It's unusual that film premieres have their after-parties in such perfect locations as "The Social Network." David Fincher's much-hyped film, which, by all means, lives up to its hype, very classily opened the New York Film Festival Friday night. The movie chronicles the creation—and the various disputes around the creation—of Facebook among a group of classmates at Harvard University.
To celebrate, Sony Pictures, which is releasing the film on Friday and apparently has very high Oscar hopes for it, took over the entirety of the Harvard Club on 44th Street. (The company also hosted a press junket there this weekend.)
It shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that the rooms and the furniture were stuffy. There was taxidermy, including of a real elephant, on the wall. The food—large sliced cheese plates, pasta with red sauce, old-school carving stations—was mediocre at best, as most food at universities and their alumni clubs tend to be. But the ambience was just right, not to mention a perfect match for a film that captures the strange Neverland of what it's like to exist at an Ivy League institution.
"This is the closest I've come to being accepted to Harvard," said Aaron Sorkin as he nursed a soda. Mr. Sorkin, a graduate of Syracuse with a degree in musical theater, is the creator of "The West Wing" and also the writer of the snappy dialogue in "The Social Network." At least, for the moment, his screenplay seems the one to beat.
The evening brought out an especially high-brow crowd. Princess Firyal of Jordan was there. So were Stephen Daldry ("The Reader") and several American independent film darlings who have all had films premiere at the Film Festival: Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale"), Wes Anderson ("Rushmore") and Darren Aronofsky ("The Wrestler"), in his now trademark scarf.
Most of the cast was there too, including Jesse Eisenberg, who plays the piece's hero slash villain Mark Zuckerberg; Andrew Garfield, who plays Eduardo Saverin, the friend he betrayed; Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster founder Sean Parker, and Rashida Jones, who plays an attorney, and, for trivia purposes only, in real life actually graduated from Harvard. (Much of the film was filmed at Johns Hopkins.)
Of course, talk in general was about how terrific the film turned out. But if you took a poll of guests at the Harvard Club for—let's go ahead and use a Facebook term, why don't we—their "status updates," many of them would be: "Is wondering how Scott Rudin lost all that weight."
It is perhaps interesting to note, now, the slight irony of Mr. Rudin, one of the film's lead producers, and Mr. Fincher making a film about Harvard and celebrating it at the Harvard Club. Neither, it seems, graduated from college. But Mr. Fincher has spoken about his kinship with his anti-hero. In New York magazine, the director said he has "an enormous empathy for" Mr. Zuckerberg and knows "what it's like to be 21 years old and trying to direct a $60 million movie … you have to have not only a great deal of drive, you have to have an unshakable, freakish confidence."
Less has been made of the parallels with the famously volatile Mr. Rudin, who was president of production at Fox at the age of 29. It is not surprising that he, too, was attracted to a project about a slightly misunderstood, uber-successful genius who can be brash, difficult and hot-tempered.
But we lost the plot for a moment. By all reports Mr. Rudin has recently shed a remarkable 70 pounds. How, by Harvard, did he do it?
"By not eating," Mr. Rudin said, and he returned to his conversation with Sony's Amy Pascal.
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