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April 25, 2006
'United 93' Premiere Begs Question: 'Is That Seat Taken?'
In today's Daily News, Lloyd Grove stirs the shit about tonight's United 93 premiere having potentially been underbooked. While Grove writes that local celebrities are expected to round out the low-key nexus of the Ziegfeld Theater, he details a bitchy (and, naturally, anonymous) give-and-take between a pair of sources speculating just how packed the Lowes Lincoln Square's overflow venue will be:
"Despite grand hopes for massive attendance, it seems they were having trouble filling the seats and had to send out last-minute invitations to B-list invitees," said my source. "There's a lack of appetite for watching something so gruesome and something we already know so much about."
But a festival organizer scoffed: "You have bad information. Our overflow screening is full."
As for suggestions that Universal Studios might have overestimated the demand, the festival type said: "The phones have not stopped all day for tickets to this."
A little probing this morning from Reeler HQ revealed the latter to be closer to the truth, even if 6,000 guests are quite a lot for anyone to expect to draw at two theaters for a docudrama about one of 9/11's hijacked plane. But if no less an authority than Peggy Siegel says the screenings are the source of crowded "high anxiety," then I guess we can probably expect people sitting in the aisles. "I guess we'll see," Grove concludes; I have my money on the festival.
Posted by stvanairsdale at April 25, 2006 09:30 AM
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