Seems There Was Something Funny Going On

The Scene: Wednesday’s benefit world premiere of Universal’s “Sgt. Bilko” at CityWalk with a party afterward at Gladstones. The event also served as the kickoff for Comic Relief’s five-day American Comedy Festival, which ends Sunday with the taping of an ABC-TV special that will be “kind of like the clean Comic Relief,” said President Bob Zmuda.

Who Was There: Co-stars Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman and Glenne Headly; director Jonathan Lynn and producer Brian Grazer; among the 900 guests were Winona Ryder, Richard E. Grant, Jennifer Tilly, Martin Mull, Richard Belzer, Travis Tritt, David Colden, Jack Rapke and studio execs Casey Silver, Howard Weitzman and Hal Lieberman. Most of the crowd seemed to be non-Hollywood with emphasis on the doctor/dentist/optometrist strata of society. “The people you ask to invest in your movies,” was the way one veteran described them.

Missing in Action: Aykroyd made it from the theater to the restaurant’s door, took one look at the packed scene, said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” and headed off with his family for points unknown.

Quoted: “The secret of doing Bilko is just to have fun,” said Martin. “You take the structure of the character and try to fill it out. But it’s not that complicated. It’s really about playing Phil Silvers or playing Sgt. Bilko. It’s like doing Hamlet, only it’s not.”

Dress Mode: Studiously after-work, though Jennifer Tilly wore a designer-made, pseudo polyester, acid green tweed jacket over a rust colored shift. “It’s the Prada aesthetic,” she said. “You spend thousands of dollars to look like you shop in a thrift store.”

The Chow: What one guest called “fish nosh”--lobster, crab, clams, oysters and shrimp. There was even a sushi bar where someone flouted the supreme taboo. He smoked a cigar near the sashimi. This might be why the Japanese invented samurai swords.

Money Matters: Tickets started at $150 and more than $150,000 was netted for the Fulfillment Fund, an organization that helps talented, disadvantaged students stay in high school and go to college. “This fund saves lives just as certainly as any hospital,” said founder Dr. Gary Gitnick.

Hollywood Wisdom: “It’s the strange thing about movies,” mused Martin. “They’re made backward: You spend all the money, make it and then see if it’s any good.”