subscribe to style file blog via RSSEmma Thompson Talks Planes, Trains
November 20, 2008 11:44 am
The glow of stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson lit up last night’s Cinema Society screening of Last Chance Harvey, sponsored by Piaget, which drew other bright lights like Marc Jacobs, Ang Lee, Bebe Neuwirth, and Bart Freundlich. The romantic comedy, written and directed by Joel Hopkins, centers on the relationship between a down-and-out jingle writer (Hoffman) and a government survey-taker and aspiring novelist (Thompson) whose paths cross in the bar at London’s Heathrow Airport. Thompson, a veteran of the genre, insisted the film’s airport meet-cute was no rom-com contrivance. “Generally speaking, the folks in airport bars probably have enough to buy you a drink,” reasoned Thompson. “And they’re on their way to somewhere interesting.” Trains are perhaps a different matter. Take the stranger with whom Thompson shared a cabin during a trip to southern France as a teenager. “He took off all of his clothes and lay down, so I left the carriage for a minute,” recalls Thompson. “When I came back, my friend, who happened to have a hardback copy of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago on her, hit him over the head with it and escaped. Thank God for those heavy books by Russians.” Was that the star’s way of saying that a Jane Austen novel only goes so far?
tags: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Marc Jacobs
