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Spotlight on Tribeca

The scene is appropriately cinematic for Vanity Fair's an■ nual dinner—hosted with Robert De Niro—celebrating the ■ Tribeca Film Festival. As the sun sets, hundreds of votives light 1 the stairs ascending to the State Supreme Courthouse, in Lower 1 Manhattan. The balmy spring night is the perfect setting: We open with cocktails on the terrace of the courthouse. The guests are a casting agent's wish list: Nicole Kidman, Shawn Carter (the artist formerly known as Jay-Z), Michael J. Fox, Kevin Bacon, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Jeffrey Wright, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Walken, Julianna Margulies, Willem Dafoe, Alan Cumming, Dylan McDermott, Wesley Snipes, and Rachel Weisz. Special cameos provided by Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, David Lauren and Lauren Bush, Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, John McEnroe, Fran Lebowitz, Sheryl Crow, Bryan Lourd, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and Richard Meier. Cut to the press line, where a scruffy Robin Williams, filming a movie around the corner, pops by, grabs i a camera, then interviews a confused David Bowie I, and Iman—a nice piece of improv that not even ■ director Sydney Pollack would have minded. H (Pollack is in town to premiere his film The InterB prefer at the festival.) As the dinner plates are I cleared in the courthouse rotunda, a light rain I B begins to fall outside, and our cast rides off I into the night. Roll credits. —DARRYL BRANTLEY ®

DARRYL BRANTLEY