Salman Rushdie, Another Sucker Who Liked Juno, Supports Saffron Burrows at Bank Job Screening
MORE The Transom
“We’re really lucky, because we went to Socialista early in the week,” said the designer Nicole Miller at the Cinema Society’s screening of The Bank Job, a British heist flick starring Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows, at the Bryant Park Hotel on the evening of Monday, March 3. Ms. Miller was referring to the recent Hepatitis A scare suffered at the West Village nightclub, inconveniently timed to Ashton Kutcher’s 30th birthday party, which was reportedly attended by Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Ms. Miller had had a dinner party there on Feb. 1. “They didn’t have any scares at that point, so nobody had to go get tested for anything,” she said.
Mr. Statham appeared as “Handsome Rob” in The Italian Job (2003), an unrelated film, and will reprise that role in its forthcoming sequel, The Brazilian Job. A man of average height with a close-shaved head, he arrived in a gray Gucci suit with white shirt partially unbuttoned. “Have I cornered the market?” he said when the Transom inquired about the titular coincidence. “I tend to play stuff that plays to my strengths.” This current version, he said, “is a heist movie with a political scandal with links to the royal family, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.” Yes, sir!
The towering Ms. Burrows, meanwhile—a former model perhaps most memorable as Eric Bana’s gorgeously toga’d wife in Troy—stood nearby in a plunging blue Roberto Cavalli number, giving TV interviews. “Where’s Jason? I thought I was doing this with Jason,” she cooed. Mr. Statham was summoned. “You can tell I’ve had a long day, can’t you?” he said.
Author Salman Rushdie arrived (“He’s here to support me,” explained Ms. Burrows, a friend from London) and offered his take on the Oscars. “The film I liked that didn’t get anything that I thought maybe deserved something was Charlie Wilson’s War.” Also? “I wanted Ellen Page to win Best Actress. I was a little disappointed by that. I loved Juno. It was stylized, but so what. Stylized is good. We overrate naturalism these days.”
