Up front, in the back

I can't hear you, this moron next to me is squealing.

I am a special person; I got to go to the New York premiere of "The Interpreter" tonight. It's luck more than anything else, really, not like I had anything to do with the production, which kicked off the Tribeca Film Festival (which itself oddly doesn't have much going on until the end of the week, but details, details).

And I had very nice seats -- not exactly dead center like Ms. Kidman and Mr. Penn, but actually right at the back before the raised mezzanine seats began, and a bit to the left so exiting proved quite easy. The Ziegfeld is a lovely old restored theater which gets most of its play from premieres like this. I've had crappy seats there and they're not horrible, but in a situation like this you like to see where you "rate" in terms of equality of seating. Not good enough to be with the stars, true, but apparently good enough to be on Kyle MacLachlan's level, because he and the woman who was probably his wife sat next to me. On the right.

On the left, on the other hand, were two of the crappiest women to sit next to. You'd think they never left the house. Truth: The woman directly next to me was okay, but her seat companion on the other side was ridiculous. She'd loudly whisper plot points ("his wife is DEAD") which weren't totally spoilers but were nevertheless advancing the plot beyond what we already knew, and so getting ahead of the game, and then she had a tendency to actually squeal or clap when seeing certain locations in the film -- Silvercup Studios, the Chelsea Hotel. I did hiss "get a grip," but not very loudly. I'm not good on the confrontation, only on the later grousing. But really, people. Shut the fuck up. Honestly.

The party afterwards, held at the refurbished Museum of Modern Art, was lovely. I refuse to pay the $20 admission, but at this rate I'll soon see the whole thing thanks to screenings and parties afterwards. They opened up much of the ground floor and upstairs balcony area, plus a good section of the gallery area. So while everyone hoovered up the steak, chicken, salmon, cornbread, onion rings, asparagus and dozens of little tiny bite size desserts, pushing and shoving and shouting over one another, a scant few of us retreated to the galleries and studied over Cezanne and Hockney. I'm not a modern art fan; frankly I don't think it's arty to create a "room" made of concrete by building a room, filling it with concrete and removing the perimeter walls. But some of the stuff was quite startling, like the wall-sized shot of the Rhine or the glass-encased miniature pots and dishes. And it was nice and quiet. I had seen Indie Movie Mogul guy leaving the theater earlier and was hoping to dazzle him with my dress and cleavage, alas, he was nowhere to be found in the party. So I ate, meandered and looked at a lot of people I didn't know, and a few I did (hello, random Anthony Edwards sighting), then left, running into first my co-worker on the street (just coming in with his friends from a different "Interpreter" screening) and then passing by Richard Belzer and Robert Klein leaving the party and heading towards 5th Avenue. Of course my first thought was: "They've both been on Law & Order!" rather than "There go two great stand-up comics."

One-track mind, seriously.