Premiere brings plenty of star power to Boston

By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, Globe Staff  |  October 16, 2007

Ben Affleck made a triumphant return last night, hosting a premiere of his new movie - and directorial debut - "Gone Baby Gone." The film, which opens Friday, was shot in and around Dorchester, and many of the locals who had a hand in making the movie showed up at the AMC Loews Boston Common. But imagine our surprise when Ben's buddy Matt Damon arrived with his wife, Luciana Barroso. The hardest-working man in Hollywood told us he's already seen "Gone Baby Gone" 10 times. "[Directing] is really huge for Ben," said Damon. "Not that writing and acting aren't important, but directing is at a whole different level. . . . He ran this whole show." The "Bourne Ultimatum" star didn't stick around long, telling us he wanted to catch some of the Sox game. "I'm feeling really good about them," Damon said. "I think we're gonna kill them." Ben's kid brother Casey, the star of the movie, said he had only one reservation about working with Ben. "I didn't want to let him down," said Casey, who was accompanied by his wife, Summer Phoenix. Author Dennis Lehane was there, and said he's thrilled with the big-screen version of his book. "I'm like Manny. I feel like I'm batting a thousand," said Lehane, who also wrote "Mystic River." Actress Amy Ryan, whose performance as the missing girl's street-savvy mom may well earn an Oscar nod, said she tried hard not to make her character a caricature. "Ben kept telling me to push it further," she said. Affleck arrived with his wife, Jennifer Garner, and admitted he was a little anxious. "This is the only premiere that makes me nervous," he said. "This has an audience that'll know if it's real or false." Others at the screening included producers Sean Bailey and Alan Ladd Jr.; actors Brian Scannell, William Lee, Bob Wahlberg, Sean Malone, Eamon Brooks, Jay Giannone, and Madeline O'Brien, who plays little Amanda McCready; Damon's mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige; and Affleck's co-screenwriter, Aaron Stockard, a Cambridge native who said he and Ben brought authenticity to bear on the script. "We knew these people and we knew their stories," he said. "It's not as though we were doing a 17th-century period piece in Peru."

Cambridge comedian Jimmy Tingle is closing his Off Broadway Theatre in Davis Square, and taking his show on the road. Tingle told patrons Sunday night that he simply can't keep the theater open if nobody is in the audience. (About 16 people were in the house for Sunday's folk music show.) The Somerville club, which would have celebrated its fifth anniversary next month, will close its doors Nov. 1, Tingle said, and upcoming shows, including the Somerville News Writers Festival, will be moved elsewhere. (The writers fest will take place at the Dilboy VFW Hall nearby.) Tingle, who did not returns several calls yesterday, told the audience that he's planning to start touring.

Harvard's new president is keeping a high profile. We're told Drew Faust will not only attend tonight's performance of "The Veiled Monologues" at the American Repertory Theatre, but she'll hang around afterward and participate in a panel discussion. A twist on "The Vagina Monologues" by Eve Ensler, "The Veiled Monologues," written by Dutch actress Adelheid Roosen, is described as a "portrait of love and relationships under Islam."

Onetime Russian chess champ Garry Kasparov packed them in at the First Parish Church Meetinghouse in Cambridge last night. The author of the new book, "How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, From the Board to the Boardroom," Kasparov is taking a break from his campaign to succeed Vladimir Putin as the next president of Russia.

Robby Krieger of the Doors was a gracious guest at Berklee College of Music yesterday. The guitarist, who wrote the "Light My Fire" riff, among other Doors tunes, talked to staff and students for 90 minutes and played with an all-Berklee tribute band. The set included "LA Woman," "Roadhouse Blues," and "Riders on the Storm," among other classics.

Wyclef Jean stopped by Matt Siegel's morning show at Kiss 108 yesterday where the Grammy Award-winner chatted with Billy Costa, Lisa Roach, and the rest of the crew about his new single "Sweetest Girl."

Tommy Savitt isn't from here, but the comic still managed to win the 2007 Boston Comedy Festival. Savitt, who splits his time between New York and Los Angeles, was deemed the funniest of them all over the weekend. . . . "The Sopranos" actress Drea de Matteo was at the Paradise Sunday to catch her man Shooter Jennings's sold-out show. Earlier that day, Jennings told the Globe that de Matteo is due to have their first child, a girl, in about six weeks.

"Bachelor No. 2" costars Kate Hudson and Dane Cook got a major workout yesterday - at least, that's the way it'll look onscreen. The actors filmed a jogging scene yesterday that took them from the banks of the Charles River to Bunker Hill to the Paul Revere House in the North End to the Faneuil Hall Marketplace (breathless yet?) to Copley Square and, finally, to the Christian Science Center on Huntington Avenue. And if there was any time left in the shooting schedule, the crew was hoping to squeeze in another visit to Back Bay eatery Clio, owned by Ken Oringer, for more filming last night.

Sheila Diiorio of Plainville and Southborough's Susan Baust were among 300 women who mobbed the Talbots store at the Natick Collection over the weekend during a national search for models over the age of 40. Sponsored by More magazine and the Wilhelmina Models, the opening call was one of several held around the country.

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