MY DINNER WITH DEBRA The sponsor party for Texas Film Hall of Fame rocked with the famous and the infamous. Lance Armstrong‘s house was the perfect party pad, and bay-bee did we have a good time. Everywhere I looked there was some of the best of Austin and Hollywood and New York. Sigh. I was in starfucker … I mean, starstruck heaven. I met all of them, making my way through the crowd and sidling up to Dan Rather (so friendly and funny) and told him how my family had watched his television coverage of Hurricane Carla in Houston, 1963, as our home was being flooded by the storm. He looked closely at me. “You’re not old enough to remember that.” I looked even more closely at him and said, “Cosmetic surgery’s faaabulous.” (Fact is, I didn’t remember the hurricane coverage; I was only 6 years old. I remembered the hurricane well but not the coverage. But my mother had told me the Dan Rather story many times, and I’d been dying to use it.) Lance Armstrong was pleasant enough though consumed with his host duties; Morgan Fairchild was the gracious ice queen – much friendlier than many of the roles she plays, of course, and always knows how to dress for an occasion. Charm, vivaciousness, sparkling humor are not words you may associate with ZZ Top‘s Billy Gibbons, but he is the master of them all, spending a lengthy amount of time yakking with me until I had to flit off to find Debra Winger. Gibbons spent the better part of the rest of the evening entertaining my friend Christopher Arnold, who was so impressed he could hardly lift his jaw off the ground. I did indeed find Miss Winger; she looked up just as I made my Norma Desmond-ish descent down the grand staircase in sunglasses, fur, and leather, and her eyes never left me (nor mine hers) until I reached the bottom, and I knelt before her like the queen. “Oh, get up,” she laughed, and we broke the ice. She introduced me to her cousin, Austin resident Amelia Winger-Bearskin, a videographer and performance artist. The charming Amelia and I traded phone numbers, and while I remained at the party, she called and said, “Meet us at Katz’s for dinner.” We were out of there like a shot, and soon Marx Harmon and I were being ushered to Debra’s table by hostess Angela whom I always love to see. Angela and I had our arms around each other (we go back a looong way), as Debra looked up and says, “God, I figured you’d know everyone.” We had a great time with her, cousin Amelia, and their friend Saxz Stevens. The next night was the real event, as glamorous and star-studded as Austin gets. Co-chairs Kate and Robert Hersch, along with the Austin Film Society staff, did a kickass job. Congrats again for another historic moment.
This article appears in March 14 • 2008.