‘Peter’s’ 600 Friends Celebrate at Tatou

The Scene: Tuesday’s benefit premiere of Samuel Goldwyn Co.’s “Peter’s Friends” at the Writers Guild Theater. A party followed at Tatou, the astoundingly ornate, soon-to-open Beverly Hills branch of the New York supper club.

Background: The film has been repeatedly labeled “the British ‘Big Chill’ ” by comparison-seeking critics. “That’s OK,” said co-star/co-writer Rita Rudner. “Just don’t call us the British ‘Ishtar.’ ”

Who Was There: Rudner and her co-writer husband, Martin Bergman; plus 600 guests, including Leonard Nimoy, Corbin Bernsen, Amanda Pays, Richard Belzer, Lou Diamond Phillips, Bob Zmuda, Richard Lewis, Rita Moreno and the suddenly much-wealthier baseball player Barry Bonds.

Who Wasn’t There: The film’s co-star/director Kenneth Branagh and all of the film’s British cast. Branagh opens in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Hamlet” Friday in London.

Quoted: “We watched ‘The Big Chill’ so we would deliberately not peg on it at all,” said Bergman. “I like ‘Big Chill,’ but is nobody ever allowed to do a reunion movie ever again?”

Dress Mode: Long-closeted cold-weather gear. The standout was one man’s full-length, white cashmere overcoat worn draped across the shoulders Italian-style. If a piece of clothing could have a soul, that coat did. It was like something Federico Fellini would have arrived in for the premiere of “La Dolce Vita.”

Money Matters: Tickets were $35, and $15,000 was raised for Comic Relief.

The Screening Setting: The Writers Guild isn’t used often for premieres. The fact that it had a full-size screening room came as a surprise to some. “I thought maybe they’d have a reading room for scripts,” said one woman.

The Party Setting: Tatou is quite a backdrop for chewing food. The downstairs dining room has a massive chandelier centered on a billowing, white, tented ceiling, fabric-draped walls and 10 glowing, fiberglass palm trees overhanging burgundy banquettes. It’s meant to evoke the ‘40s era of Hollywood night life--the Cocoanut Grove gone psychedelic. It was described as looking like “a bordello in Palm Beach” by one guest and as a “campy . . . ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ motif” by Bergman. Eating will never be the same in Beverly Hills.