Dan's Papers - April 17, 2009 - GREY GARDENS SCREENING TWINKLES WITH STARS

Last Saturday night, Hollywood came to the Hamptons with the pre-launch preview screening of the new HBO movie, Grey Gardens, at Goose Creek estate in Wainscott, followed by a dinner at the former estate of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, in the ocean estate section of East Hampton. The new film, which expands upon the former Grey Gardens documentary shot in 1973 and released in 1976 by the famous Maysles brothers, will premiere on HBO April 18 at 8 p.m. It stars Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange as Little Edie and Big Edie.

About 100 people arrived at each of the two screenings of Grey Gardens, held in the private movie room at the spectacular, sprawling estate of Brian Bantry. At the 7 p.m. screening, the movie's writer, director and producer, Michael Sucsy, walked among attendees waiting to be seated in the theater. "I'm excited to finally be showing my movie in the Hamptons, and I can't wait to see the reaction of people out here," said Sucsy, who said he spent the past six years researching and writing the script. He said his reason for making this movie was that after seeing the first Grey Gardens film, shot by Albert and David Maysles, he wanted to learn more and show more of the lives of Big and Little Edie Beale.

"The Maysles brothers came out here and shot their movie in six weeks during 1973, when Big Edie was 77 and Little Edie was 56," said Sucsy. "It was such a great movie, but it got me wanting to know even more about these two fascinating women. So I decided to research their pasts and how they got to the point of staying together in this decaying, 28-room mansion, as it looked during the 1970s."

Albert Maysles, of Manhattan, was also brought on as a production advisor for this film.

In the new film, Sucsy spans more than 40 years of the Beales, telling the true, behind-the scenes story of this eccentric mother and daughter. They were relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, (portrayed by Jeanne Triplehorn), whose family also had an estate in East Hampton. Sucsy's film focuses on what happened before the Maysles made their iconic documentary, which started a cult following of Grey Gardens fans. It tells their whole rags-to-riches story in a bittersweet and yet endearing way.

Executive producers Sucsy, Rachael Horovitz and Lucy Donnelly were all out in East Hampton for the screening and dinner party. The film also stars Ken Howard as Phelan Beale (Big Edie's lawyer husband), Daniel Baldwin as Julius "Cap" Krug (a married man who has an affair with the young Little Edie), Malcolm Gets (who has an affair with the young Big Edie), Arye Gross as Albert Maysles, and Justin Louis as David Maysles.

Parts of the film are "a movie within a movie," since Sucsy shows the making of the first Grey Gardens documentary, with the Maysles Brothers first arriving at the Beale residence and asking the Edies if he could make a film about them. He shows how the Maysles become like a part of the family.

Sucsy explained that he decided to shoot the film in Ontario, Canada, to save money on production. "It was cheaper to build a set up there than to shoot it in East Hampton," he said. Viewers will have a hard time noticing the difference, since the painstaking research that went into this film left no margin for error on the part of the cast and crew.

"We studied every detail of this house, from the winding staircase in the front hall, to the portrait over the fireplace, to the window frames," said Kent Bartram, a research director on the film. "We wanted the viewers to think they were looking at East Hampton, with other shots scanning the village, done by computer imaging."

Guests saw this in person, at an elegant dinner party following the screening at the Grey Gardens mansion as it looks today. It was renovated by Ben Bradlee and his wife Sally Quinn, who bought the dilapidated estate in 1979. The couple entertained about 125 guests following the two screenings.

"I thought they did a great job of imitating everything in this house," said Bradlee. "It was such a moving experience seeing the film come to life that I cried."

Frances Hayward, who rents Grey Gardens most of the year, said she was also moved by the "tremendous acting of Drew and Jessica, who totally immersed themselves in their roles."

Quinn said the crew "had called us to see if they could shoot here, but all our friends told us not to. However, both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange came out and stayed here, and that was nice."

Other guests of the evening included Christie Brinkley, Dick Cavett, Lynn Scherr, Steve Kroft, Joe Pintauro, Celia Maysles (daughter of the late David Maysles) and Lois Wright of East Hampton, an artist who lived at Grey Gardens from 1975-1976, and who published a book about her experiences called, My Life at Grey Gardens. (Her next Grey Gardens exhibit will be held at the National Arts Club in Manhattan on April 29.)

Wright said she was "amazed at how wonderful the new movie was. It really captured the spirit of the Edies and of this house - it's really accurate," she said. "It's so much fun being back in this wonderful house."

Brinkley said she knows Barrymore, and that she loved her character in the new film. "I thought she looked so beautiful when she was playing Little Edie at 18, with her costumes and her make-up," she said. "She made me feel protective of her, like I didn't want anyone to make fun of her. I've always thought she was a great actress - she has a special kind of sparkle and glow, and she brings her signature smile to everything she does. I thought her character was so likeable for her strong spirit."

Brinkley appeared a long time ago in a Maysles film called, Beautiful Baby, Beautiful, an HBO special about modeling, filmed in Africa.

Cavett, another guest, said he thinks Sucsy's movie should receive an award for make-up. "The way they aged these two women was amazing," he said. "They wore prosthetics. They had skin and hair changes - it was an artistic masterpiece." In the movie, it took up to four hours a day for make-up changes, and up to 42 costume changes for Barrymore alone.

Pintauro, of Sag Harbor, also praised the "artistic concentration." He noted, "I found this film very moving, since there's a little bit of Edie in all of us, and it also reminded me that in our own families, as people age, there are slightly dysfunctional relatives. It captured my heart."

On the night of Tuesday, April 14, the Grey Gardens cast walked down the red carpet to another star-studded party at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, to celebrate the HBO premiere this Saturday night at 8 p.m.