A Handle on His Art

“One of the things that has happened is that I’m less and less able to talk about the door itself,” said Robert Graham, standing near the entrance to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. “It’s a good thing to let it go ....It was a long process.”

Graham, who spent the last five years creating the cathedral’s doors, hosted a party Tuesday outside the cathedral to celebrate their completion. The fete also celebrated the publication of “Robert Graham: The Great Bronze Doors” (Wave, 2002), three essays by Jack Miles, Peggy Fogelman and Noriko Fujinami, describing the religious and historical context of the doors and their technical realization.

Mostly, though, guests at the angelic soiree, including Sidney Poitier, MOCA director Jeremy Strick, gallery owner Peter Goulds and environmentalist/actor Ed Begley Jr., had come to toast Graham.

Harry Dean Stanton walked around the plaza, asking, “Anybody seen Bob?” Possibly obscured by a ring of autograph-seekers, Graham was standing only a few feet away. Stanton was one of several hundred denizens from the worlds of arts and movies, Venice and Hollywood, who sipped wine and marveled as the 25-ton bronze doors opened and closed.

As day gave way to evening, Brooke Shields admired the shadow play on the tympanum behind the Virgin Mary above the doors.

“It’s like wings, or God’s hands,” she said.

Shields, who gave the artist a Brooke Shields doll, had been sitting as a model for Graham recently. “It’s a time for creative things,” she said.

Nearby, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony was shaking hands with every person in sight.

The cardinal was not among the guests who joined Graham and his wife, Anjelica Huston, Lauren Bacall and Kelly Lynch at the private rooftop party at the downtown Standard hotel.

Nowhere in Sight

The star count was low, the buzz higher at a low-key Hollywood screening for “Hysterical Blindness,” director Mira Nair’s new film.

Nair, who won acclaim earlier this year for “Monsoon Wedding,” about an Indian nuptial, was on holiday in Africa. Executive producer and star Uma Thurman was in China working with Quentin Tarantino. So it was co-star Juliette Lewis who chatted up the industry types Tuesday night at the Cineramadome.

Set in 1980s Bayonne, N.J., the character-driven film depicts two working-class women, played by Thurman and Lewis, in their desperate attempts to find love in the dive bars and row houses of their world. For Nair, the setting and costuming of the picture played a large role in keeping the story honest. “There is something extraordinarily fascinating about ‘80s banality,” Nair said in an interview with HBO. “It’s so easy to characterize this and to make it a cartoon thing

After the screening, the talk was of Thurman’s performance. “She just totally inhabits the character,” said one man to a friend. “It’s kind of spooky.” The movie debuts Sunday on HBO.

Running Mate

Life in the White House can change a guy. Stress can take a toll, and so can things like impeachments and pork rinds (case in point, Bill Clinton in jogging shorts.) But the rigors office may have an upside. With George W. Bush set to appear as October’s cover boy for Runner’s World magazine, there’s talk that he might be the fittest U.S. president ever.

“There’s absolutely no question,” said Amby Burfoot, the magazine’s editor, before backtracking. “He’s certainly the fastest runner ever.” And a stark contrast, the magazine pointed out, to Jimmy Carter who was photographed collapsing from heat exhaustion in a 1979 10K in Maryland.

Bush, in a rare interview, sat down with Runner’s World to talk about how running helps clear his mind and how he’s setting an example for the rest of us. “No excuses,” he told the magazine. “If the president of the United States can make the time, anyone can.”

When a magazine editor ran alongside Bush in the President’s Fitness Challenge three-mile race in Washington in June, Bush, who is 56, posted a time of 20 minutes, 29 seconds--which put him in the top 3% of all 5K finishers of any age in the U.S. Runner’s World readers couldn’t believe it and flooded the magazine with calls and e-mails.

Bush’s doctor says he’s in “excellent” health--in the top 1% of men his age as far as his heart is concerned. His resting heart rate is 44, putting him in the range of elite marathoners--and ready, presumably, for that long run in 2004.

Times staff writer Renee Tawa contributed to this column. City of Angles runs Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes.com