Celebs in D.C. for Night at the Museum 2 Premiere
D.C. may be known as Hollywood for ugly people, but for a little while last night, it was almost like we were just plain Hollywood. Granted, there was no actual red carpet at last night's "red carpet" U.S. premiere — which was billed as a World Premiere despite Tuesday night's London screening — of Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian at the National Air & Space Museum. But there was a crowd of excited fans lining the steps up to the museum's doors, a red velvet rope line populated with microphone-wielding entertainment journalists inside, stressed-out personal assistants and handlers in headsets, heavily-made-up television correspondents, and discreet but tough-looking bodyguards. Substitute middle-aged male studio execs for the slightly paler middle-aged male government types who got invites to the event, and you could almost imagine you were at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
Why the unusual site for the premiere? The sequel to 2006's wildly successful, wholly awful star-studded comedy Night at the Museum changes the venue from New York's Museum of Natural History to the Smithsonian, mostly the Air & Space Museum. Additionally, the production was given unprecedented access to film in the actual museum, the one caveat being that they had to film during the museum's regular operating hours without shutting the building down - which often meant filming with hundreds of tourists looking on. Ben Stiller found the experience invigorating: "It was exciting, we only had a few days here, but it was really fun for the energy, and you just don't get that when you're on a sound stage. It gets very insular."
While much has been made of this unusual access to film in the museums, the fact is that, as Stiller indicated, they still only filmed very briefly at the real buildings. The bulk of the film was still shot on sets, including a massive replica of the Air & Space built in Vancouver for the shoot. The only stars DCist spoke to all night who'd actually done any shooting in D.C. were director Shawn Levy and Stiller. For some, like 12-year-old Jake Cherry (who reprises his role as Stiller's son Nick Daley), this was their first visit to the real Air & Space Museum, an odd experience for them after shooting in a replica that was built to mimic the building's details exactly. Excited as he was to be there, Cherry — one of those frighteningly precocious child actors like Haley Joel Osment used to be — is partial to the Natural History Museum, which he'd just visited.
Other stars had been to the museum before, and continued to marvel at the work done in replicating the building for the film. Screenwriter Thomas Lennon (The State, Reno 911!), though a Chicago native, said he visited the museum many times as a kid when his family visited the D.C. area, and used that familiarity with the building in the writing of the movie. While he wasn't here for filming, he was at the Vancouver site, and said of the replica, "It was eerie, it was terrifyingly eerie." Co-writer Robert Ben Garant added, "The carpet's slightly dirtier, and otherwise it's exactly the same."
Lennon wasn't the only one with local connections. Patrick Gallagher, who plays Atilla the Hun, recalled doing a children's play at the Kennedy Center nearly 15 years ago, an experience that has stuck with him. "It's still the most fun I've ever had," he told DCist. And there's even some homegrown talent in the film. Jon Bernthal, who plays Al Capone, is a native of Cabin John and a Sidwell Friends graduate. He didn't get to shoot back home either, but echoed the wonder of his co-stars at the job done on the Vancouver set. When asked what his favorite place in D.C. was, Bernthal replied nostalgically that it was his high school baseball field. "Past hopes and dreams that were never quite realized," he joked.
There were plenty of other big stars in attendance, many of whom were being rushed into the screening by the time they got down to DCist's end of the rope line. We missed out on talking to Amy Adams (who looked far more glamorous than the occasion probably called for, in a satiny floor-length gown), Keith Powell (30 Rock's Toofer), an oddly subdued Robin Williams, and Owen Wilson. Hank Azaria was by far one of the most personable actors there, being among the first to arrive and one of the last to head into the theater, entertaining everyone with various character voices. When asked about being in another film with Robin Williams, he slipped into his Agador Spartacus character and relished the prospect of "squeezing the hind part" of his old Birdcage co-star. Ricky Gervais was also extremely jovial with the press, talking about his affinity for playing characters with no sense of humor, and joking about how he'd like to agree to host an awards show and then bail partway through. "Just start crying. Just go out there, be all fun, just do a song and then go, I can't do this anymore, and have a little breakdown. Ah, that's great. I'm gonna do it." And with that, he was whisked away to find a seat in the IMAX theater with the rest of the stragglers.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian opens next Friday at theaters all over the area.