A Fox Searchlight party for Slumdog and the Wrestler

I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but it’s located in Beverly Hills and has an impressive back garden, where the party was held.

The stars of the party were Danny Boyle, his DP Anthony Dod Mantle and Darren Ahoronovsky and his wife Rachel Weiss.

Danny Boyle, as energetic as his movies, animatedly and excitedly tells me about how he manages to avoid all the mistakes he learned from “The Beach’s” shoot in Thailand, where he had an army of hundreds of crew on set. “It was a relief shooting “Slumdog millionaire” with a small crew and unknown cast,” he says.

We also discussed his previous films. He agreed that “Life less ordinary” and “The Beach” were different than his other movies. But he was thrilled to hear that I liked his TV film “Vacuum Cleaner”, which was aired on BBC fives years ago. “You saw that?” he asked excitedly. Apparently, he did it for fun.

Danny is hopping to win some awards for “Slumdog Millionaire”, which seems to be gathering a lot of interest from the industry.

Then someone with a long white hair and a cheerful smile approached me and said, “Hi, I am Antony, the DP of “Slumdog Milionaire”. Anthony is a fun and a fascinating guy. He is the guy who shot one of the most photographically innovative movies: “28 days later.” He worked mainly with Von Trier and Danny Boyle. When I asked him what is the difference between the two directors, he said, “Danny shoots to sell tickets and Lars shoots for himself.” Though he admires Danny, he couldn’t stop talking about Lars’s innovative films, and urged me to go and watch his upcoming movie “The AntiChrist.”

I loved Darren Ahoronvsky’s first film, PI, so I naturally wanted to discuss it with him, but he wanted to talk about his new movie, “The Wrestler”. I tried again to steer the conversation to PI but he insisted to talk about the Wrestler and claimed that the Wrestler is in a way a return to his PI days!

In my way out, I bump into Danny again. So I seize the moment and tell him about my project. “Why don’t you send it to my Agent?” he says. “I will!”

A Member from the HFPA overhears our conversation. He tells me that Paul Verhoeven has asked him whether he knows of any scripts that deal with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and wondered whether I’d be willing to let Paul read my script. Jeez, what a question?…Needless to say, I fired him a copy as soon as I got back home.