Joined by His <i> Petit</i> Pal Madonna

The Scene: Tuesday’s premiere of Warner Bros.’ “With Honors” at the Directors Guild. This modest screening/reception was dwarfed by the arrival--complete with obligatory incandescent paparazzi frenzy--of Madonna. (She’s a close friend of the director and performs the film’s theme.) Perhaps the most accurate way to describe the evening would be: There was an appearance by Madonna that was accompanied by a movie premiere.

Who Was There: Director Alek Keshishian, whose previous film was Madonna’s “Truth or Dare” documentary; co-stars Joe Pesci, Brendan Fraser, Patrick Dempsey and Moira Kelly; producers Paula Weinstein and Amy Robinson; plus 800 guests (“600 if the fire marshal is asking,” said one organizer) including Dennis Hopper, Branford Marsalis, Debi Mazur, Pauly Shore, John Davis, Beth Swofford, and studio execs Rob Friedman and Barry Reardon.

The Buzz: Many were quite moved by the film. One guest described its theme--Harvard students learning about life from a homeless person--as “The Fisher King” meets “Dead Poets Society.” Madonna said it made her cry. “There’s something about the fragility of human life,” she said. “To read an obituary and to think that, at the end of all this, it’s just a paragraph on a page.”

Dress Mode: For most guests it was after-work casual. As would be expected, Madonna was the fashion stand out. Her outfit suggested a harem dancer as seen by Vogue magazine: thick silver bracelets, a tight-fitting turquoise and magenta cropped top, bare-midriff (showing off a recently ring-pierced belly button) and a matching diaphanous silk skirt. “It was a Jasmine costume,” said the mother of a 3-year-old “Aladdin” fan. “Believe me. I just bought one for Barbie.”

Chow: The reception was held across the street in the DGA’s old building. Done by Along Came Mary, it included lavish “college food” buffets that evoked rich alumni more than starving students.

Observed: Before the party, DJ Mike Messex said there were two ways to fill the dance floor. One was by playing “gimmies,” the staples anyone would dance to, “the kind of songs,” he said. “you’d hear on a cruise ship or a disco in Mazatlan.” The other was if Madonna got up to dance. The second option worked better than the first. When she danced, they followed.

Quoted: “I think the film’s message is fairly universal,” said Madonna. “It’s to believe in yourself. To think for yourself. To not judge people by the way they look. It’s about prejudices. It’s about the irony of being in an environment which is supposed to be about learning and broadening your mind, but actually is full of a lot of really narrow-minded people.”

Hollywood Moment: Buried in a scrum of Shawn Eckardt-style no-neck security guards and besieged by autograph seekers, Keshishian and Madonna made their way across the street to the party. It was a Fellini-esque moment of out-of-control fame. Of the experience of traveling with the pop icon, the director said: “It’s kind of remarkable because she’s this petit friend of mine, but then you go out and she’s something entirely different for everybody else.”