A Heck of a Heavy-Hittin’ Hoedown

The Scene: Saturday’s benefit premiere of Warner Bros.’ “Wyatt Earp” at Mann’s Chinese Theater. A party followed on the studio’s Burbank lot. The film’s star, Kevin Costner, said of the Western: “This movie is a meal.” He wasn’t kidding. At three hours plus, it was a seven-course movie.

The Setting: The party, held on the studio’s two-by-four-block Western set, featured Western bands, trick ropers, quick-draw shooters, 12 buffets and provocatively costumed saloon girls, who prompted one woman to comment: “Hey, it’s like Heidi Fleiss comes to Tombstone.”

Who Was There: The film’s stars--Costner, Gene Hackman and Dennis Quaid (who said, “You don’t want to know,” when asked how he lost 43 pounds to play consumptive dentist-gunfighter Doc Holliday); director Lawrence Kasdan; co-producer Jim Wilson; plus 2,000 guests, including Martin Short, James Earl Jones, Rita Wilson, Tony Bill, Jackie Collins, Mike Medavoy, Al Ruddy, Mark and Lezlie Johnson, and Warner execs Bob Daly, Terry Semel, Bruce Berman and Rob Friedman.

Topic of Conversation: Could anything compete with the O.J. Simpson saga? A Disney exec said the car chase was shown live on two channels in Milan, Italy. One producer said watching the Bronco on the freeway reminded him of “Speed.” “I kept thinking it was wired so it couldn’t go over 40 miles an hour.”

Legends Don’t Always Make Big First Impressions: Asked if he met Wyatt Earp (who consulted on silent films and died in Los Angeles in 1929) 86-year-old Gene Autry said, “I think I did, yes.” Asked what Earp was like, Autry said: “I can’t remember too much about him.”

Quoted: “This is a bigger movie than I think people have seen in a long time,” said Kasdan, who wrote, produced and directed. “This is an old-fashioned epic, like ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ or ‘Doctor Zhivago.’ It takes you all the way from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century with one of the most interesting guys who ever lived.”

Money Matters: The $450,000 raised was divided between two charities: Tripod, which aids deaf and hearing-impaired children, and Futures for Children, a provider of educational programs for Native American youth.

Two Takes on Stardom: At the same moment Costner was being interviewed by a TV entertainment program whose pot-bellied, middle-aged soundman was so magnificently bored he was reading Readers Digest while taping the star’s conversation, the teen-age girl selling tickets for Starline Tours jumped through her booth’s window, wild-eyed, auto-focus camera in hand, and came running over to get closer to the actor. In a way, both seemed satisfied by their brush with a star.