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Sarah Jessica Parker as creative director?  Well, yes.  Chosen to head the team of the Halston design empire, updating vintage pieces for contemporary lifestyles.    And Julia Roberts is now dubbed as the Lady of Lancome by WWD, a global ambassador for the L’Oreal brand, telling reporters in Paris, “I have to stand up straighter, and wash my face more.  Isn’t this every girl’s dream … to be 42, have three kids – two are twins -- and be a working mom.  Says a lot about Lancome and what it stands for.”

Julia’s first ad photo for Lancome was shot by Mario Testino, and will appear in U.S. media this summer when her Eat, Pray, Love, based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller about a post-divorcee traveling the world to find herself, is released.  By then Julia will have filmed Larry Crowne, co-starring Tom Hanks about a man who needs to reinvent himself.  Tom is directing, with the filming in Los Angeles.

She’s appearing in a cameo in Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day written by Katherine Fugate with a cast that yearned to work with Garry (Pretty Woman).   A romp about up-and-down Los Angeles relationships involving Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper (in a surprising twist that prompted crazy howls from the premiere audience), Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Carter Jenkins, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts (Julia’s niece), Taylor Swift and Larry Miller.  Some actors stand up to the plate, while others … umm.   As for the stories, best to let logic go to the moon.     

After the premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Ford Motors-sponsored party in the parking lot behind the El Capitan Theatre was created by Chad Hudson events.   A huge tent designed with moon-white diaphanous draperies was lifted out of a pasha’s dream, with delicious and healthy buffets by the Innovative Dining Group (owners of Boa, Sushi Roku), and the deejay highlighting oldies-but-goldies love ballads from Can’t Take My Eyes Off You to Old Black Magic in a nod to the Valentine’s Day weekend.     

Lucky we are in our civilized world to have libraries, a heartfelt thought we were pondering the night of USC’s 22nd annual Scripter Awards at the Edward K, Doheny Library, funded by the oil and timber tycoon in 1932.   His descendants -- great, great granddaughter Kacey Doheny McCoy with husband Peter, and great, great, great granddaughter Shane McCoy with fiancé Louis Fermelia -- were among the distinguished guests.

Shane serves as USC’s executive director of advancement, and she invited Audi of America to be the transportation sponsor for the honorees, who arrived in a fleet of Q7 TDI clean-diesel vehicles, one of America’s first highly efficient, seven-passenger luxury SUVs, offering improved fuel economy and cleaner emissions.  Audi v-p and entertainment specialist Michael Patrick was thanked by the guests.

“I’m a Trojan, and it’s a thrill to be back on campus, where I’ve taken a nostalgic tour tonight, and couldn’t help but remember that my father Ivan Reitman filmed Ghostbusters here,” proclaimed Jason Reitman.    He added that he credits his wife Michele Lee for the natural dialogue with the women characters in his films, after the Scripter dinner in the cathedral-ceilinged Reading Room of the Library.  

Jason and co-screenwriter Shelton Turner were announced as winners of the 22nd annual USC Libraries Scripter Award with their Up in the Air, as was Walter Kirn, whose novel inspired the movie.     Chosen from screenplays adapted from books by a committee chaired by Naomi Foner (mother of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhall), this year’s nominees included Crazy Heart, District 9, An Education, and Precious: Based on the Novel Push. 

The black-tie ceremony brings together the film, literary and academic communities.   Jason Alexander committed to serving as master of ceremonies, gracing the evening as he did last year with humor and ease, but work kept him out of town.   With charm a-plenty, Libraries Dean Catherine Quinlan took over, noting that the event supports the development of the Libraries’ collections that include first editions of Moby Dick, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Origins of the Species, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlett Letter, Ulysses, The Catcher in the Rye, and more. 

Catherine was followed by Glenn Sonnenberg, a 1977 USC alumnus with a B.S. magna cum laude in history and Phi Beta Kappa honors.  Glenn presides over the board of the Friends of USC Libraries, and in addressing the guests he emphasized the need for support to make our libraries stronger.    

In the crowd of 300 were the nominated authors and screenwriters, chosen from a field of 68 eligible adaptations.  Also: ICM chief Jeff Berg, Julie and Roger Corman, USC’s dean of the school of cinematic arts Elizabeth Daley with husband Jamie Hindman, USC dean of the school of theater Madeline Puzo, Justine and Robert Bloomingdale with handsome son Wyatt, who’ll study law after polishing his Spanish abroad, T-Bone Burnett, Fox Searchlight’s Claudia Lewis, Callie Khouri, Jeralyn and Dennis Doty, Elizabeth Zaillian, Debra Greenfield, Sarah and Shelley Berman, Marla and Wesley Strick, Lisa Taback, Michael Learned, USC’s event planner Toni Miller, receiving congratulations for organizing another elegant gala and for the dinner prepared by Pasadena’s The Kitchen for Exploring Foods.

“I discovered Moby Dick in our Brooklyn library, my home away from home when I was a pimply teen.  Every day I discovered another treasure.  Not only is Moby Dick the greatest novel in our language, it’s a philosophy book, a cinematic book, the movie inside Herman Melville’s head,” declared screenwriter Eric Roth, the Scripter finalist for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 

Eric was accepting the Scripter Literary Achievement Award, following previous honorees Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) and Michael Chabon.   Steven introduced Eric, who suggested a copy of Moby Dick be added to the gift bags, and it was.   

“The idea that words matter is what brings us all together tonight, and as a screenwriter, one must be articulate in a way that words become pictures of words,” says Eric.  “J.D. Salinger didn’t allow his work to be adapted for the screen, but just for fun I adapted a scene from Catcher in the Rye.  I didn’t change a word.  It was perfect.  Some things just are.”

Eric is adapting the 2005 novel, Exremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by New Yorker Jonathan Saffron Foer. The books narrator is a nine-year old boy Oscar Schell.  Foer takes a common tack on this problem by making Oscar uncommonly precocious.  However, Oscar is not a literary prodige created to tell a story – he is over educated and over sensitive.  As a child of Manhattan liberals, he is veggan, plays the tamborine, is a pacifist, multi-lingual, academic, and above all earnest.  He provides an array of filters through which the reader views the most tragic events. The allied bombing of Dresden, and their home in Germany during WWII are two examples.  One of the first American works of fiction to incorporate the attacks on September 11, 2001, that affects all elements of the novel.

From Mark Twain, six last words:  “Knowledge is free at the library.”