Elephant in the Room

Thursday night, went to see an advance screening of PARAMOUNT VANTAGE's "A Mighty Heart", set up through the Writers Guild. Featuring a Q&A with actors Archie Panjabi, Irfan Khan, Dan Futterman... and one other actor from the film... oh, whatserface... it's on the tip of my tongue... oh yeah—Angelina Jolie.

It should be said that Jolie is almost grotesquely pretty in person. She looks like a caricature of what a pretty person would look like. On a scale of 1-10... it would be unfair to the scale to assign her a number because she ruins the fucking curve.

The screening was packed. Everyone who had a cell phone with a camera built-in had to CHECK it at a desk before going into the theater. You wouldn't be allowed to retrieve your phone till AFTER the Q&A. Obviously, this was done to prevent people from taking pictures of Dan Futterman.

(I hid my cell phone from them because I'm better than everyone.)

There was a geeky old dude sitting next to me who probably fell asleep for a good 20 minutes in the film—but boy howdy did he wake up for the Q&A. We were three rows from the front and he made it a point to laugh real loud at anything Jolie said that was remotely amusing...

Makes me think of the guy who sees a picture of a pretty girl on the internet and posts a comment that says, "I'd love even just to talk to her."

Here's my confession: I don't want to talk to Angelina Jolie. I wouldn't know what to say to her.

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The Q&A was strange. People had to fill out question cards during the end credits—and it seems they collected just a handful of them and gave them to the moderator. Which spared us from the obnoxious INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO spectacle of people standing up and fawning over a movie star. But the audience questions the moderator deigned to read seemed pretty random and uninteresting.

But Angelina Jolie was clearly the elephant in the room during the Q&A. Everyone came to the circus to see that elephant. Everyone on stage was trying really hard to pretend as if everything was equal. Just four actors who shared the experience of shooting a movie together. Jolie came off well, I thought. For some reason, I thought she might have an affected accent, like Madonna—maybe it's because Jolie affects a lot of accents for her roles. But in person, she sounds just like an all-American suburban girl.

I should say, Archie Punjabi is hot as Hades too, and I'd like to... have a conversation with her. Get to know her. Buy her a coffee.

"You say one thing but you mean something else," observed the Gay Horse.

Celebrity Shuffled 5:
1. "Ziggy Stardust", David Bowie
2. "You or Your Memory", The Mountain Goats
3. "Complication", Nine Inch Nails
4. "Starfuckers Inc.", Nine Inch Nails
5. "Life in a Glass House", Radiohead
"Do-You-Have-Enough-NIN?" Bonus:
"Please", Nine Inch Nails

(The shuffle-function really fucks you sometimes.)

TGIF Laugh Corner:
What if HARRY POTTER ended like THE SOPRANOS?
I heart the Naked Cowgirl.
"LOST" promises not to go out like a bitch.
I have mixed feeling about the theater.
I want her.