The Giver: World Premiere

Whoever said "Mondays Suck" obviously did not have a movie premiere to go to that night!

A handful of superstars were on hand last night to introduce their new film THE GIVER.

Jeff Bridges, Taylor Swift, Katie Holmes, and MERYL STREEP all showed up to the NYC world premiere.

I was lucky enough to have had drinks with Ms Naia (who is a producer on the movie) last week while in LA and got invited as an afterthought.
 Yayyyyy!

The lady in purple there is the author of "The Giver" Ms. Lois Lowry.

And the young not-yet-household-name stars of the movie arrived first to cheers from the crowd.

Across the street all the fans waited and cheered.

Those of us attending the premiere were dressed real purty-like.

Meryl showed up and I was immediately starstruck from several hundred feet away.

Here's Miss Naia being all Oprah-like (without the fatness) passing out tickets to the premiere.

Taylor Swift arrived and the energy of the entire block changed. There was a roar of cheers from the crowd and every single person - young, old, famous, and not-famous - turned to gawk or sprinted over to snap photos.

It was so crazy she didn't even go to sign autographs, but instead hurried into the red carpet/interview area...it probbbbably would have been a security hazard.

The streets were packed with onlookers.

And paparazzi lined the red carpet.

Those of us NIPs had to walk behind the red carpet and into the theater. No interviews or paparazzi-walls for us! #feelingfabulous #not

Once inside the massive theater, we watched a live stream of the red carpet arrivals.

It was also in here that we got the news the Robin Williams had just died.

Jeff Bridges was literally on-camera being interviewed when it happened and broke down in tears talking about his friend.

OMG Meryl!!!!

Katie Holmes looked FIERCE.

AND THEN (no and then!) the A-listers entered the building...

"MERYL!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"KATIE!!!!!!!"

Harvey Weinstein took the stage to introduce Jeff Bridges.

And then Jeff Bridges introduced the rest of the cast.

Miss Taylor...

Meryl...

There was a lot of star power on that one little stage!

And then we were treated to a surprise performance by OneRepublic, who had a song that was featured on the movie soundtrack.

It was a very entertaining movie. There were some lines and situations that were hilariously and unintentionally gay and molest-y though.

Like when the kid goes, "If I'm The Receiver...what are you?" 

And Jeff Bridges goes, "I guess that would make me the Giver."

(If Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers still did that SNL skit "REALLY?!?!?!" their appearance right now would be very fitting.)

So excited to see Miss Naia's name featured prominently in the credits!

Remember this time 10 years ago when we were just starting out as lowly Hollywood assistants?

Makes me want to revisit my IMDB page!

Thank you Naia for the Hollywood hookup, as usual!

Machine Gun Preacher Premiere!

I landed in LA around lunchtime yesterday. Grabbed a quick lunch with Kristy. Took a power nap. And then it was off to the premiere of Gerard Butler's new film Machine Gun Preacher!



The premiere was held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (Oscar) Building in Beverly Hills.



The star looked real good with some longer hair.



His costar Michelle Monaghan looked like a skinny little elf.




Zoe Saldana was there too. And a smattering of other rando celebs.



Thanks Naia for hooking up the tickets!



The AMPAS Building houses an enormous fancy theater.



Movie premieres are funny because they're just like a regular movie screening, except the film gets introduced, usually by the star of it, and everyone claps for all the opening credits including the production company logo, in this case Relativity Media. The first few credits are the ones that get the big applauses, for the stars and directors etc. Near the end of the opening credits, when they're crediting the Wardrobe Designer or Casting Director or something there's just an awkward smattering of applause. And in this movie those last credits came up during an awkward sex scene where Michelle Monaghan is getting F'ed in the passenger seat of a car so that combined with the weak applause was kind of funny and made me LOL inappropriately.

The movie is about Sam Childers, a former junkie criminal who reforms himself, finds Jesus, and builds an orphanage in Southern Sudan to save the child victims of the war over there.

Here's the trailer:



After the screening, the theater was completely silent as everyone processed what they had just seen. I thought the movie was pretty incredible and it made me want to do something, anything, to help these kids...except maybe visit. (The movie probbbbably won't be good for Sudanese tourism.) And I kind of wish that it were titled and marketed differently... the words "Machine Gun" and "Preacher" might turn away some potential filmgoers.

............................

After the movie they had open bar and open FOOD.





But it felt kind of weird to gorge oneself on delicious snacks and beverages after watching a movie about African children who eat SEWAGE. Not that we didn't happily do it.



We mixed and mingled and congratulated the stars on a job well done.



And we ended up chatting with these fabulous ladies from the Official Gerard Butler Fan Club who had won tickets to the premiere. They were REALLY excited to be there, and you could just feel them getting all moist in the presence of Mr. Butler as they fanned themselves continuously.




Somehow my camera managed to make Gerry look old and yucky when really he is anything but.



And people also posed for pics with the real Sam Childers, the man Gerry plays in the movie.



Yay. Fun night! I miss LA.