Night of 1000 Stars; morning of equal hangovers

Don’t know how anyone could be expected to retreat to a dark movie theater on a sun-splashed morning like this in Sarasota. Especially after a hazy, crazy Night of 1,000 Stars where at least that many celestial objects were circling everyone’s Bombay Sapphire-stoked heads.

Michael’s on East is the hoi polloi chuckwagon where the Sarasota Film Festival sets aside one of its social gatherings each year. I’m sure the lunch and dinner crowds don’t scrape against fire code standards like this shindig. I tried to take a head count but kept getting distracted by the  handiwork of cosmetic surgeons who must rank high among Sarasota’s industrialists.

I swear when one gem-drenched sabertoothed cougar smiled at me, her toes curled backward from the skin tension.

Stanley Tucci squeezed into Michael’s around 10:15, fresh from a sold-out screening of his new movie Blind Date, co-starring Patricia Clarkson. The overheard consensus among folks who made it inside the theater wasn’t complimentary. Tucci’s bravely polite smiles for photographers seemed to confirm that. “Boring” was the most common description I heard. I’ll have a chance later to see if that’s true.

Grabbed a few seconds with Tucci before he was hustled to the roped-off VIP area, sitting at a table reserved for Blind Date personnel and friends. I kept the chat brief and off the screening vibe, just to be polite. He had bigger crab cakes to fry since most of the VIPs appeared to be festival sponsors and Sarasota moneybags; the kind of folks who chipped in for William H. Macy’s opening night film, The Deal.

Variety recently named Sarasota as one of the top festivals where artists may find financial support for projects, while other festivals are either shopping centers for distributors buying rights to completed movies (Sundance, Cannes) or kicking off awards hype for movies with everything else lined up (Telluride, Toronto). You gotta start the process somewhere and it usually has something to do with someone else’s bank account.

Tucci’s pal Steve Buscemi – who’ll introduce him at tonight’s awards gala at Longboat Key Club and Resort – also worked the VIP lounge crowd. He didn’t mind smiling (or something like it) for cameras clicked by fans on the non-business side of the ropes.

Princess Di and I took off around 11:15 when the body crunch factor approached agoraphobic levels. We have tickets to a couple screenings (Helen Hunt’s directorial debut Then She Found Me and the Harry Potter mania documentary We Were Wizards) and owe it to ourselves to catch some of these ultraviolet rays before dressing for tonight’s gig.

I was asked by the folks at WTSP Ch. 10 (where I do movie reviews each Thursday during the 4 p.m. newscast) if I might be available to handle red carpet interviews of Buscemi and Oscar winner Charlize Theron, whose film Battle in Seattle closes the festival tomorrow. Looks like that won’t happen, which is a shame.

I had envisioned chatting with Theron then saying something like: “Well, I have to ask you the obligatory red carpet question.” Before she could say which designer she’s wearing I’d say: “What am I wearing?”

In my fantasy, she’d laugh, charmed by my wit. Then we’d head back to the hotel beachfront and gaze at the stars until daybreak.

In reality, she’d say: “A cheap suit.”