CHRISTINE Party Accelerates
By Luaine Lee
So you want to know what a Hollywood party is like? Everybody thinks there's lots of drugs and hanky-panky going on, with shadowy corners where unspeakable things happen. Wrong. The single most urgent raison d'etre of a Hollywood party is to be seen.
And no one with his career firmly in hand is going to be seen out of control. Columbia had a whopper at the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles to christen it's latest movie, CHRISTINE.
Word is that CHRISTINE the latest Stephen King flick to make it to film, deposited another $400,000 in King's pocket for the movie rights. It's about a 2958 Plymouth Fury that has a crush on it's nerdish owner. Hence, lots of '50s rock and roll from the sic-piece band at the Hard Rock Café.
The café purports to be a relic of the '50s with pennants from colleges pinned all over the walls and buxom waitresses dressed in cotton uniforms with handkerchiefs popping out of their pockets.
The dress (the invitation said informal) turned out to be more "kitsch exotic" than informal. I mean, there were Indian princesses there, girls in hiking boots, some in leopard-rimmed '50s sunglasses-sunglasses in the dark nightclub.
The men seemed to favor leather pants and wrinkled trousers with big pleats, jackets with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow and short hair. Lots of aging hippies like Jeff Goldblum and Mary Kay Place showed up. Ed Begley Jr. looked just like the character he plays on ST. ELSEWHERE and everybody else looked familiar. That's because most of them are struggling actors who earn their tofu by touting McDonald's or pantyhose.
But the best part of it was happening outside. Klieg lights shone on the cherried-out red and white CHRISTINE who sat demurely while white smoke poured out from under her. CHRISTINE, you see, is possessed of regenerating powers. She can repair her own dents and kill trespassers in the process. Twenty-three CHRISTINES were pulverized for the movie, one of the crew members told me.
