[IMG:L]Celebs Celebrate Clint
“He’s probably the perfect example of why we should move the senior citizen age from 65 to 85,” Dustin Hoffman mused as he glanced down the red carpet at one of the few people on the planet even more famous than he is: Clint Eastwood.
Hoffman was one of a group of Hollywood A-listers who eagerly assembled to pay tribute to the iconic – and iconoclastic – 77-year-old actor and Academy Award-winning director at the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Spirit of Independence Award ceremony, which honored Eastwood’s dual status as both a huge Hollywood star and an uncompromising film artist.
“You look at where he started, as a spaghetti Western kind of actor, as a John Wayne or whatever, and then to go on to directing, and then go on to auteur directing,” continued Hoffman. “He has not stopped evolving and his artistry is ongoing.”
[IMG:R]Another icon who knows a thing or two about career longevity also on hand to pay tribute to Eastwood was singer Tony Bennett, the subject of the forthcoming Eastwood-produced documentary Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends. Bennett, four years Eastwood’s senior, said it was more than just Eastwood‘s magnetic physicality that made him a star. “Yes, he’s got interesting body language and a beautiful face, but more than that he’s got a beautiful mind and heart. He’s developed into a great director and each film is getting better and better – he’s amazing.”
Kevin Bacon recalled being a degree of separation from Eastwood when the Hollywood superstar directed him in Mystic River and demonstrated that he still understood the perspective of working class actors.
[IMG:L]“I was working with an actor who was a day player on the set and the actor was a little nervous about it and messing up his lines,” Bacon remembered, “and Clint said to me ‘You know, what might be a good idea is if you screw up your lines on the next take, because it might make him feel a little easier about it.’ It was the first time I’d ever been asked to do that by a director, to intentionally blow my lines, and I did it and it worked incredibly well, and we just sailed through the rest of the day. That kind of sensitivity is something that really is at the heart of the way he directs.”
“Everyone thinks they know who Clint Eastwood is,” said Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash), who wrote the scripts of the Eastwood films Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, “Even politically they think they know who he is and he’s just not. Whenever I think I’ve got him pegged, I’m dead wrong each time.”
“You think Clint, you think fairly conservative, you think Republican or something, you’re not quite sure – Libertarian? you’re not sure,” Haggis continued. “In May 2004 – the height of the patriotism, people are driving around with flags in their cars – I sent him an article about the war, the true story about the war that was scathingly critical of the war, figuring he’d call me up and go ‘you Commie bastard, what the hell are you sending me now?’ And he didn’t.”
“He called me back and said, ‘Wow, that’s troubling material. That’s tough material.’ And I said ‘Yeah, but it’s the truth of what’s happening to our men, isn’t it?’ He said, ‘Yeah, so let me help them to get it made.’ And he personally took it over to the head of Warner Brothers and that’s the reason my next movie got made – because he championed it.” That film, In the Valley of Elah, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron, is set for release later this year.
[IMG:R]As more celebrities assembled at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater to join the tribute – Terrence Howard, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Phillippe, Aidan Quinn, Dylan McDermott, Derek Luke and Rosie Perez among them – Eastwood seemed amused to take the evening more as a career celebration than an early eulogy, looking hale and hearty as he strolled the red carpet with confident, even pausing to flirt playfully with female reporters a quarter of his age.
While he was pleased to be feted for his past accomplishments, his focus was still on the films yet to be made. “It’s all about the work,” he said. “You keep working and you keep doing things, and if you give out, they give out.”
And when I quizzed him if there was one particular period in his career that was the most satisfying, he didn’t miss a beat when he answered:
“Right now is as good as any.”
Jen Goes With Her Gut
I had a gut feeling that the book party for bestselling author Laura Day at ONE Sunset, an elegant new Hollywood hotspot on the Strip, would be a big deal, and I was right to follow my intuition; after, all Day’s books – the intuition-themed tomes The Circle and Welcome to Your Crisis – are all about following your own inner voice, right?
[IMG:L]Sure enough, the soiree, thrown by super-agent Kevin Huvane and film producer Ryan Kavanagh, was star-studded indeed. The first famous face to arrive was no less than Jennifer Aniston, who’s been Friends with Laura for about 15 years and has embraced the wisdom of her own intuition.
“I think that the simplest thing is just to listen to yourself,” Jennifer said. “We always have an inner voice, whether it’s in a work situation or a family situation, or any kind of dilemma or whatever, and we don’t always listen to our instincts…It’s just a rule to try and live your life by. Laura’s just a nice woman and it’s good to have mentor’s in our lives that we can gain advice from.”
[IMG:R]And Jennifer wasn’t the only A-lister who turned out for some mentoring over cocktails: Demi Moore whisked in with hubby Ashton Kutcher and daughter Rumer Willis at her side and mixed and mingled with a power crowd that included Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia, actress Jordana Brewster, Bradley Cooper and screenwriter, novelist and uberwife Gigi Levangie Grazer (Stepmom, Starter Wife).
Author Day wasn’t surprised that her philosophies appealed to Hollywood’s top-shelf scene. “I think that all successful people are successful because they use their intuition,” she told me. “Successful people tend to really get what intuition is because they use it all the time. They make decisions that go against reason. However, they’re wildly successful. Time after time after time when you do that you know that that against reason, when it goes right, is your intuition.”
Sophia Bush was one of the Young Hollywood types who was looking to get more in touch with her inner counsel (while others like Ashton, who dutifully sat next to super-social Demi absently fiddling with his PDA, seemed to feel they might have followed their intuition to a more off-the-hook bash).
[IMG:L]“I am one of those people who believes that your gut instinct comes from somewhere,” Sophia told me. “You get that feeling in the pit of your stomach it’s for a reason and we would probably all benefit if we trusted our guts a little more. I know that there are moments where I wish I had trusted my gut in the past where I didn’t, and there are moments where I’ve had a feeling about something and gone for it and it’s worked out wonderfully.”
Laura confirmed that Sophia’s instincts were, as you might expect, on the money. “The number one tip is listen to your voice,” she advised. “Write down the things that you think will happen. So get them out of the messy mind onto the piece of paper and then when they come true make a mark in the journal, because what you teach yourself is that you know.”
The Police’s Arresting L.A. Appearances
One of the most long-awaited rock and roll reunions of the past kicked off last winter when Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland reformed The Police onstage at the Grammys AT L.A.’S Staples Center, and the trio’s sellout tour brought them back to Hollywoodland for two shows, and you just know the stars had the people snatching up those $250 seats.
[IMG:R]With expectations riding extremely high after two decades apart, some of The Police’s early shows met with mixed reviews (even Copeland trashed one of their sets on his own blog) but anticipation was running high at the Staples Center show, where the crowd included a still out-and-about Jennifer Aniston (she and Sting did Saturday Night Live together a few years back), joined by her best gal pal Courteney Cox Arquette and Courteney’s hubby David, while Dustin Hoffman, Jeremy Piven, Alanis Morissette, Jason Statham, Jamie Lee Curtis, No Doubt’s Tony Kanal, Billy Crudup and producer Brian Grazer all settled in as Sting’s soundalike son Joe Sumner and his band Fiction Plane warmed things up.
The Police had tightened their show, dropped some oldies and build their chemistry – a little, at least – since those earlier dates, delivering a rousing set of their greatest hits and album favorites like “Message In a Bottle,” “Roxanne” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” with a little tweaking here and there to accommodate all three bandmates’ jazzier, exploratory instincts and, occasionally, to cleverly dodge those high notes that even a yoga-fied, tantric marvel like Sting can’t quite reach at age 55.
But as impressive as the Staples show was, even a bighsot attendee like Adam Sandler told me he was jealous that I got to attend the second L.A. show at Dodger Stadium, where The Police played before 55,000 fans that had been more than adequately whipped into an anticipatory frenzy by the opening act: Foo Fighters were a surprise addition just a few weeks before the show.
[IMG:L]Dave Grohl and his band blasted out a powerhouse hour-long set filled with familiar hits with newfound intensity – “Learn to Fly” “Best of You,” “Everlong” and “Times Like These” among them – and Grohl delivered a knockout moment when, in the middle of “Stacked Actors,” he leapt from the stage into the floor seats, dashed across the infield, and climbed atop a tower of giant speakers near second base, kicking out the rest of the tune’s guitar riffs before sprinting down the third base line to climb back up onstage.
With that kind of showmanship, the crowd – including Garry Shandling, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jared Leto – was amped and The Police delivered on the electricity in the air with one of their most energetic sets to date – Sting was in even better voice than the Staples show, a renewed camaraderie between the bandmates emerged here and there, and Copeland in particular demonstrated exactly why he’s long been considered one of the greatest rock drummers of his era by attacking the percussion with verve and even a sense of humor.
Thanks to a jolt of Foo and the potent force of their first stadium full of fans in a quarter century, at last, it seemed every little thing The Police did really was magic.
