By now, that evening has been rendered by the haze of time into Mad Libs.

The occasion was to announce an amount of money- a largish figure-being designated for something- name of a fashionable lethal disease-by a company that could well afford to give that much and more away. Hmm. Name of a fancy merchandising conglomerate?

The evening was horrific. Poor Ms. Spiers spent hours trying to infiltrate the gelatinous human cluster around Demi Moore, the only A-list star present, who squatted in a dark corner like a tick so glutted on blood she couldn't even twitch her legs. As we recall, the weary Ms. Spiers came away with a quotation from someone who was then lucky or savvy enough to be temporarily famous-Scott Speedman, perhaps?

We were reminded of that tragicomic evening for two reasons. The first was this Monday's world premiere for Bewitched, at which the red carpet stretched into the hot, white night outside the Ziegfeld Theater.

The NY1 society reporter (and advocate of enormous, unruly eyebrows) George Whipple wandered the red carpet and chatted on his cell. An English reporter said hello to him from behind our media-barricade lineup. ( In Touch was next to VH1. WB11 was next to Lowdown. MTV alongside Star, which was next to Boldface Names.) Mr. Whipple greeted the English fellow warmly. After: "He doesn't know who I am," the guy said. "I've been standing next to him for three, four years, he doesn't know who I am."

Actually important people-Barry Diller, for one-passed relatively unmolested. But when an actor-type celebrity arrived-which was marked by the screaming of the photographers from down the other end of our bullpen, the sound of which is something like a gang war in an emergency room-four or five journalists from independent publications simultaneously extended their tape recorders, a pool practice which, in a more ideal world, might be opposed by some journalistic cousin of antitrust legislation.

Red-carpet lineups aren't reporting, they're pressers, and Stephen Colbert might as well be Scott McClellan.

And truly: In service of his upcoming television show, The Colbert Report, as well as his role in Bewitched, Mr. Colbert turned on the charm for Inside Edition and Fox News alike.

Fox News told David Alan Grier, the one black man on that side of the barricade, that Michael Jackson had been acquitted just an hour or two previously. Mr. Colbert: "I'm just so thrilled his career is back on top! King of Pop! King of Pop!"

"I'm so happy for him," Mr. Colbert said to New York Times Boldface Names columnist Paula Schwartz, the hot, reigning red-carpet queen, on whom The Transom has a huge crush. She either questioned him-"Seriously?"-or gave him a quizzical look.

"Absolutely," Mr. Colbert told Ms. Schwartz, in deadly earnest.

VH1 asked him to write a news headline for the Michael Jackson story:

"The King of Pop … still … has his … crown?" he tried. (Well, it's still better than "Boy, Oh Boy.")

A German TV guy interrupted our eavesdropping to say that he'd like to interview The Transom, so that we might enlighten the lovely German folk on Nicole Kidman's career.

"You'll be famous in Germany," he said. Smoke from his cigarette curled around him. Brimstone! Devil! The Transom hopped the barricade and fled for home.

The second reason The Transom recalled that long-ago evening with young Ms. Spiers is this: Last week, in her current role as editor of Mediabistro.com, she penned an essay announcing her retirement from the odious, stillborn work of party reporting.

In a luscious piece of irony, Ms. Spiers tardily delivered some excellent party reporting indeed-at a long-ago party, she recounted, Alec Baldwin-who had apparently just weeks before announced his intention to expatriate to Canada in his disgust at the Bush administration- was hugging Henry Kissinger. And instead of documenting that, and instead of transcribing her lengthy and fascinating conversation with Paris Review editor George Plimpton, who would die soon after, and instead of running with light-hearted party chit-chat from Tom Brokaw, who would soon (and quite dramatically) retire, the magazine for which she was employed decided to document that party with some silly, frothy, metrosexual innuendo by Mr. Baldwin.

Who has neither died, nor retired, nor done much else, God bless him, since.

Don't get us wrong: We like pretty outfits. We like sexy rich people. The trivial and the ephemeral and the ridiculous moments that mark our New York days and nights are not without their meanings.

Still, all this might perhaps accrue to suggest that it isn't party reporting-or even party reporters-that are broken. Instead, it's the magazines and their editors, and all those who go with complicity into the publicists' bullpens and red-carpet lineups-"Nicole! What are you wearing?!"-that are.

-Choire Sicha

Shopping and Clucking

Dana Foley matched her dizzying décor. The walls of her boutique are hand-painted murals of Japanese prints, and she'd sewn her wispy kimono-esque top that very day! Imagine! Ms. Foley, the very model of a hasty seamstress, has come a long way from selling prints in a flea-market stall on Sixth Avenue a decade ago. Swimming through waves of Lucky magazine supporters, she and Anna Corinna, her business partner in Foley & Corrina, welcomed a slew of spendy ladies to the opening of their newest, ever more Lower East Side–y location last week. As of just a few months ago, their outpost had been … on the other corner.

"I can't believe that people are actually buying," beamed Ms. Corinna, who was wearing a turquoise top admittedly not from their collection, her wardrobe temporarily in flux due to her slight second-trimester inflation.

"See this black ball gown? You can dress it up or down!" Ms. Corinna continued, showing off a sophisticated garment from their collection that a friend of hers wore under- under!-a tattered black tee. "You can wear it out at night, or with flip-flops and a funky shirt shopping on Broadway on Saturday," she said.

Between the pomegranate martini bar and the fun race of outfits to the dressing room, one guest found it difficult to remain vertical on her high heels. Taking a spill in the crowd, she suddenly stumbled-a silk tank and snakeskin bag in hand-before grabbing the arm of a sunglass-clad stranger to keep herself afloat in the party.

"We attract a mix of uptown and downtown girls, wives of football players from Atlanta, regulars who live in the South of France, and the bartenders from down the street," Ms. Corinna added, without mentioning such names as Jessica Simpson, who had recently purchased a gold bag with a peacock inlay.

Sweltering from the summer heat, party hosts Eleanor Ylvisaker-who is the Earnest Sewn jeans P.R. queen-and Christian Dior rep Ali Wise sought refreshment in a cigarette. They laughed about Ms. Ylvisaker's wedding video, the newlywed having tied the knot with hedge-funder and surfer Jon Ylvisaker in April. The fun couple has just returned from a secluded honeymoon in Sumba, off Bali, where Mr. Ylvisaker took advantage of the waves. When asked if she surfed, Ms. Ylvisaker laughed and admitted that she's horrified by the big waves. "Sometimes I can barely get my toe in," she said.

And speaking of waves! The night eventually cooled when a cranky upstairs neighbor threw buckets of cold water onto the smokers and cell-phone chit-chatters below. See? The Lower East Side, celebrity-friendly boutiques and all, still reeks of anarchic authenticity.

-Sara Levin

Amis, Austen Ankled

Last week, the New York Public Library's Conservator's Circle hosted a reading of Martin Amis' eternally unfilmed screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. The critic, novelist and son-of's precocious career is only trumped by Ms. Austen just a little. Both got their start early, she as a teenage historian, he as a barely 20-year-old book critic. A wisp of a man, Mr. Amis talked mostly into his chest and then summoned two young actors-Catherine Kellner and Matt McGrath-onstage to read from his script in characteristically hopeless approximations of a British accent:

CATHERINE: So if a man is poor ….

JAMES: … then he must marry a rich lady.

CATHERINE: And if a man is rich ….

JAMES: … then he must marry a rich lady, too.

CATHERINE: Then who is to marry the poor ladies?

(James frowns; he hasn't thought of this.)

(cont., feelingly)

Oh those poor, poor girls.

So true! According to Mr. Amis, the adaptation was commissioned in 2001 by Miramax, with whom he had entered into a vertically integrated deal-writing novels for the Miramax Books imprint, articles for Talk magazine and screenplays for Miramax Films. In this "multilevel atmosphere," Northanger Abbey was conjured, first as a rewrite, then for TV, then perhaps a movie-and, after more rewrites, it met purgatory.

In early 2004, Mr. Amis' mega-agent, Andrew Wylie, sent the script to The Paris Review, where it fell into the hands of Lea Carpenter, who was then the magazine's deputy publisher. Unfortunately, the staff held widely differing opinions as to its reproduction in the quarterly's pages, so when Granta published a few extracts in its 25th-anniversary edition that fall, the matter was put to rest. And it was Ms. Carpenter who finally brought the screenplay off the page into a live forum. "He could make even the least sexy book provocative," Ms. Carpenter said, going on to lament the fact that Mr. Amis isn't as institutionalized as his idols, Austen and Saul Bellow.

When Mr. Amis spoke to The Transom from his home in Uruguay, he himself wasn't quite sure what the screenplay's status was at the moment. Buried under the rubble of a disintegrating Miramax, things don't look good. "It is the only Jane Austen novel that hasn't been filmed yet, and not because of any shortcoming. In some ways, it's the most appealing for any director, what with its Gothic elements. I mean, they keep making Pride and Prejudice every few years …. "

-Jessica Joffe

Young Animals

The Whitney Contemporaries, the philanthropist-in-training arm of the Whitney Museum, charges $400 for its 25-to-40-year-old members. MoMA's Junior Associates clique comes in at a minimum charge of $500, including mandatory museum membership (sneaky!). But instead of joining "the one where the pictures are," as Holden Caulfield put it, some opt for "the one where the Indians are." Indeed, the thriftiest mate-hungry youngsters hop to Central Park West for the bargain of the group, the American Museum of Natural History's Junior Council-in which membership comes at the low, low price of just $275.

Last Thursday's end-of-year celebration for the Junior Council and assorted hangers-on was capped off by a speech from the museum's commanding president, Ellen V. Futter. Naturally-hey, we're all animals, right, fellow evolutionists?-the evening quickly evolved from sober scientific-progress report to skirt-chasing and chest-thumping beside the Rose Center for Earth and Space and its Hayden Planetarium. At the end of her optimistic account of the museum's technological and financial growth, Ms. Futter surveyed the audience. "I know many people here have questions," she said. "But I also know that I'm the only thing standing between you and the terrace," she added. They laughed, but the 300 guests made no secret of their preference, shouting "Terrace!" on their rush outside toward cocktails.

The terrace in question overlooks Central Park West and Jerry Seinfeld's quarters in the Beresford, and on it, the 22-to-39-year-old men and women finally mingled: Most had arrived in gender-segregated clusters. Trios of uptown bankers and real-estate developers hungrily eyed manicured young women in skin-tight summer dresses. "Look, it's a way to meet other single people," said one guest. "It's a lot better than online dating. I would never do that."

The Junior Council's online mission statement is more demure; its Web site extols these events as exclusive chances to learn about the museum: "A stimulating mix of science, education, and revelry, these occasions present young professionals with the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at one of the world's greatest museums …. " Stimulating! Revelry! Behind! Aha!

"I would say 30 percent care" about the science, said one attendee, a real-estate developer from across the park. "Seventy percent are here to socialize." Added his friend, "I mean, look at these women. Look at what they're wearing. Do you think they're here to learn about science?"

Now, now: Science-minded women like to look sexy, too, our chauvinist friends. As the noises of mating rituals filled up the hot night, two girls emerged from the powder room, one adjusting the other's cleavage-baring top. "We figured we'd come to this, have some drinks," said one, all tee-hee. "I mean, it's for a good cause, right?"

-Zoe Slutzky

Drink, Memory

When former New York Times managing editor Arthur Gelb first started as a cub reporter at the paper, his editor on the city desk told him of an old New York newspaper aphorism, which he relates in his book, City Room: "Drink is the curse of the Herald-Tribune. Sex is the bane of the Times." Alas, neither vice was in evidence last Saturday at a party for today's young Times men to welcome the paper's summer interns. About 70 journalists gathered at the East Side bar Dip for an evening of fondue and quiet conversation. Now, The Transom knows deep down that the Gray Lady isn't a teetotaler, but by the end of the night (and yes, we stayed for the whole thing), this crowd was still sober and composed. As the group dispersed early, one waitress-in quiet deference to the Gelb years-began passing out the drinks for free.

-Rebecca Dana

Loving Art

"My dog doesn't like disco," said Mickey Rourke. Loki, his Chihuahua terrier, lay trembling in his arms. "She likes country, rock 'n' roll-and some classical." Loki, he said around a mouthful of cocktail, also loves art.

Does anyone-or even any dog?-actually hate art? Model Karolina Kurkova arrived at Phillips, de Pury & Company at 7 sharp, blond hair snuggling her shoulders over her dress' drooping, cleavage-baring neckline. She leaned in close to say that her most recent purchase was a painting from Berlin. "I love everything," she explained, nodding slowly at her own words. "It just has to get my eye. It can be Picasso, but doesn't have to be. I have to get that feeling. I like a lot of black and whites, but art is everywhere."

We hope she got that feeling-and wasn't put off by the D.J. and her love of dog-irking disco-inside the Sixth Annual Art Auction Benefit for Free NYC. (Free NYC is a nonprofit which offers mentor programs and family events for the sort of youngsters who are always described as "underprivileged.")

But tonight, even the overprivileged went a little hungry. Awww. Slivers of salmon topped with caviar on pig-shaped pumpernickel bread-the surrealist cuisine of mixed metaphor!-and bite-size grilled cheese circulated; but only sugar cookies followed the hors d'oeuvres, a sign of this swimsuit season's revolt against the main course. "We ate in the 80's-why does it matter?" said distinctly non-fat John Findysz, a visual director at Jeffrey New York. "We'll eat again when we're 40." Um, excuse me? Who's going to admit to 40?

Honorary chair Naomi Watts, dressed simply in an off-the-shoulder navy shirt that gathered at the elbows and a knee-length, flared blue skirt, strode gracefully from one piece of art and its attendant socialite cluster to the next, politely stopping at each like a bride at her wedding reception. Before a Gary Hume: "It's a beautiful photo. There is a lot going on," she said thoughtfully. "The colors stand out, and I like the juxtaposition." Ms. Watts placed bids only in the silent auction-including on a mysterious Tanyth Berkeley portrait of a nude, shadow-faced woman-but sat front-row for the live action, cheering with the rest of the audience as the bids jumped by thousands.

Auctioneer Simon de Pury-chairman of Phillips, de Pury, who led his forces to collect sales of $23.6 million at last month's contemporary auctions and even cleaned up at the prints and multiples auction last week to the tune of $1.6 million-broke from his usual serious tactics and made like Tom Cruise in love with love. When a Christopher Wool photograph temporarily stalled at $17,000, Mr. de Pury came down into the audience, practically jumping as he clenched his fists and yelled, "$17,000? No more?! Come on now! Only $17,000?!" At $20,000, Mr. de Pury was down on his knees, face red. The crowd responded with an encouraging wave of hoots and wows, prompting one man, eyes averted, to slowly raise his paddle in the air. "Very good taste, sir," Mr. de Pury snapped calmly, returning to his podium.

During the sale for the Chuck Close picture-a self-portrait of the artist which eventually topped out at $70,000-Mr. de Pury took to isolating bidders like an auctioneer scorned. He peered down into the face of one gentleman, surely too close for comfort, speaking loudly about the piece. The bidder blushed and turned to his wife, who was laughing hysterically, exalted by her husband's shame. "It's embarrassing," said an onlooking bidder. "He doesn't need a speech. The few thousand dollars up doesn't make a difference."

-Amy Lieberman

Soon, it became all too clear: The space shuttle Columbia , with its seven astronauts, had burned up re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

As it happens, the shuttle that carried that crew was built in 1979, the same year Mr. Wolfe published The Right Stuff , his New Journalism tome to the early test pilots-Yeager, Conrad, Grissom, Glenn-who first faced down the evil odds of rocketry and were willing-Willing? Delighted!-to claim the glorious spacestuff for the U.S.

But that sort of mythology all seems far away now. It's difficult to connect the steel-chewing cowboys of the Florida tarmac, who were dedicated to Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving, to these new, barely known seven, who went suddenly and horribly from C-Span anonymity to full-blare Fox tragi-fame. As Mr. Wolfe confessed, he, like a lot of people, had stopped following the shuttle program very closely these past years. The 1960's space race and its jolt of national urgency was so much stardust memory. The space shuttle, he admitted, "began to seem like a complex airliner."

Until Feb. 1, when that airliner became a comet, raining grief and debris on the nation.

But in the wake of the Columbia tragedy, Mr. Wolfe, a romantic, wasn't plagued with petering, defeated ideas about space travel. He knew: Men had died before; NASA had faced scrutiny before; the public had lost its stomach for risk before. The Apollo 1 fire in 1967-which claimed Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White, the first American to walk in space-held NASA back for two years!

To the contrary, Tom Wolfe is ready to go to Mars. "I'm a romantic about the idea of going to all these different planets and, my God, maybe some day leaving this galaxy-to me that's romantic ."

Mr. Wolfe said NASA had to regain a sense of mission. His first thought on the subject was the early, pre- Apollo idealism, before the fabled space race-back, for instance, in 1958, when the space shuttle was still called the X-20 Project and was seen as a sort of low-watt concept. NASA was ready to man Mars, for God's sake! Mr. Wolfe recalled Wernher von Braun, the early 1930's German rocket genius who ended up heading what is now the Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA. "He was very thoughtful about the whole thing," he said. "If the sun dies-and eventually it will-what happens to … human beings? We haven't even discovered a flea out there. We need to build 'a bridge to the stars,' he thought, which would be getting people off the earth with spaceships and somehow creating settlements on some other body in the universe."

"But NASA didn't really have any philosophy to sell to the nation," he concluded, "and as a result the budgets started shrinking. I mean, they could barely keep the lights on in Houston."

The space race with the Soviets, said Mr. Wolfe, while it propelled the first launches and eventually the Apollo 11 moon landing, had a short shelf-life and no fallback philosophy. "Congress didn't want to spend any more money on this. And I dare say the citizenry in general were not interested any longer because it really was a contest with the Soviets.

"After a while," said Mr. Wolfe, "the Apollo missions began to seem anticlimactic to people."

The only person who seemed to have a philosophy about the whole thing, the long-range purposes of space exploration, was Wernher von Braun," he said. "And it didn't look too great to have a former member of the [German] Wehrmacht as your philosopher."

The space shuttle itself was a symbol of NASA's scaled-back concept of space travel. "They more or less settled for the shuttle just to keep the program alive," said Mr. Wolfe. "And to make it more salable in terms of selling it to politicians and the public. As soon as they could, it was going to be used for taking a lot of civilians up."

Of course, that idea ended in 1986, when schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, the first citizen astronaut, perished in the Challenger .

"You think about the length of time it took between the deaths of the three astronauts in Apollo 1 -that program was just stopped. It was dead in its tracks until they just worked and worked and worked on it. It was that way after the Challenger flight. Everything is stopped for a long time. And they'll stop now."

But it will return. Mr. Wolfe said the astronauts of the Columbia -Husband, Brown, Anderson, Clark, Ramon, Chawla and McCool-while they weren't gritty test-pilot types, were basically the same as their predecessors. "These people knew the risks," he said. "They knew what they were doing. They wanted to do it. And there are plenty of others more than willing to take the next flight, I'm sure."

As Mr. Wolfe wrote, the men and women who become astronauts aren't praying for their lives when the evil odds roll their way, they're thinking: "PLEASE DON'T LET ME FUCK UP."

"That's what Buzz Aldrin was saying in the papers this morning," said Mr. Wolfe. "You're not so much afraid for your hide, but are you going to look like somebody who gets rattled, or can't carry out the experiment? And the only thing they had to do in those early flights was hit the button at the right moment when they were re-entering earth's atmosphere."

The essential constitution of the astronaut-and the public's perception of him-remains the same. "If you're in a cocktail party and you say, 'See that guy over there'-and they're not very big-'He's an astronaut.' And even if he's not gone up to space yet, that room will suddenly converge on the astronaut. Because there is something-you talk about this admiration of the right stuff-it still exists on a far more unconscious level."

-Joe Hagan

Martha Graham's Ghost

The man who would be Martha Graham sat on the cheetah-patterned bedspread in his West 14th Street apartment. "I don't play her small and petite," said dancer Richard Move as he motioned to a photo of Graham hanging on the wall. On the other side of the room, a large vanity mirror hung behind a gurgling humidifier.

How could he? Large-framed and black-clad, with a prettier face than his idol, Mr. Move stood 6-foot-4 in his combat boots. A bull's-eye of platinum blond had been dyed into the crown of his jet black hair. When he smiled, he revealed a mouthful of crooked teeth.

"She was larger than life. She loomed ," he said with locked jaw.

"Her persona and her place in history is so large that somehow my height makes sense in that department. I think it's that extremity and passion, and that complete commitment and sacrifice, that fascinates me about her."

Were Graham still alive, who knows what she would make of Mr. Moves' admitted obsession with her. Since 1994, he has been impersonating Graham in a series of downtown shows-first at the nightclub Jackie 60 and then, until 2000, at Mother-called Martha@ . And if all goes as planned, next he'll be making the film-festival scene, promoting his turn as Graham in a strange little film about her life called Ghost Light , directed by Christopher Herrmann and featuring such staples of the 80's downtown scene as Ann Magnuson, Debbie Harry and former fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Figuring out what Graham's surviving acolytes think of Mr. Move is not so unfathomable. Though Mr. Move said that his Graham impersonation is "foremost an homage," he acknowledges that the dance guru's extreme personality quickly lent itself to satire.

"She was a real egomaniac and she's from another era, and I think that's part of the humor," he said. "People don't speak in these exalted, mystical tones right now. Later in life, she was always in fur, bejeweled, perfectly coifed, always had to be loved."

Though a number of Martha Graham Company dancers are involved with Ghost Light and the Martha@ series, others aren't thrilled that their inspiration is being lampooned by a large man in drag.

Shortly before Mr. Move's first performance of Martha@ , he received a cease-and-desist order from Ron Protas, Martha Graham's estate holder-himself no stranger to controversy when it comes to Graham. Mr. Move's alleged infraction: He had used a picture of Graham on the flyer. Ever since, Mr. Move has had to label all Martha@ paraphernalia with a disclaimer: "This is in no way connected to or sponsored by the Martha Graham Entities."

Pearl Lang, a longtime student of Graham who has taught at the school and been involved in the company for decades, said that Mr. Move's impersonation is "the most obscene thing I have ever heard of. Nobody should climb on anybody else's back for a career," she told The Transom. "I am totally and absolutely against the whole movie."

However, Ghost Light 's director, Mr. Herrmann, said that his leading man plays Graham "really straight" in the film. "It's still kind of campy, but you know Martha Graham was very campy," said Mr. Herrmann. The film, which The Transom screened, is ostensibly about the making of a documentary about Graham's final ballet. The filmmaker in Ghost Light is based on Hamptons documentarian Barbara Koppel, who incidentally doesn't know yet that she was the model for the role. Ms. Magnuson plays the filmmaker as an ambitious and pushy journalist who is enamored of Graham, but at the same time makes fun of her. Meanwhile, Mr. Move walks through the film with his face frozen in a haughty frown, spouting lines from Graham's autobiography. His imposing height and masculine physique leave the distinct impression that Ed Wood is alive and well and working as a casting director.

Mr. Herrmann said that despite its funny conceit, the film is true to life. "There's one scene where Martha asks the guys to adjust their penises when they're in rehearsal. People are like, 'Did she really do that?' Yeah, she did," he said. "People don't really know how funny Martha really was."

Meanwhile, Mr. Move said he turns "a deaf ear" to the controversy surrounding his Graham impersonation. He explained that because people who were close to Graham-such as dancer Bertram Ross (whom she called "my skin"), Linda Hodes and Merce Cunningham-support him, he finds the opposition unfounded. "I think that some people feel like any time you infuse something with a little humor, they think 'satire' and 'camp' are dirty words, and that's a kind of sensibility that finds what I do controversial and questions it. And I just think that's a really old way of thinking," he said, running his hands through the black roots of his platinum hair.

Mr. Move's fascination with Graham began at the tender age of 15, when he took his first Graham dance class in his hometown of Fredericksburg, Va. His high school didn't even offer modern dance, but his teacher took him to see a Graham performance at the Kennedy Center, and it was love at first sight. "I was close enough to see her bow," he remembered.

"I became kind of obsessed with her, and this amazing life," Mr. Move said. "I mean, it's 1929 and the stock market crashes and we're going into the Depression, and she's a woman and she's risking everything to rent a Broadway theater and do her work for one night and start an art form."

Mr. Move, who appears to be in his early 30's-"A lady never comments on her age," he said-began to work up his Graham impersonation in the 90's. He interspersed monologues by himself-as-Graham with performances by guest artists. "It was almost like a vaudeville variety show of dance. And Martha was a big vaudeville star, so it was kind of a nod to her days in the Greenville Follies and vaudeville, which she was so involved with before she was involved in her career that we know her for," he said.

"The idea is that Martha has never died, and she has now taken on this new reason in hosting this monthly dance series that she happens to curate, M.C. and host," he added, blowing out a long plume of smoke.

As for the ironic content of his performances, Mr. Move said: "I think irony and humor is a way in, and I think that's a very contemporary sensibility."

Some who studied under Graham found Martha@ too ironic. "The one episode I saw at Mother was the old video of her and Helen Keller," said Graham company dancer Miki Orihara. "That one I didn't really appreciate because he made fun of Helen Keller also. To me, I was a little bit hurt."

Ms. Orihara did give Mr. Move credit, however, for introducing Graham to "different types of audiences, more like what people call downtown dancers, who really think that Martha Graham is too snobby."

Mr. Move said that as Martha@ evolved he made his performances more serious and melancholy.

Eventually he accrued an interesting fan base. By the end of his series in 1999, Mikhail Baryshnikov was his guest and was performing in his ensemble. Merce Cunningham performed with him twice and Mark Morris performed with him four times. Actresses Jessica Lange and Julia Roberts, and artist Francesco Clemente, among others, came to his shows. Many became personal friends. Bertram Ross saw the show but had one complaint. "'You should wear a more blood-red lipstick.' That was his big comment," Mr. Move said.

And Mr. Herrmann said he got the idea for Ghost Light when he checked out Mr. Move's show. At first, the director said, he was "concerned that it would be over the top." However, working with the cast to tone down the film and scale back the humorous and theatrical aspects of the show convinced him that the movie could work. Graham would have approved, he rationalized. "She was a classicist," Mr. Herrmann said. "One of the most eye-opening experiences for me was her taking me to the Kabuki in Asia and all of the characters are played by men. All mythological pieces are played by men. All Shakespeare is, too. In her eyes, it's acceptable for a guy to play her." Especially this guy, because "he channels her."

-Alexandra Wolfe

The Daughter Is a Scamp

Tina Sinatra has declared herself the "keeper of the Sinatra flame." And that apparently includes maintaining her father's rigorous hatred of the press.

On Jan. 29, Ms. Sinatra-the spike-haired and eye-lined youngest daughter of the late singer-served as a host, along with New York Post columnist Liz Smith and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, at the Museum of Television and Radio's premiere of Sinatra Amidst the Pyramids , a heretofore unseen video of a concert that Sinatra père performed for then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1979.

A foreshadowing of Ms. Sinatra's media manners came early when Ms. Smith introduced her co-host with a string of reminiscences that induced cries of nostalgia and chuckles from the audience. Taking her cue, a teary-eyed Ms. Sinatra told the crowd that Ms. Smith's introduction was "the first good thing" a journalist had said about her in a long time.

The film suffers from sporadic blackouts, fuzzy photography and dizzying spins of the camera, but Sinatra's matchless baritone permeated the photographic fog so that the entire screening room was cheering and clapping wildly by the film's end. The Sphinx towering in the background provided an exotic element, and the Chairman of the Board's occasional stage banter seemed to thrill the M.T.& R. crowd (except for Mr. Wallace, who halfway through the film, hotfooted it over to his colleague Bob Shieffer's book party at Blue Smoke on 27th Street). Regarding the late Sadat, Sinatra said: "He really is a great cat." And then motioning to the pyramids, he told the audience: "I don't know how to tell you this, but I have two of those in my den back at home." It sure would be interesting to see how Sinatra would play in Egypt today.

At the post-screening reception in the museum lobby, The Transom attempted to squeeze between the fur-clad benefactors surrounding Ms. Sinatra to talk about one of her latest projects: a modern-day remake of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate that had starred her father. We also wanted to ask her how as chief executive of Sheffield Enterprises-the company that licenses the late Sinatra's name and likeness-she planned to market her father's work to the younger cats who aren't hip to Francis Albert.

Unfortunately, the minute we introduced ourselves, Ms. Sinatra looked like she'd taken a bite of a rancid cannoli. She shrunk wordlessly away from us while shaking her head.

In an attempt to make something of the event, The Transom sought solace-and a quote-from Ms. Smith the following morning. "She just doesn't like the press," she twanged in her Texan drawl. "She's just her father's child."

Ms. Smith sure sounded like she knew all the answers. So we asked her about The Manchurian Candidate and that thumbsucker about marketing Frank Sinatra to a younger audience. "I'm sure she couldn't give a shit about the younger generation," Ms. Smith shot back. "She just wants to make a movie that would be commercially viable."

-Zoe Slutzky