At the center of Daniele Thompson’s delightful comedy of manners, “Change of Plans,” a hit at the 2009 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, is a dinner attended annually on June 21, World Music Day, by the same –more or less– collection of characters.
On Tuesday, after IFC’s special screening, Thompson’s longtime friend Diane von Furstenberg and husband Barry Diller hosted a dinner at DVF’s studio in the Meatpacking district.
“I am so happy she offered. Diane makes these wonderful dinners,” said Thompson when I spoke to her earlier that day. Fortunately, the menu did not include the “bigos,” of the film, an old time Polish recipe credited to Roman Polanski.
“Every people has this kind of stew,” said Thompson. “The kind of dish where you throw everything in: leftovers, meat, cabbage, and so on. Roman Polanski, who is a friend, made it for me.”
In “Change of Plans,” the husband, who is Polish, busily prepares this signature dish. Thompson’s son Christopher who acts in this ensemble piece and also co-wrote the script with his mother said that Polanski’s wife, the actress Emmanuelle Seigner who plays Sarah, kept complaining on the set: “Roman’s tastes so much better.”
And how is he doing? “People think it is so easy to be confined in a Swiss ski house, but really, he cannot go out to have a cup of coffee. He is suffering,” said Christopher.
In the meantime in New York, Stephen Sondheim, Fran Lebowitz, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, Ann Dexter-Jones, Frederic Tuten, and many others supped on two kinds of pasta, two kinds of salad, and desserts by the sublime Sant Ambroeus.
