I was one of the few keyboard-tappers allowed into last night’s (Saturday, 2.23) Weinstein Co. party at West Hollywood’s Soho House. It was quite the hot-shit event, let me tell you. The currently configured creme de la creme of the Weinstein realm was there (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, David O. Russell, Katy Perry, Harvey himself, Joaquin Pheonix, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Quentin Tarantino, Phillip Noyce, Bladimiar Norman, Scarlett Johansson, Juno Temple) plus my girlfriend and myself and weren’t we pretty hot also? It felt like that for a while, at least.


Jennifer whatsername in the elevator-foyer entrance to last night’s Soho House Weinstein party.

It was loud and crowded with live music and everyone was in their 40s or younger (almost no gray or white hair in sight) and dressed to the nines and going “whur-whuppa-wallah-wullah-wullah-whoa-whur-wuppah-dumba-doodah-doppa-wadda-badda-boo.”

Sincere thanks to Lisa Taback for waving me in. Yes, it felt a little too crowded at times. Yes, it took an average of 10 to 12 minutes to get the bartender’s attention every time you wanted a drink. (And no, they had no non-alcoholic beer — assholes.) But that fantastic penthouse-floor view always makes up for everything.

And the women were wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom magnificent to…well, not stare or gawk at but discreetly eyeball. Every one of them said “this is it…this is the top, and my being here verifies my being in the upper .005% of desirability, and if you’re not really comfortably connected to this realm by way of wealth and creative contacts and whatever else…I don’t have to say it, do I? Just forget it. But I’ll chat if you have a clever mind or a line or…whatever, I’ll smile and listen and laugh. And why not? I’m easy-going. I’m not crass or thick or uneducated. I get it.”

The coolest part of these things is arriving in your car and then getting past the first lady with the invitees on her iPad and then the second lady with same, and then being waved into the ground-floor elevator foyer (this is where I first saw Jamie Foxx and his entourage…”here we are, all six or seven of us! No, wait…nine!”) and going upstairs and walking into the main lobby and then up the grand staircase and doing your first walk-around and saying hello to familiar faces. It doesn’t get any better than that.

And then, minute by minute, Diet Coke by Diet Coke, chat by chitty-chat, it very slowly starts to dissipate. After a couple of hours you’re ready to pack it in. I got there at 10:05 pm and left just a little past midnight.

I was more ready to leave this party than others because — I have to be honest here — most of the cool people were packed into an elite inner-sanctum back room that the general populace was discouraged from trying to get into. Or so it seemed. There was a line to get in and yes, I saw Amy Adams waiting along with several others, but I don’t like parties that pull this elite shit. I really don’t. But that’s SOP for Soho House, which is all about selling exclusive access to people who aren’t sure if they’re hot shit but are willing to pay in order to feel that way.

If you’re connected enough to get into a party of this magnitude you should ideally be good to go all around, I think. The Silver Linings party that I attended at the Chateau Marmont on Friday, 12.7, was much cooler and friendlier because there wasn’t any effing back room. The best and/or coolest people (David O. Russell, Diane Keaton, Josh Brolin, Melissa Leo, Jane Fonda, Robert DeNiro, Mel Gibson) were everywhere and there were no giant-sized security goons in sight.

The Oscar night after-party at the Beverly Hills hotel when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan (14 years ago!)…that was another relaxed, well-handled, unlimited-access event. The more the people giving a party try to rope off the elite with special rooms and goons, the less cool they are and the less cool their party is and the more you want to leave.

I was standing at the top of the staircase and looking down at Tarantino, who was wearing a black beret like he’s worried about a hair-loss issue or something. He’s really big these days. He’s borderline Orson Welles. The difference between the way he looks in this 19 year-old Pulp Fiction cast photo and now is the difference between how Welles looked in 1938 when he did that radio broadcast of War of the Worlds and how he looked when he played Quinlan in Touch of Evil.

The other journalists at the party were Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye, and N.Y Post columnist Cindy Adams.