A Kinder, Gentler Premiere

Fifty Tibetans were outside Westwood’s Avco theater Monday night holding yellow and black signs that read “Free Tibet,” “Please Save Tibet” and “Mickey Mouse for Tibet.” Plus they were chanting, “Tibetans love Hollywood” and “Tibetans love Martin Scorsese.”

Mickey Mouse? Martin Scorsese?

In a departure, the director of “Casino” and “Raging Bull” has made “Kundun,” the story of the Dalai Lama’s early life, for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures. In the process, he’s made the Tibetans very happy, and the Chinese a bit upset.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for Tibet to have a higher profile,” said Martin Wassell of L.A. Friends of Tibet. “You can walk around the federal building until you’re blue in the face and never get this kind of media attention.”

Of course, the media’s primary focus was on guests Nick Nolte, Dennis Quaid, Kelly Lynch, Gina Gershon, Vincent Schiavelli, Jon Avnet, screenwriter Melissa Mathison and studio execs Dick Cook, Donald DeLine and Joe Roth, who said “Kundun” is “one of those movies you can say is clearly about the art.”

After the screening, most of the Tibetans had departed, and about 200 guests headed to Obachine in Beverly Hills for the after-party. The scene there was low-key, almost like a normal night in the restaurant, except all the guests talked about the same subject.

Nolte said, “This is a film you’re going to take off the shelf 20, 30 years from now, and the images will still be arresting.” Rosanna Arquette said, “Marty completely transports you into another world.”

On this occasion, the world came to Marty, who sat in a booth with a chair set at the table’s end. A guest would come by, sit for a minute, then leave to be replaced by another. Considering how much Roman Catholic imagery usually fills Scorsese’s films, it looked a little as if he were hearing confession.

Scorsese said what attracted him to this material was his youth in New York’s Little Italy, where he saw many problems settled by violence. He became interested in the Dalai Lama, who, he said, “is really living a life of nonviolence.”

But wasn’t it odd to go from making a violent film like “Casino” to making this?

“No,” Scorsese said. “It was a relief.”