Monday, 25 April 2005 | 3-D

Whenever someone walks by on the red carpet, as long as they're not wearing a Tribeca Film Festival badge, they're showered with light and told to look right and left and straight ahead—yelled at, in fact. Sometimes I don't recognize the celebrity, but generally at least one of the photographers comes up with a believable-sounding name, and the rest of us scribble down notes. The other night, after we barraged an unfamiliar moon-faced blonde with our winking shutters, I turned to the photographer on my left and asked who we'd just documented. "I dunno," he shrugged. In fact, no one knew who she was, even after the PR person told us her name.

Tonight the stars were bigger, and the press pen smaller, and I got to witness a legion of professional adults practically tackling some sparkly people; it looked a little like what happens when a breadcrumb is thrown at a pack of hungry pigeons. I took turns watching the press and nosing my own lens in between bodies whenever possible.

It was the first night I've been able to watch the film following the red carpet parade. During the movie, I was lightly aware that the actors from the film were sitting among the rest of us, but it got weird when I walked out of the theater with the characters on either side of me, as if they'd hopped out of the picture and into 3-D. I still had movie brain, so it actually seemed to make a little bit of sense that Sir Ian McKellen was standing two feet away, when just moments before he was looming over me onscreen.