EXCLUSIVE There were plenty of interesting people who turned up for last night’s screening and reception for “The Fabelmans.” In fact, the only person missing, sadly, was director Steven Spielberg, who’s been sidelined with COVID. He was very much missed!
Still, the group at swanky Lincoln Ristorante in Lincoln Center did their job to keep up spirits. They included stars Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Gabrielle Labelle, and screenwriter Tony Kushner, and a crowd that flocked around them including Lou Diamond Phillips, legendary talk show host Dick Cavett, Celia Weston, documentary filmmaker star Barbara Kopple, the great Yankee announcer Michael Kay and his wife Jodi Applegate, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, and someone we don’t see too often in New York: Karen Allen.
Allen lives in Massachusetts and is not the “circuit.” But she’s a friend of Spielberg, naturally, since she starred in the first and fourth “Indiana Jones” movies as Indy’s great love, Marion Ravenswood. So is she in the fifth and as yet untitled Indiana Jones movie? After all, this is the big finale after 40 years!
Allen, still with a twinkle in her eye, was all smiles when she exclaimed, “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you!”
Hmmm…
“Seriously, I can’t say a word,” she continued, and quickly changed the subject back to “The Fabelmans,” which she loved.
You know I persisted. “And what about you and Indy having a kid? Last time it was supposed to be Shia LaBeouf. Now what?”
Allen gave me a blank stare. So I mentioned that she’d been in the greatest movie ever made, John Landis’s immortal 1978 comedy, “Animal House.”
That subject got her attention. “We talk all the time about making a sequel called ‘Animal Home,'” she said. “We’d all be living in a nursing home, partying, wearing robes and pajamas instead of togas!” Is this a real thing? She shook her head no. “Just in the casts’ minds. But we’d better hurry before we lose more cast members!”
It’s a great idea. But one I think that will remain a fantasy — or a good “SNL” sketch. And with that, Karen Allen retreated to the cool, clean environs of the Berkshires. Maybe we’ll see her at next summer’s “Indiana Jones” premiere — or maybe not!
PS Karen also got to reunite last night with the great PR man Gary Springer, who was once an actor himself. (He was in “Jaws,” another Spielberg classic.) Allen and Springer were both in “A Small Circle of Friends,” sort of a predecessor in 1980 to”The Big Chill.” “There was a fire where we were staying,” Gary recalled. “Yes, and a few people were running around naked,” Allen responded with a laugh. Those were the days!
Add on: A few press people wandered over to Lincoln Ristorante just as the party was ending. They’d been at a reception for A24’s “The Whale,” where no one was allowed to speak to Brendan Fraser, and the celebrities were in a roped off section! Sounds like fun!
