“Finding Nemo” Premiere

by chris cunningham

Woo hoo! Walkin’ down the red, er, blue carpet at the “Finding Nemo” world premiere. At El Cap. for the screening and then party across the street at Hollywood and Highland. Slightly clueless why everyone was yelling “Cindy”, “Cindy”, “Cindy” at me when I walked down the carpet. I finally noticed Cindy Crawford was walking right in front of me. Duh… Two supermodels in one week! Although Cindy is “the” supermodel.

Steve Jobs came into the theater and grabbed his seat in front of John Lasseter and Michael Eisner. Eisner and Jobs stood in the aisle and chatted for a few minutes. I had nothing to add to the conversation so I didn’t join in. All I heard was Eisner complaining about his Mac crashing or something. I guess he didn’t notice Jobs clearly not listening and wearing his iPod. Albert Brooks was there with his kids, Danny Bonaduce obviously works out, which hopefully is his new drug, Ellen DeGeneres and her girltoy were wearing de reguer pantsuits, Willem DaFoe is way short, Brad Garrett is way tall, Wayne Knight is way thinner, Lauren Holly is way cute, and Jon Voight is so unbelievably nice. I stopped and talked with him for bit as he was strolling about. He asked my name and what I do. I told him I just finished visual effects on The Matrix and he immediately started blurting out box office numbers for this weekend.

I asked if he goes to all the Disney premieres, because I’d seen him at the “Shanghai Knights” premiere. He said they invite him a lot and that he just worked on “Holes” for them. Great guy. Friggin’ “Joe Buck”, the Midnight Cowboy himself. If you see one film right now, rent “Midnight Cowboy”. A top ten film of mine. Beau Bridges and Miguel Ferrer were on hand as were various other celebs, all just milling about. John Lasseter asked me if I could take a photo of him with his family. Um, yeah, of course. Pretty powerful group of people there today. The movie? Not their best, but still very very good. It’s no Shrek. Hee hee.