One Night at a Premiere and Party With Brad Pitt

The Scene: Monday’s premiere of TriStar and Mandalay’s “Seven Years in Tibet” at the Cineplex Odeon. A party followed at Le Colonial. The story of Heinrich Harrer, Austrian mountain climber and escaped POW, who talks his way into 1940s Tibet, was described by star Brad Pitt as being “about a guy who learns to accept responsibility against the backdrop of the dissection of Tibetan culture.”

Who Was There: Pitt; co-star B. D. Wong; director Jean-Jacques Annaud; plus 900 guests including Matthew McConaughey, Ellen Barkin with Joel Schumacher, Diane Sawyer, Mariah Carey, Matthew Modine, Kathy Bates, Dennis Hopper, Julie Delpy, Larry King, Nick Reed, Madeleine Stowe, Lou Pitt and execs Peter Guber, Adam Platnick and Jeff Blake.

The Buzz: Many in the Hollywood crowd commented on Pitt pulling off the role. As one guest said, “It’s a lot better than Keanu Reeves being the Buddha.”

Quoted: Pitt, on not knowing much about Tibet before filming began--”I wasn’t aware. I didn’t know the story. Tibet was some Utopia, some Shangri-La with palms or something. I had no idea what it was. And the truth is, their life was very hard. They live on the top of the world and it’s a tough life. They’re people who seem to have nothing material-wise, but are very happy.”

Observed: Pitt was due on the New York set of “Meet Joe Young” the next morning. When the actor stayed late at the party, there was concern about him “catching his flight.” It turned out not to be a problem. “When you get to be Brad Pitt,” said one exec, “you don’t ‘catch a plane.’ You call for one.”

Overheard: One middle-age male admiring Le Colonial’s French Vietnamese decor, said, “I missed the war in Vietnam, but I did see ‘Miss Saigon.’ ”

Best Compliment: Tibetan refugee Dawa Choyesang, 70, was probably the only person present who had seen Harrer in Lhasa during the 1940s. She said Pitt compared well with the Austrian in being dachakpo (“well-distinguished, gentlemanly”). Through an interpreter, she said: “With what Brad Pitt has done for the Tibetan cause, we are very happy. Sometimes one man does make a difference.”

Hollywood Irony: Traditional Tibet is a “wisdom society” that stresses spiritual maturation. In Tibetan, “to amuse” translates as “to spin someone’s head around; to confuse or bedazzle.” The classical word for entertainment, dudzi, implies a pointless diversion. Said one scholar, “If you tell a Tibetan you’re in the dudzi business, it would be like saying, ‘I spend my life wasting my life and the lives of others.’ ”