Tribeca 2007 wrap-up

My grand total in 48 hours at Tribeca: Six movies, four press conferences, five red carpets and two parties. It's taken me a while to write this wrap-up because on Saturday, I traveled to Washington D.C. for my Duke friend Betsy's wedding - it was a lovely weekend.

After the last entry, my next stop was a set of back-to-back press conferences. One was for "Gardener of Eden" and Leo DiCaprio canceled his plans to attend, so I didn't get much out of that one. The other was for a documentary about a Mexican boxer directed by Diego Luna and produced by Gael Garcia Bernal - two of the hottest young Latino actors around. Both turned out for the press conference and were interesting to hear (and I even understood most of what they said in Spanish), but it was a shame they showed up looking as though they hadn't bathed in several days or seen a razor in a while. If they aren't going to dress up a little for what is most likely the largest assembly of press this little boxing documentary will ever see, what exactly are they going to dress up for?

From there I covered back-to-back red carpets for two movies I didn't see: "Take," starring Minnie Driver, and "The Education of Charlie Banks," directed by Fred Durst of the rap group Limp Bizkit. I got a short chat with Driver, who was lovely, and then waited for Durst. He grew up in Gastonia, so he was excited to see I was from his hometown paper and gave me a huge hug which treated me to an up-close view of his scary neck tattoos. We had a nice little chat. Eva Amurri, Susan Sarandon's daughter, is in the film, so Sarandon and hubby Tim Robbins made a surprise walk up the carpet. Sarandon looks great - pushing 60 and I detected no signs of plastic surgery. Robbins is aging nicely too.

From there I had to find my way to my final red carpet of the evening, "Suburban Girl," starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in an adaptation of the book "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing." Alec Baldwin is her love interest, so all the reporters on the carpet were asking everyone in the movie about Baldwin's troubles with his daughter. By the time Gellar got to me, her publicist was ushering her along so I barely got five words out of her. And it turns out the movie, filmed at least a year ago, eerily echoed Baldwin's current situation. He plays a divorcee who complains of a "spiteful daughter." At one point, Gellar's character says, "You told me that your daughter refuses to speak to you," and Baldwin's character replies, "I left her a message." Another line has him saying "If I had fought for custody, everything would be different now." All the lines provoked unintended laughs. In a way I felt bad for the filmmaker, but it likely means more people will see this movie than would otherwise, because it's only a middling romantic comedy-drama.

Afterward I finagled my way into the cast party, but Gellar and hubby Freddy Prinze Jr. stayed safely ensconced in a booth surrounded by friends so there was no opportunity for spontaneous conversation with them. But I met some nice people there and it made for a nice ending to the whirlwind visit. Hope I get to go back next year! To recap the movies:

Thumbs up: "Chops" (high school jazz documentary); "Normal Adolescent Behavior" (high school sex drama); "The Hammer" (boxing comedy); "Suburban Girl" (tepid thumbs-up, but you gotta see it for Baldwin).

Thumbs down: "Gardener of Eden" (quirky vigilante story) and "Descent" (rape revenge drama). Neither was inherently bad, just off-putting.