West Slide Story: Winslet and Jackman Flushed Away at Premiere

Much as I nearly swallowed my tongue reacting to last week's announcement that DreamWorks Animation would celebrate its Flushed Away premiere by sending voice talent Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman down an inflatable "toilet slide," I couldn't help but succumb Sunday to the publicity siren call luring me to the scene on the Upper West Side.

Indeed, in the austere mid-autumn chill of West 68th Street and Broadway, the studio set up a huge john into which its biggest stars went plunging cheerfully, landing on a carpet that DreamWorks PR interns stayed up all night dyeing just the right shade of 2000 Flushes blue, yet ringed nevertheless with the hard-to-kill residue of photographers, video crews and, well, me, looking on with the type of stunned bemusement reserved for infomercials and donkey shows. The experience required a therapeutic filmmaking exercise of my own, starring Jackman, Winslet and their tormentors; you can glimpse the drama here.

I guess I do feel better, but I'll be damned if the metaphor didn't whip me hard enough to leave a bruise. Or maybe that was just the publicist.

Posted at October 29, 2006 10:56 PM