DeNiro, Keaton Comedy Gets Robin Williams and New Title

“Gently Down the Stream,” a wedding comedy starring Robert DeNiro and Diane Keaton, has a new title and an added player. Robin Williams has joined the cast that also includes Katherine Heigl and Topher Grace, as well as Susan Sarandon and Amanda Seyfried. According to the imdb, the title may have also changed to the generic sounding “The Wedding.” How original! This means that Justin Zackham’s movie now has four past Oscar winners–DeNiro, Keaton, Williams and Sarandon. The weirdest thing is that Heigl is billed with DeNiro and Keaton in the most recent poster. Getting older is just full of indignity, isn’t it?

Anyway, I ran into beautiful, fun and wide-eyed Amanda Seyfried last night in Hollywood at the premiere of HBO’s “True Blood.” HBO gives the best parties on both coasts, don’t cha know. All the “True Blood” stars were there–Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Alex Skarsgard, etc. Even show creator Alan Ball, who expressed his dismay at my review of one his films, “Towelhead.” “Your review destroyed that film,” he said. Alas, I am a fan of “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood.” You can’t like everything! Anyway, Ball is a nice guy and tells me has a bunch of projects being readied for placement.

Oh yes, Amanda Seyfried: “I just heard about Robin Williams joining Gently Down the Stream,” she said, perhaps unaware of the movie’s title change. She told me spent Monday with pal Dominic Cooper at his Los Angeles Film Festival premiere of “The Devil’s Double.” “He should get an Oscar nomination,” Amanda observered, and she’s correct. Cooper is superb in this LionsGate release about Uday Hussein, son of Sadam. It’s like the Iraqi “Scarface.”

Also at the “True Blood” premiere, a lovely couple: Patrick Fischler, the actor who was so great as a nasty comedian a couple of seasons ago on “Mad Men,” and actress wife Lauren Bowles, a knock out, who also happens to be the half sister of Julia Louis Dreyfus (they share a mom). Lauren plays a witch on “True Blood.”  They’re just like Darrin and Samantha, I said. “Only we won’t be recasting Patrick half way through,” retorted a clever Lauren. Nice kids!