Mariah Carey had a hissy fit when director Lee Daniels showed up an hour late to her Cannes Film Festival premiere of Precious on Friday night, while Ryan Phillippe was all buddy-buddy with French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s son, Pierre, at the launch party for Belvedere IX. Restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani canoodled in Cannes with rehabbed party girl Tara Reid, leading her back to his boat in the wee hours of the morning. Fergie says that the girl-on-girl action in her next video isn’t too far off from some of her real-life experiences. Brad Pitt took three ladies to lunch at Mercer Kitchen, none of whom were Angelina, then wandered around Soho, gathering a trail of women gone gaga in his presence. Natalie Portman says the romance rumors about her and Sean Penn are “completely untrue.”
“Page Six” narrowly avoids calling Macy Gray a drunk for her sloppy performance at the Plaza’s Sloan-Kettering gala. Pierce Brosnan, Kirsten Dunst, and Bette Midler gave Leonard Cohen a standing ovation at Radio City Music Hall. Sean Avery ducked out of the New York City Ballet gala early to hit up the reopening of Scores West. The Manhattan Criminal Court made Graydon Carter wait (can you imagine?) to testify for Brooke Astor in her son’s trial. Steven Ratner, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s auto-industry adviser, isn’t letting the collapsing economy affect his construction of a $15 million Martha’s Vineyard summer home. His in-the-works estate is causing a stir among other Vineyard homeowners, who say it’s “far too big and gaudy.” In an episode of Summer of ’77, Reggie Jackson boasted about his days at Studio 54, when he’d hang out with Richard Pryor, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli. “I was just a kid, 29 years old, going in there and partying … And if I dated a model from the Ford Agency, or Elite, or John Casablancas’ place, I was held in reverence.”
Ed Westwick nabbed the role of the brooding Heathcliff in an upcoming remake of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty are calling it quits, again, and rumor has it Miller’s getting closer to her ex, Josh Hartnett. Mid-divorce hip-hopper Swizz Beatz says that he and Alicia Keys are officially an item. Cynthia Nixon and her girlfriend are engaged. Cameron Diaz, who’s used to dating Jessica Simpson’s exes, got cozy with Maroon 5 crooner Adam Levine over the weekend, another one of Simpson’s former flames. One of Paris Hilton’s new neighbors offered their landlord $27,000 a month ($5,000 more than the property’s rent) to kick out Paris and her boyfriend Doug Reinhardt. John Mayer left L.A. club MyHouse with his T-shirt and face covered in lipstick kisses.
There’s trouble brewing in chick-lit land. Candace Bushnell, Fabiola Beracasa, and Lucy Sykes were no-shows at Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover’s party for her latest read, Hedge Fund Wives, perhaps out of loyalty to their pal Jill Kargman, who’s been touting her similarly titled book, The Ex-Mrs. Hedge Fund. Alexis Bledel didn’t flinch when her Traveling Pants co-star, 26-year-old Amber Tamblyn, made out with her 45-year-old boyfriend, actor David Cross, at the East Village’s 2A the other night. When accepting his Drama League Award, Elton John said that he’d “been a member of the drama league for years … the Madonna drama league.” In last night’s tell-all with 60 Minutes, Anna Wintour said she tries not to be a bitch.
