Hudlin Entertainment

Django Unchained New York Premiere Party!

Dancing With Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino

By Melena Ryzik

Even before the strong showing for “Django Unchained” at the Golden Globe nominations on Thursday, Harvey Weinstein was in a good mood. At the film’s premiere, hosted by the Cinema Society on Wednesday night, he stood at the front of the Ziegfeld Theater and crowed about the honors that this Weinstein Company release had already garnered: a host of nominations from the NAACP Image Awards.

His enthusiasm was doubled by Quentin Tarantino, the film’s director, who started singing in front of photographers and introduced his cast as though he were Don King on speed. “First name Jamie, last name Foxx,” he said, calling out the star. “Middle name — – ”

Well, let’s say it was a Tarantino-ism and, not a gentle one.

“Django Unchained,” a western-turned-slave revenge epic – which somehow also incorporates a German bounty hunter, an anachronistic Ku Klux Klan comedy bit courtesy of Jonah Hill, and countless references to Italian cinema – received glowing reviews from the opening-night crowd, even as they were sometimes fazed by the body count.

The afterparty, at the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel, was jammed with a who’s who of Mr. Tarantino’s friends and former stars, like Uma Thurman, Cameron Diaz, Sam Rockwell, Liv Tyler and Jeremy Piven. Diddy turned up, hugging Mr. Weinstein, slimmed down in a black T-shirt, and partying with Mr. Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson, another cast member. Sitting with his family was Christoph Waltz, his head shaved from a recent role in a Terry Gilliam film. An Oscar winner for Mr. Tarantino’s last film, “Inglourious Basterds,” he plays the scene-stealing German in this one.

At 1 a.m., when the party was due to wind down, Mr. Foxx got in the DJ booth and began a stream of thank-yous and shout-outs. (Why wait for an awards show stage?) The shout-outs included most of the horoscope (“My birthday is in two days,” he noted) and then called for someone to fetch Mr. Tarantino to join him. “Tell him to cut the story short – I know he’s telling a story right now,” Mr. Foxx said.

“A whole year of shooting the movie, 30 minutes to cut it,” Mr. Foxx said, when director turned up, trailing Ms. Thurman. “With everybody calling saying, What’s up? What’s up? What’s up?”

Of course, Mr. Foxx praised the final product, trimmed to two hours and 44 minutes. “With the subject matter and everything, the way it plays, I thought it was fantastic,” he said. “So kudos to everybody that had anything to do with this movie.” As his friend DJ Irie blasted hip-hop, the entire geometry of the room shifted toward the DJ booth, when Mr. Foxx, Mr. Tarantino and Ms. Thurman began dancing behind it.

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