to us at the Focus Features party. “Heath” of course is Heath Ledger, her real and reel husband in the much-lauded film. She continued, “I’m curious what it will be like for Matilda when she’s older, to see how her parents met on that movie set. And in the course of the film’s shoot, they have such an unhappy outcome, marrying, yelling, and fighting, then divorcing. Hopefully it will be unlike any way she’ll ever see her mother and father behave.
Ang Lee picked up the discussion: “I think their love affair was especially helpful for Heath. He was playing a complex, really clenched-up role full of self-loathing. The relationship nourished him and kept him grounded; it helped him leave the set peacefully.” Then it was Heath Ledger’s time to chime in: “I was not doing anything that was testing me and I got bored [in my earlier film work],” speaking of taking on the role of Ennis Del Mar, the reticent cowboy tortured by his lifelong attraction to ranch hand/rodeo performer Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal). “I’m not doing a movie unless it means something to me,” he went on, adding that Brokeback changed his perspective. “Nothing scares me now.”
All weekend long, we kept running into Sir Anthony Hopkins, who was honored with the 2006 Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement. Don’t expect the 68 year old to be slowing down anytime soon. In The World’s Fastest Indian, Hopkins plays New Zealand motorcycle legend Burt Munroe, who, at 68, pursued his lifelong goal of setting a land-speed record on motorcycle. It was a role that Sir Anthony told us that he did his own stunts in. “It was either do this or there’s no such shot in the film.” “We couldn’t do it with a stunt double,” said the film’s director, Roger Donaldson, who directed Hopkins in 1984’s The Bounty. We asked him how fast he personally drove that Indian motorcycle. “About 70 miles per hour at the most. You could do a slide on [Utah’s Bonneville] Salt Flats and rip your body to pieces,” Hopkins said. Four of his most intriguing roles are those of a psychotic cannibal, a U.S. president, a Spanish swordsman, and a black college professor. We asked him which was the hardest to pull off. “Oh, I think Nixon was the hardest. Nixon was tough. I’m not American. Why the hell would they cast me in it? I gave it my best shot. I think that was the trickiest one to pull off: Tricky Dicky,” he explained. “I just did a movie called Bobby, about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I play this retired doorman at the Ambassador Hotel, and I’ve got this long speech, about a page and a half.”

At the Vanity Fair party at Jeff Klein’s newly renamed Sunset Tower Hotel, some of the social swells at the hoop-de-do were gossiping about the sordid, secret life of Lapo Elkan, the favored grandson of the late, great Italian auto magnate/playboy Gianni Agnelli. Lapo’s fairy-tale world flipped upside down in October when he overdosed on cocaine and heroin in the apartment of a middle-aged, pre-op transsexual prostitute in Turin, Italy. Vanity Fair recently published a detailed account of the scandal, reporting that Lapo was wearing a dress and high heels when he was discovered the morning following an all-night drug binge by his “hostess.” The gossipers at the the Graydon Carter party were saying that Lapo has seen the film Transamerica several times, but that he really loves the film Breakfast on Pluto, which they say he has seen more than twice and that he loved the character Patrick “Kitten” Braden, portrayed by Golden Globe nominee Cillian Murphy in an eye-popping performance. Whether true or not, our calls to his reps went unheeded. However, they did go on the record (to Vanity Fair) as saying that the young Elkann was unaware that the coke was laced with heroin and also denied that he was found in full drag, as the tranny streetwalker, Patrizia, claims.
When we ran into Cillian Murphy over the G.G. weekend, we told the tall, good-looking Irishman that we heard that Lapo Elkann was a huge fan of his. His response to us was, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.” Cillian’s role in Breakfast on Pluto is that of a gentle transvestite, confronting 1970s IRA terrorism. “All she wants is just to be hugged and cuddled and feel secure and look pretty,” Murphy said in explaining his character. “There’s no ulterior motive with Kitten and that was quite refreshing. “Cillian told us that preparation for Kitten went much deeper than plucking, waxing, and occasional strolls in high heels, which became a regular part of his beauty routine. He said he also went clubbing in London with transvestites and became a careful observer of women’s gestures and body language. He also watched South Pacific and all of the old Mitzi Gaynor films that Kitten adores. “I hate musicals. I really do, but I understand. It’s losing oneself in that heightened, surreal, bubbly world as a way of getting away from what’s actually happening. I think of all the roles I’ve taken on, this is the one I have the deepest affection for. I think about her, you know? I wonder how she’s getting on.”

Snapping pix at the Vanity Fair party was our good pal, photo ace Patrick McMullan. The super-shooter has a new book out, just perfect for Valentine’s Day, called Kiss. The cover photo is the recently parted Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey in a passionate kiss. Inside there are a lot of celebrities lip-locking, such as Jennifer Lopez and Diddy Combs and Ben Affleck (in separate photos).
Speaking of Nick Lachey, he said recently to Elle magazine when asked if he ever imagined what it must be like to be his ex, Jessica Simpson, to walk in her shoes. He said, “Every day. In fact, sometimes I did walk in [Jessica’s] shoes. It was a kinky thing we like to get into.” Some rumor mongers are saying that it’s not just Jess’s shoes Nick likes. Of course, Nick’s people say it isn’t so about the cross-dressing. When Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn heard that Nick could be a closet cross-dresser, she said to us, “I want him to star in my film, A Low Life in High Heels. Since he already knows how to walk in heels, he would be perfect to portray me,” said Holly, the only surviving member of Warhol’s notorious drag queen trio, which also included Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling.
Speaking of Andy Warhol, our friend and star of Factory Girl, Sienna Miller, tells famed British photographer Sam Taylor-Wood in the current Interview magazine that “some of these people [the Warhol crowd] are treating Guy [Pearce, who portrays Andy in Factory Girl] as if they have Andy back. “We agree with Sienna. We also feel that we did have our friend Andy Warhol back with us for a while. In fact, both of us are having to go through a grieving process, so evocative is Guy of our own memories of our late friend, since Factory Girl has wrapped. We know we vowed in last week’s column to stay put in Beverly Hills, but when Sienna Miller called to invite us back to Shreveport for the film’s wrap party, we had to say yes, especially since the party (which by the way was beyond fabulous) was hosted by our friend, shoe-designer Taryn Rose, who insisted we fly to Louisiana on her private plane. Everyone was in tears as we bade good bye to one another: Sienna, Jimmy Fallon, Jack Huston, Tara Summer, director George Hickenlooper, and producer Holly Weirsma. We all promised to either call, fax, e-mail, or text-message one another at least once a week and promised we’d all see each other at the Cannes Film Festival. Guy Pearce said he’d keep phoning us and would say, “Hi, it’s Andy [mimicking exactly Andy’s voice].”