THE ROCK GETS HIS STAR…RAINN LEAVES THE “BOTTOM CESSPOOL” OF ACTING…TRACI THRILLED TO BE OUT OF PORN: NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS FROM THE FIRST FOUR DAYS OF CINEVEGAS 10
Year 10 of the biggest and best CineVegas Film Festival yet kicked off with a wild wacky way-out hilariously funny comedy and then packed in more premieres, more screenings, more parties and more stars than ever before. Here’s our full photo-rundown report since all the festivities began just 96-hours ago!
Day 1: “This is my favorite event of the year at the Palms,” says owner George Maloof. “Its got glamour, excitement, premieres and some very talented people. This is so good for Vegas.”
Alongside him actor Dennis Hopper who serves as chairman of the festival told me, “We have two big entertainment capitals of the world so close together in Vegas and Hollywood and when I got my award here five-years ago I said there should be fare more Hollywood involvement in the Vegas festival. Now it’s happening and it sure is good.”
You can see all our first-night red carpet video interviews by clicking here at lasvegasweekly.com.
Comedy actor Rainn Wilson, who is in NBC TV’s smash hit The Office stars as a washed-up failed rock drummer in the truly laugh-out-loud comedy The Rocker. It was shot in just six weeks with a mere $15 million budget but comes up one of the must-see films of the year. I haven’t laughed this hard in many years! So make sure its definite summer movie viewing when it opens nationwide Aug. 1.
He told me that in a sense it’s a little like his own life because 20-years ago he was a starving struggling actor in Manhattan having to drive a moving van “I was at the very bottom of the showbiz cesspool and now here I am starring in Vegas. That took so long I feel I deserve the success,” he told me. Rainn says everybody knows him as the weirdo Dwight from The Office and that he loves the character which he predicts will be around for many years. “But as an actor when something comes along radically different like this spaced out wacked up failed heavy metal drummer I jumped at the chance to show audiences a different side of my comedy,” he continued. “When I read the script for the first time and it called for me to take off my clothes and go naked I did exactly that and finished reading the script with all my clothes off. Any opportunity to take off my clothes for comedic effect I will do it.”
Day 2: Actor Bill Pullman is one class act and he stars in Your Name Here, which premiered on Friday. It’s the story of America’s greatest science-fiction writer who wakes one day to discover himself, like his characters, is trapped in an alternate reality and then another!
Bill is high on the movie and he and I chatted about that he’d come to CineVegas because chairman Dennis Hopper had talked him into it and their paths crossed just two weeks ago by coincidence at the Cannes Film Festival where both men had films entered in competition, but didn’t win! I also talked with former porn-star Traci Lords who has put that world behind her and now stars in mainstream media films. She is one bright smart balanced and attractive woman who told me: “I started adult films at 15, but stopped in 1996 when I was 18. That was another life, another person and another age ago. She’s written a book Underneath It All to explain how her own childhood molestation and rape led to the underage porn career and how she now uses her straight film income to save the lives of other troubled teenagers!
Day 3: A dream of blues music, seduction and murder haunted the Dark Streets world premiere. The film noir is set to music of B.B.King, Herbie Hancock, Etta James, Aaron Neville and Natalie Cole among others stars Bijou Phillips and in a unique CineVegas event she joined forces after the film with blues guitarist Chris Thomas King for a fundraiser concert to assist creative folk in Louisiana still suffering from the devastating Hurricane Katrina after-effects.
Day 4: Former wrestler “The Rock” turned rising star actor Dwayne Johnson had a double-duty throwdown yesterday (SUN).
He hosted the first-advance charity screening of his new summer blockbuster hit Get Smart, that opens nationwide this coming Friday, June 20 and co-stars Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway, at the Planet Hollywood Resort and then he criss-crossed Sunday Strip traffic to limo the Brenden Theaters at the Palms for his official celebrity star presentation.
I had the pleasurable task of introducing CineVegas Film Festival artistic director Trevor Groth who introduced Dwayne.
Then Palms owner George Maloof and Brenden Theaters owner Johnny Brenden flanked Dwayne as his star was unveiled.
Dwayne told me he’s got two more weeks on Race to Witch Mountain before wrapping and said the week of location sequences here at Planet Hollywood Resort had been a fun and successful time. The Get Smart screening was to raise funds for his own “Project Knapsack” foundation which links schools across the world including one here in Vegas, Martinez Elementary School, with their peers in a school in El Salvador. He told me he was really pleased with its progress and fast growth and support.
After Johnny Brenden donated a $2,500 check to the foundation Dwayne and I talked exclusively in Johnny’s new luxurious office-suite that was rushed to open for The Rock. “Being a wrestler versus being an actor, both are hard. Both are difficult but the wonderful thing about the acting is the creativity that comes into play. It wasn’t that bad for me the first time I acted because I came from a world of live TV. I had to execute four hours of live TV every week all 52 weeks of the year. Coming from that guerilla style of shooting benefited me. I had to write these long monologs, sometimes they were funny but sometimes they bombed. At the end of the day you still had 20 or 30,000 people you were playing to. I’ll pick the acting over the wrestling though, I don’t get banged around as much!”
Here’s today’s (MON) schedule of celluloid highlights: In case you missed Sunday’s world premiere there’s a 3 p.m. repeat of Memorial Day depicting a roller coaster of our over-exposed insane and inane national obsessions over a Memorial weekend. Today’s special pick though is Where I Stand, which gets its world premiere at 6 p.m. Anthony Hopkins narrates the untold story of no-nonsense Las Vegas Sun crusading journalist Hank Greenspun who singlehandedly is responsible for much of what makes Las Vegas the city it is today.
Also recommended is GoGo Tales at 9 p.m. There will be two away from the Palms screenings of Japanese master animator Takashi Murakami’s film Planting the Seeds on the wall of the Lake of Dreams at Wynn at 9 p.m. and again at 10:30 p.m. followed by an official CineVegas party is at the boutique Blush nightclub in the Wynn.