Helen Mirren, playing a tough mean rootin’, tootin’, shootin’, Fig Newton killer, in “RED 2”:
“My character’s a retired MI-5 agent with good marksmanship specialty who still wants in on the game. They taught me on a shooting range with real guns. I didn’t feel silly handling them because I’ve done many things where I felt sillier. After my training, guys on the set helped. The ammunition’s quite clunky. In actual fact, I’m against guns.”
The perennial Queen Elizabeth, whose show about HM was a London hit and “might come to New York end of next year,” looked glamorous. Long blond hair, beige sweater outfit. Her Majesty Helen pulled her dress back for me to read the label. Tory Burch. And whose sweater? She removed it and we read “Kate Spade.” Somehow I couldn’t see that happening in Buckingham.
In this movie, Bruce Willis, playing a retired CIA agent who can kill an entire army single-handedly, said: “It’s 1985’s anniversary of my first day that I first began the first ‘Die Hard.’ I didn’t think much of it then. The director walked me through it, saying, ‘Do this . . . do that . . .’ I did it. I was a kid. I still had my New Jersey attitude. I also didn’t know what I was doing.”
He now knows what he’s doing. “What I’m proud of today is my new beautiful wife and our 14-month-old daughter, Mabel Ray. I talk to her, play with her, walk with her. You know what? I’m happy.”
Mary-Louise Parker, playing Bruce’s love interest: “In my early days, I auditioned all the time. Out of money, I’d walk to the next one, four to five a day.
“I was so excited. I shared a one-bedroom with four girls.”
Actor’s back
Following Charles Grodin news yesterday, he wants it known that, come fall, after centuries of no filmmaking, he’ll play Naomi Watts’ pa and Ben Stiller’s pa-in-law in “While We’re Young.” Noah Baumbach directs, Scott Rudin produces, shoots in New York and, except that his kid Marion’s writing a book, enough about him.
Spotlight’s on better cinema
As today’s Hollywood films sink down the toilet, comes Aug. 5 a TV doc on yesterday’s Hollywood history. We’re talking atypical movie stars — Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, — who changed the old studio system to new cinema properties like “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Graduate,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
And instead today we have? FX, car crashes, train derailments, computer-generated explosions, naked bodies, dirty words, filthy scenes, zero plots and flicks nobody’s going to see.
Unlikely pair
Wednesday. The Century Club. Lunchtime. Spitzer seated. In came Pataki, whom he succeeded and who then succeeded in going out of his way to avoid Spitzer. When former Gov. George Pataki was seated, ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer hoisted himself to go over to say, “Hello, Governor.” Friendship friendship, just a perfect blendship.
Sad farewell
Page Morton Black, who immortalized her husband’s Chock full O’Nuts jingle, just left us. Giuliani sang it when she visited City Hall; Cardinal O’Connor sang it at her charity event. She worked for no money seven days a week chairing the Parkinson Foundation. She helped everyone. She never forgot a birthday or holiday. Even her rep, Sy Presten, worked for her for free. We loved her.
Water pride
Dentist Paul Tanners owns bottled water AquaForte. On Montauk Highway, in the intense heat, he was stuck by a fender-bender. Sidelined roadside drivers and passengers in the accident stood sweltering. Opening his trunk, the doc dispensed water bottles. Gratis. One grateful socialite handed him a buck.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.