SCENIAC: At the ‘Semi-Pro’ premiere

OR sug dek:

After a six-month hiatus from covering premieres, a girl feels a little rusty about how to approach the whole shebang.

I forgot to ask the publicist about a parking pass until it was too late, I left the tip sheet at work so didn’t know whom to secretly stalk, and when I walked past the blue carpet as Michael Moore was arriving (Michael Moore at the premiere of Will Ferrell’s “Semi-Pro”?), I let the aggressive security guards hustle me into the Mann Village Theatre in Westwood instead of doing my usual linger, stare, eavesdrop.

On the way into the theater, I bumped into my old friend (profile-subject) Christopher Mintz-Plasse – better known as McLovin from “Superbad.” He’s starting to fill out a bit and I predict will not stay gawky and funny-looking for long. (Milk it now dude!)

“Webold,” he said when I asked if he remembered me. I didn’t understand that until I recalled that we had gone bowling together. “We bowled together, yes!” I said and his face flooded with relief. “I was about to feel really stupid,” he said.

Before the movie started, I listened closely as the publicist seated behind me instructed her out-of-town parents on how premieres work.

” ‘ET’ won’t even come to an event if they don’t get the first spot on the carpet because they are the No. 1 show,” she told them. “And then it goes ‘Access,’ CNN, and the last spot goes to the local Spanish channel.”

I also learned that the stars of a film always sit “center-center” at a premiere (what is known in the biz as “the sweet spot”), and that after one of her events is over she spends the following day answering angry phone calls and e-mails from people who didn’t like where they were seated. “They’ll say, ‘How dare you put me there? I needed to be closer to this person.’ It’s like, closer? There’s no talking during a movie.”

Then first-time director and longtime New Line executive Kent Alterman made a lengthy, self-effacing speech. After several minutes he said he had officially bored himself and several minutes later he sat down, but he did solve the Moore mystery: Moore gave Alterman his first production job on TV Nation, and “Semi-Pro” is set in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Mich.

You’ll hear about the movie from the critics when it comes out next week, so let’s jump to the after-party, which was less than a block from the theater and set up to look like the Flint Fairgrounds Coliseum in the mid-’70s. The effect was complimented by the distinctive smell of marijuana floating in the air.

I hovered awkwardly near Woody Harrelson for 10 minutes until his publicist told me he wasn’t doing any more interviews. “It’s not you,” she said barely looking up from her Blackberry. “He’s just really burnt out.”

Will Ferrell’s reserved area was empty by 10 p.m., but I found Alterman fielding hugs from a procession of comedians (he once worked for Comedy Central).

“Let me just urinate,” he said kindly when I asked him if he could chat and he gestured for me to walk with him out the back of the tent where the “Andy Gump Executive Restroom” bathroom trailer was located.

When he emerged seven minutes later, he said, “I was peeing that whole time. That’s how bad I had to go.”

We talked for a while about how grateful he was to work with Ferrell, and to be able to cast so many friends in the film, and how he was a big fan of the ABA growing up, but I feel the urinating quote sums up the experience of a director at his first premiere: too busy accepting accolades to go to the bathroom.