It’ll never be like this again so don’t worry! I finally went to my first “press junket” for Run, Fat Boy, Run (see review below), as they’re called at the Four Seasons Hotel in beautiful Beverly Hill, CA. First, someone mistook me for an executive from Sony, so for about one second I got a loving and somewhat respectful look, then poof all gone, shunted to my digs. But not before we got to chow down on some delicious food and all the gassy water you can drink. At these roundtables about 10 of us sit around and grill, well not grill, more like lovingly faun over whoever above the line talent is shoved in the door for 15 minutes.

First we got Michael Ian Black, the story creator and co-screenwriter. What this means is he wrote the original screenplay, settingit in NYC and when the deal couldn’t be had over here and the package got bought by a company in the UK, it got Londoned up,with the help of Simon Pegg (see below) thus the “co-”. This guy was hilarious, like watching a stand up routine.

Next was our director, David Schimmer. I found myself surprisingly distracted by how handsome he was. Now many, many actors when observed in person look weird,small with big heads, downright unattractive even, but rarely does it go the other way. Some-one who looks truly better off screen...like normal people, except he’s not. But he was smart, seemed really nice and sincere just like Ross on Friends, if he’d decided to stop being an academic scientist and decided to start directing movies in England. He said it was all fun and really different from directing TV and then wowed us with a story about how he made 200 marathoners look like 2000 by sending his second unit camera de-partment to shoot them 5 different ways.

Perhaps, and not surprisingly the highlight was Simon Pegg. Now remember what I just said about Schwimmer...okay Pegg was way different looking but not in the he’s so handsome way. And I’m sure he wouldn’t be offended or even care about that observa-tion. He’s a person who’s features get stretched out in a funny way so that he looks longer, less compacted then he is in person. The magic of cinema. Now who cares what he looks like though because he’s another one of those shamefully intelligent Eng-lish all around actors who truly do put Americans to shame. Think Hugh Laurie but not quite as Cambridge cute. No wonder they’re taking over American TV. People like Pegg, a self described “fan boy”, don’t just sit in their room making videos with their pals. They go to college, maybe they travel around and expose themselves to other cultures, they observe the demands of actual acting around them and step up. They write sketches, they make their own TV shows, movies and then when asked the inane question, “what’s the difference between British and American humor” they have a truly intelligent response. What can I say, in the grand tradition that stretches back to the first time I saw Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, I’m in love, again.

And then there was Thandie. Talk about stunning. This woman is so pretty I found my-self gasping for air. Just gorgeous. But she played us. She was the most skill-ful...talked the whole time, like we got in 2 questions. Regaled us with tales of pranks and youthful hijinks, her kids, silly stuff. And she was the straight man in the film.
All in all fun times...don’t you wish you lived in L.A. now? Naw, not when you have me.