The Lady of the ‘House’ Is In

The queen of Sundance, Parker Posey, was creating a slim vortex in an ocean of hipsters, roughly a zillion of whom packed the Palace last week for the premiere of Miramax’s “The House of Yes.” By the time we got there, she had morphed into Parker Golightly, a wisp of a thing brandishing a martini in one hand, a cigarette in the other and a smile that could melt rocks.

“The secret’s out,” she cooed to her courtiers about one smitten gentleman-in-waiting. “We’re in love.” Puff. Puff.

Oh, to be coming out--the way people used to come out, that is. “Everyone wants to be a celebrity,” observed Posey, “so everyone thinks your movie opening is your cotillion.”

A little while earlier, she’d been Parker O!, the fatally deluded and tastefully dressed sister/lover in a family that could use Dr. Laura. For an actress known for her edgy roles, this part required an extra dab of technique. Posey broke it down this way: “What kind of person would relate her experience with her twin brother to the assassination of Kennedy?” Indeed.

Squeals. Hugs. It’s Edi Giguere, the costume designer who turned Posey into a first lady look-alike. In fact, it is millinery alone that marks the party as “House of Yes”-oid--little pink cardboard pillbox hats top the tables. OK. So Giguere is just the, shall we say, enabler.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “that hat’s in the public domain by now.”

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Le Dome was atwitter with the city’s intelligentsia nibbling tiny meatballs recently in honor of James O. Kemm’s “Rupert Hughes: A Hollywood Legend” (Pomegranate Press). The illuminati included a demure-looking woman who’d written THE LOVE BOAT LADY on her HI MY NAME IS tag. TV’s “The Love Boat” was born as a book, “The Love Boats” (Pinnacle Books, 1975). Who knew?

Jeraldine Saunders, the former cruise director for the Holland America Line, gave us an explication de text.

“I found out these sweet little ladies in Adolfo suits would have a waiter in the morning, a steward in the afternoon, maybe a passenger and an officer at night. But the passengers would all leave with smiles on their faces.”

What’s even better than sex? A deal. In these days devoted to recycling, the classic TV series is being developed as a feature film by Aaron Spelling and Disney.

Oh, yes. Saunders also teaches classes in astrology--husband No. 2 was Sydney Omarr--and that neglected art form, charm:

“Any time you’re sitting, a lady should always have her ankles crossed or together, but never make a Y or a V.”

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P.O.V. magazine came home last week. You can still send your mail to Boston, where the freshman men’s magazine is based. But the publication that pitches itself as the guide for wannabes visited the kingdom of the wannabes.

P.O.V. threw a bash honoring itself and its current Hollywood issue at Luna Park. The place teemed with P.O.V.-tians--that is, up-and-comers in the Industry. Mixing with the masses were Lili Taylor, Matthew Modine, MTV’s Chris Hardwick and a couple of cover boys from the October issue--John Singleton and producer Lawrence Bender. The 2-year-old magazine recruited them--as well as Kevin Smith and Julie Delpy--to offer advice on making it in Hollywood because they were deemed “hyper-successful, precociously successful and also honest and candid,” according to P.O.V.’s precociously successful editor in chief, Randall Lane.

P.O.V. is particularly keen on steering Gen-Xers toward financing a comfortable retirement in these millennial days of downsizing and shaky prospects for Social Security. Not that the 250,000-circulation mag has neglected the fun component--P.O.V. is relaunching Egg magazine in the spring as a guide to night life and hipsterism, so that men will know where to take their not-fat girlfriends.

If being your own businessman is the heart of the mag, the brains come courtesy of publisher Drew Massey, 27, who started P.O.V. by charging $60,000 on 16 credit cards, and Lane, who until recently moonlighted as editor while he plied his day job as Forbes magazine’s 27-year-old Washington bureau chief.

“It was classic entrepreneurship,” Lane says. “Drew went into heavy debt and I was working two jobs. That’s how you start things these days.”

Scary.