Life Imitating an Artist

Soup cans and several Marilyn Monroe look-alikes came to the Museum of Contemporary Art on Saturday to celebrate Andy Warhol’s birthday. (He would have been 75 today.)

Upstairs, KCRW host Garth Trinidad deejayed while two cakes--decorated, of course, with likenesses of Warhol--were served to the Warhols and Monroes in attendance. As part of the celebration, the museum offered free admission to the exhibit to those in costume. But for some, it was a challenge to get through the doors, as illustrated by the walking soup cans, three college students who made their costumes from Hula-Hoops and fabric.

The Campbell’s regalia made taking a seat in the downstairs theater difficult. “The little seats ....” said Laura Salgado, the 19-year-old creator of the cans. “Obviously, they don’t accommodate soup cans,” added her friend, Won Choi, 19. Esther Goldstein, the third can, giggled.

In the next gallery, Jackie Onassis and Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick, a.k.a. Kate Urcioli, 19, and Kristin Unger, 18, looked at the Warhol paintings. The two had driven from Las Vegas specifically for the birthday.

“We’re fans,” said Unger. “And this was our [way of] not having to spend $17.”

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Battle Fatigue

It’s nearly noon, but actor Cole Hauser’s voice sounds groggy and distant. He returned to his Los Feliz home just three days ago after five months in Hawaii shooting an as-yet-untitled war movie with Bruce Willis. It’s his second war film in about a year.

Hauser begins the phone interview with monosyllabic responses, as if he hasn’t cast off his character, the tough-as-nails Navy SEAL and demolitions expert he inhabited for months. The experience left Hauser somewhat shellshocked. “It was intense,” he says of the shoot. “I’m sitting here in my home just recovering. I’ve slept for a couple days. I’m just kind of doing nothing, which is just kind of staring at the walls.”

Earlier this year, Hauser played a “racist shark of a man” in the World War II picture “Hart’s War,” also starring Willis. After returning from the Prague shoot, he had about a day to recover before he began filming “White Oleander,” a story about a young girl’s troubled life in foster homes. Hauser portrays a foster parent opposite Robin Wright. On the first day of the shoot, he apparently got his characters confused. “I’m supposed to be looking at [actress Alison Lohman] like I’m passionate .... I’m sitting there and I think everything’s fine and the director [Peter Kosminsky] says ‘Cole. Cole. You’re looking at her like you’re going to kill her.’ ”

Immediately after finishing work on that film, Hauser flew to Hawaii for months of rigorous training in weapons and pyrotechnics. During the battle scenes, he performed all his own stunts, diving through explosions and suffering minor burns all over his body. “There were so many explosions, it really felt like you were in war,” he says.

Military maneuvers have always fascinated Hauser. His father and grandfather were both Marines. And at 18, he asked about enlisting as a Marine at a recruiting office. But Hauser’s aversion to authority kept him out of the armed services. “I don’t follow orders well,” he says.

In the new film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, Willis is Hauser’s lieutenant, and their crew has been dispatched to make a rescue in Nigeria. Hauser keeps the film’s details to himself. “It’s an amazing story of soldiers ... about America helping out Africans,” he says. “It’s really good for the times ....I think that this kind of film would be one that other people would raise their fists and say, ‘That’s what I love about America!’ ”

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Scream Attack

Jennifer Love Hewitt was accosted outside a San Diego radio station by a 46-year-old woman who screamed at the actress as she left KFMB-AM on Monday morning, according to police.

Hewitt’s bodyguard stepped between the woman and Hewitt just in time to intercept a few minor blows, a San Diego Police Department spokesman said. When officers arrived at the scene, however, Hewitt and her bodyguard were gone. Later, when police encouraged the bodyguard to press misdemeanor assault charges against the woman, he refused, so the woman wasn’t arrested. Hewitt did not return calls for comment.

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Sighting

Actress Famke Janssen at Mandarette restaurant in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

City of Angles runs Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes. com