Let's Misbehave
Jessica Biel Stirs Things Up On Screen and Off
Easy Virtue, the new movie based on a 1924 Noël Coward play, is a bit of a farce, and according to cast and crew at last night's Cinema Society screening, so was the shoot. The director, Stephan Elliott, urinated into a bush, only to discover a paparazzo hiding inside it ("My agent told me I'd pissed off the media," he noted, "but technically…"); protagonist Ben Barnes went flying off his horse during a foxhunt scene; and there was at least one mishap involving a lighting fixture. "It went through a painting of quite some worth," Elliott admitted. "The owner dealt with it really well, considering the painting was older than all of us combined."
To help re-create the atmosphere of interwar gentility, Colin Firth learned how to tango. "I think I found my dance," he beamed. Jessica Biel, who plays a glamorous American interloper, roars into the film behind the wheel of a 1929 BMW roadster. (She graced the screening, which was co-hosted by Brooks Brothers and Jaeger-LeCoultre, in swishy 3.1 Phillip Lim.) "I don't drive stick well," she confessed at the after-party at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where she was joined by beau Justin Timberlake. But she would have floored it if she could have. "They wouldn't let me do it! The guy who owned the car was like, 'Please don't mess up my baby.' " Where's the comedy in that?
ERROR:
