Intelligencer

Polanski and Portman to ‘Pitch’ Perfume

It’s art.

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By Andrew M. Goldstein
Published Nov 30, 2008

(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Francesco Vezzoli, the Italian video artist known for his lavish parodies, has a new project: a faux perfume ad starring Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams, filmed by Roman Polanski. It’ll debut in February at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome. “Lately the art world has become a place where there is a lot of effort to create desire, so I thought Greed”—the name of the scent—“was an appropriate theme,” Vezzoli says. He recruited Portman and Williams because they’re “two A-list celebrities who have never endorsed a perfume,” he explains. “Natalie plays the good girl and Michelle plays the greedy one, and they start having a catfight over the perfume. They bite each other, pull each other’s hair, throw themselves on the floor, and all of that is filmed by Polanski in his epitomizing style.”