At the launch of Black Sweater, filmmaker (and Johnson & Johnson heir) Jamie Johnson's new men's wear line at Bergdorf Goodman, not even an epic hailstorm could keep the stampede of socialites away. The name comes from a WASP legend, in which an upper-class grande dame would send black cashmere sweaters to individuals she wished to banish from society for indecent behavior.

The clothes are billed as having elements of classic tailoring while pushing the limits of contemporary fashion. The line includes blazers, trench coats, trousers and the signature black sweater. Jamie has added a few "special touches" to the collection, like trousers with racy hand stitched cutouts: men holding tennis rackets on one side and naked women on the other. His signature black sweater has the names of great society destinations (Hobe Sound, Newport and Fisher's Island) hand-stitched on the cuffs, which can be conveniently rolled up out of view. The party was also thrown to celebrate tie-maker Alexander Olch's Spring 2011 collection.

Today, of course, the practice of explicitly expelling people from within the ranks of polite society no longer exists (although many undoubtedly wish it did). However, if the practice were still in place, who would this exclusive crew give a black sweater to?

Vanity Fair contributing editor Todd Eberle fingered the linen lining of one of the black jackets and said, "I'd give one to Victoria Jackson-that comedian who went on an anti-gay rant. What does she think she's doing?"

His friend Alexander May took a more political stance: "Sarah Palin. She could definitely use one, and, I mean, she needs to tone those bright colors down anyway."

A Ryan O'Neal look-alike named Hamilton introduced himself before turning away to admire a rack of gray flannels, showing the back of his green cashmere sweater riddled with moth holes. Todd sighed appreciatively after him, "This party is so haut WASP; I love that there are people called Hamilton wearing a sweater with holes in it."

Burgeoning filmmaker JC Khoury was eager to talk up his first feature film, "It's called The Pill, about a guy who has a one-night stand, takes the girl for the morning-after pill and his relationship with her in between the time she takes the first pill and the time she has to take the second pill 12 hours later. It's a mix of comedy, drama and romance, so I came up with 'romantic dramedy.'"

And who would he give a black sweater to? "Hmmm. Qaddafi. He's pretty out of line."

Most of the crowd appeared to know each other from schools, holidays abroad and clubs. The conversations drifting through the air could have been from a Fitzgerald novel, "Didn't I see you on Fisher's last summer? When are you heading up there?" "Can you believe this hail? I wish I'd decided to stay an extra week in Aspen." "Are you going to Jamie's dinner after at Desmond's?"

Despite the cocktail party atmosphere, the conversation kept returning to the host's clothes. One guest who preferred not to be named said, "These clothes are nice but expensive, that's what killed Tom Ford. I mean, how can these compete with J.Crew?"

The designer himself seemed to hang back from the crowd even though his attention was much in demand. Although it was rumored that Jamie had been shunned from polite society after his 2003 documentary Born Rich, The Observer saw no evidence of that, as members of the Rockefeller and Bloomingdale families were in attendance, as well as various American countesses.

How did he come up with the concept? "Well, I didn't, only because it was a pre-existing story and I found it interesting. Stylistically, the stuff draws on that faction of the upper class and the patrician world. I think it is routed in traditional tailoring. Men want a very classic look with subtle variations. There are these traditional tailoring references which come from uniforms, whether they are institutional references like schools or sporting uniforms or equestrian wear."

Has he abandoned film to become a clothing designer? "No, movies are happening; currently there is an HBO documentary going on. I can't get too much into what it is about, but a new film is afoot."

And who would he give his black sweater to? "The Kennedy cousin who crashed his car and claimed he was only on 'sleeping pills.'" Would he give a black sweater to Charlie Sheen? "I would definitely give a black sweater to Charlie Sheen-and a copy of Emily Post."

Nina Garcia might be following the cameras and going over to Marie Claire just as Project Runway chucks Elle to make the magazine its new sponsor. [The Cut]

Alec Baldwin tells 60 Minutes that before he left that sweet voice mail for his daughter, he was thinking of running for office and he still might do it! [P6]

Liv Tyler and husband Royston Langdon have officially announced their separation. [NY Daily News]

Jamie Johnson, the Johnson heir and that guy that made Born Rich, is blogging for Vanity Fair, says Wasps are the hot new thing. [Daily Intel]

Paul Giamatti is being considered for the part of Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's W biopic about George Bush. [EW]

“I am an elitist,” he said in his basso Italiano, as a small fiefdom of waiters in neat black suits whisked silently about the restaurant. “I believe in an elite, I believe that people want an elite … because there’s always been one, whether it be an oligarchy or a dictatorship.”

He tore himself a small piece of caramel-colored bread that had, several minutes earlier, been wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside his left jacket pocket. The young aristocrat always brings his own bread, made from spelt and imported from an Ohio bakery, when he dines out at restaurants. It’s part of his “vanity diet,” he explained as he took a bite, and launched back into his exegesis.

“There’s a pinnacle of society, and people want to reach it. It’s part of those wonderful Jeffersonian words, the pursuit of your happiness,” he said. “Those who don’t have want to have more”—he paused as a French-accented black waiter deposited a pre-appetizer in front of him—“and those who have, have different pursuits.”

As an unrepentant member of the latter category, Mr. Franchetti has spent much of the last decade carefully honing such “pursuits”—none, of course, resembling anything so functional as a profession. He has read the books in his “extensive library,” collected rotary phones, studied the different kinds of marble (he is “something of an expert”), experimented with modeling (as a way to “explore” his vanity) and made weekly trips to his tailor—all in happy, anachronistic anonymity. But of late he has begun cultivating a new interest, one which he feels is particularly suited to his role as courtier at the modern-day Versailles of New York: He has resolved to make himself a reality-TV star.

“This is a place of display, therefore you display yourself,” he said.

And in the age of famous-for-being-famous, there is no better way for a young aristocrat to shine than by borrowing some moves from the princess of pout herself.

“Paris Hilton is, yes, in a larva form what I pretend to do,” Mr. Franchetti said during one of several conversations, which included the seminar at Le Bernardin as well as a chat at the Algonquin Hotel Lounge. “Or maybe a Gore Vidal, but a cheaper version, and more populistic. He was very provocatory and literate,” he said, then paused to reconsider after it was pointed out that Mr. Vidal is something of a leftist radical.

“I see this as a void for someone who creates discussion,” he went on, “who is again provocatory, but not because they dance on tables.”

By his own estimation, Mr. Franchetti took his most successful stab at provoking such discussion in Born Rich, the 2003 documentary-cum-therapy-session made by Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson. In the film, the former model’s stratospheric wealth was exceeded only by his ability to ­offend. “I find guilt [over wealth] absolutely senseless. It’s basically for old women and nuns,” he said in one scene as he sat in his book-lined West Village apartment, a black Hamburg Steinway off to his right. In another scene, he pronounced Bill Clinton’s penchant for suits with low-riding lapels “vulgar.”

But his most notorious line was his attempt to invoke the modern aristocrat’s great struggle between his dueling low and high impulses (or what Mr. Franchetti later called the “Dionysian and Apollonian forces.”) “I’m reading a book and I’m thinking about a pussy, but I find when I get the pussy, I’m thinking about the book,” he said.

Mr. Franchetti wasn’t surprised by some of the reactions to his film debut—“I knew that it was going to be scandalous!”—and waved any outrage off as little more than bourgeois conventionalism. “I mean, it’s a Nietzschean theory—it’s nothing that I’ve invented,” he said of his pussy/book formulation.

But some of the young baron’s friends have yet to get over the shock of Born Rich. “I don’t want to talk about that movie—come on!” said Nicola Bulgari, the longtime Franchetti family friend and scion of the house of Bulgari, the noted Italian jewelers. “He’s a different guy than that. He’s so much more complex. He’s not superficial at all.”

For Mr. Franchetti, however, Born Rich was both affirmation and inspiration, a chance to test-ride his theory that a person can buy fame so long as he is possessed of youth, money and good looks. He calls these traits the “mediatic trinity.”

“I don’t believe that I am better because of these things,” he said, “but I see its effect on people.”

And so while some of his Born Rich co-stars, like Autotote gaming heir Luke Weil, got busy denouncing the film or scrambling for cover, Mr. Franchetti chose to hire a publicist from power agency PMK and began promoting himself.

“My idea was that they put you in the public eye and they actually make you famous,” he said.

Toward this end, he embarked on a plan that seemed to consist above all of strutting the red carpet at movie premieres, signing onto Mr. Johnson’s sophomore film effort (an upcoming documentary about “capitalism and empire”), and kicking up the occasional tabloid spat (including a sniffy little back-and-forth with fellow socialite Fabian Basabe). Along the way, he received—and rejected—an offer to star on the find-a-wife reality series, The Bachelor, and snared a cameo as one of Lisa Loeb’s dates on her new reality show, #1 Single. He treated the one-hit crooner to a chauffeured drive in a ’41 Buick limousine and said that no numbers were exchanged.

“She is very—how should I put it?—petit bourgeois,” he said. The episode airs February 12.

But all these little brushes with fame are really just preludes to that powerful celebrity launching pad, the reality-TV series. For a time, he thought the show would be a kind of “aristocratic eye for the common guy,” as he told the Daily News in December, a humorous romp in which he would instruct grubby-handed American types on the mysteries of proper etiquette. But after the prime networks and cable channels didn’t bite, he began working, with the help of a William Morris agent, on selling a second series about his attempt to buy fame—a kind of meta-meta-show that would be “sort of Entourage-y,” but real, he said. He is currently in discussions with a network (which he refused to identify) and said he hoped to have an answer in the next few weeks.

Never mind that reality shows are about as European as Burger King and have about as much aristocratic panache. In the 21st century, a nobleman has to make do with what is available to him.

“Yes, absolutely, [it’s] cheap, trashy—I’m well aware of that,” Mr. Franchetti said with a small smile. “But we live in the age of Paris Hilton, my dear, so what am I going to do—a show where I discuss Flaubert with people that call in? No, I don’t think so.”

Besides, he said later, “I want to be reduced. I would like to be a teenage heartthrob, I want to be on the tabloid, I want to be reduced to shit. But I don’t identify myself with that. I don’t have an identity problem. I know who I am.”

SEVERAL MINUTES INTO HIS FIRST COURSE AT LE BERNARDIN, Mr. Franchetti interrupted himself to peer at the rim of the white china plate that a waiter had placed in front of him. “Have you noticed that you can tell that your plate has been wiped on the sides?” he asked, enunciating each word. “They always wipe it to keep it clean, but you shouldn’t see streaks. Or at least they should arrange that the light be less direct so you wouldn’t see these streaks of the wipe, no?”

Mr. Franchetti is used to being catered to. He grew up in Rome, surrounded mostly by servants, since his father, Andrea, was busy playing about in the United States and his mother, the actress Angelica Ippolito, was often touring with a theater company. His parents, who never married, split up after eight years.

He attended international schools, but said he got on better with the adults in his mother’s salon—“like Fellini, Mastroianni”—than he did with his peers. “I was always listening to adults’ conversation, so I had no rapport with people my age. I couldn’t relate to them,” he said. By the time he was 14, he was living on his own.

At 19, the young Franchetti came to New York on his own to study piano, first privately and later at the Mannes College of Music. It was during this period that he experienced his first unpleasant brush with anonymity, and it is to this period that he traces, indirectly, his “chasing for” celebrity.

“There is this sort of thing of nobility—it’s very similar to being a movie star,” he said. “I came to America, and all of a sudden I am no one …. So, being used to it, I want to recreate it.” But while Mr. Franchetti craves fame, or at least infamy, he was adamant that these are not “inherent social ambition[s],” since true aristocrats can’t actually be bothered by anything so prosaic as a career goal. “It’s not a ­real ambition; it’s only because I’m here,” he said. “I know that I’ll retire in the castle with my books, and I don’t really give a damn. I know that that’s what I want eventually. New York to me is a vitrine—that’s why I’m loving it. But after 35, 40, good-bye.”

The Franchetti dynasty traces its roots back 700 years, to what was then a wealthy Jewish Italian family with a knack for trade, banking and eventually transport (they ran a courier service). It was always an influential clan, but it reached its “apogee,” as Mr. Franchetti calls it, during the 19th century, when the family acquired both a title and a Rothschild (namely, Mr. Franchetti’s great-great-great-grandmother). Since then, the heirs have busied themselves mostly with spending money and then renewing it through marriages that have linked them to everyone from Henry Fonda (in the case of socialite Afdera Fonda) to Cy Twombly (in the case of Mr. Franchetti’s great-aunt, Tatiana).

Along the way, Mr. Franchetti’s grandfather, the dashing Baron Mario Franchetti, married the American textile heiress Anne Milliken (now the young baron’s grandmother and the source of much of his wealth). And his father eventually wed Fiora Pirri, a Sicilian princess who is now a professor of artificial intelligence but spent several years in prison after joining a radical guerrilla group in the 1970’s. (The stepson still refers to her as “the terrorist.”)

As for Mr. Franchetti, he said that he doesn’t like rich girls (notwithstanding a romance with Lola Schnabel several years ago and a recent alleged flirtation with Lindsay Lohan). Rich girls, he said, are “less feminine and more annoying … because they’re not in tune with themselves; they’re in tune with being trendy.”

But penny-poor aristocrats are a different matter. “I would probably find that appealing,” the bachelor baron chuckled—though he also noted that “often, if they’re very aristocratic, they’re ugly because they’re inbred.”

Mr. Franchetti has spent an exhaustive—and exhausting—amount of time contemplating his dying caste. While he boasted that he is “completely unaware of the history of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, or what’s going on”—interest in the present being a bourgeois conceit, after all—he spent a good part of one conversation giving a book report on the Spanish Armada. And he never seemed to tire of citing a favorite Lytton Strachey essay that he felt really summed up the predicament of today’s aristocracy.

“Aristocrats have nothing left, really. They’re slightly ridiculous; they’re shorn beings and slightly out of place everywhere they go,” he said. “The only thing aristocrats have left is manners. Because, after all, they don’t have real influence—we don’t live in the 18th century. So the only thing that separates them from the multitude is manners.”

Mr. Franchetti smiled at this summation. As a self-proclaimed devotee of all things ancien régime, he has made it something of a project to preserve these last barriers against the multitude. He has read Galateo, the 16th-century bible of social etiquette, and has devoured Il Cortegiano, the same century’s primer on courtly manners. He says he has a “physical reaction” when a woman walks up to a table of men and the men just sit there “with their asses stuck to the chairs.” But, like the truest of aristocrats, he is also willing to throw his manners to the wind when he doesn’t get his way—as he once did when he encountered a particularly recalcitrant feminist.

“It was magnificent,” he said. “It was at a bank or an office building on Park Avenue, and there was a big, big, very heavy door, and I opened it to let her go through, and she said, ‘I’m not a paraplegic.’ So I said, ‘Fine.’ I let it go, and it crushed her.”

Mr. Franchetti knows such stories are bound to raise hackles. He has no problem if everyone loves to hate him, he said, though he would like to be “hated correctly.” “Provocation is an essential thing for me, and it is something that I think is necessary in this panorama of blandness,” he said. “Is it a performance? Yes. Is it real? It’s also real.”

Mr. Franchetti turned his attention to the check, which he insisted was his duty to pay, a journalist’s ethics notwithstanding. A five-minute debate ensued, during which he cited everything from the imperatives of etiquette to the importance of the nobleman’s “grande geste,” to the value of being seen in his “natural environment.” While the service had been “disappointing” and the restaurant (Le Bernardin) looked like an “airport,” duty was duty, he said.

“It’s part of the being-with-me, which I think transcends the professional duty,” he said. “Your professional duty is to have me kept happy. Then you can write that I’m a dick, I don’t care—you can write whatever you want.

“By the way,” he added, interrupting himself. “I’ve studied rhetoric inside out. All of Cicero. So, just so you know, I’m very good—I can turn a discussion any way I please.”

With that, he grabbed the leather-bound check binder, placed conveniently at his side, and snapped his gold Chase card inside.

He smiled. It was nearly midnight. The waiters were still bustling about the restaurant, ministering to the evening’s last customers. Mr. Franchetti was off to play poker in one of the underground clubs he frequents.

“You see,” he said, “I’m more interesting than you thought.”

"Her family just joined the club," replied one of the two brunettes gravely.

"Well, it's kind of true," said the third. All were referring to comments that their fellow club member, Christina Floyd, made in Johnson and Johnson heir Jamie Johnson's documentary Born Rich , which also features appearances by Ivanka Trump, daughter of developer Donald Trump; Georgina Bloomberg, daughter of Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and S.I. Newhouse IV, grandson of Condé Nast owner S.I. Newhouse.

Though Mr. Johnson's film has been screened only a handful of times-most notably at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered last January-it caused a furor after the New York Post and other publications reported some of the indiscreet comments made by the film's subjects, the children of wealthy, well-known and social families, some of whom said they had thought they were appearing in a student film that would never be seen by a large audience.

To their dismay, that audience will grow exponentially when the film, which has been acquired by HBO, screens at the Hamptons International Film Festival on Oct. 24 and on the pay-cable channel beginning Oct. 27. Born Rich will even be available on the HBO on Demand channel, a service that allows viewers to watch, pause and rewind the program as if it were a video.

"Had I known that it was going to be shown to the entire world on prime-time HBO-HBO now is as big as being on a network lately-I definitely don't think I would've done it," said 27-year-old Josiah Hornblower, a descendant of the Whitney and Vanderbilt clans who appears in the film.

The backlash that followed the Sundance screening and the first wave of press reports resulted in at least one lawsuit from one of the film's participants-Luke Weil, the son of Lorne Weil, chief executive of Scientific Games, which supplies instant tickets, validation systems and facilities-management services to two-third's of the country's lotteries-and a number of angry, embarrassed families who had heretofore observed a code of silence about their wealth and privilege. As Mr. Johnson's lawyer tells him in Born Rich : "They've always made it gospel that you don't want to talk about your family."

As the film's subjects and their families gird themselves for a new wave of publicity, the majority of Born Rich kids who spoke to The Transom said they regretted participating in the film, especially because they were about to be judged for comments that they made as long as four years ago, when they were younger and, they said, much less mature.

"This has been a total nightmare," said one of the film's subjects on the condition of anonymity. "I look like a total moron, and that's not who I am."

So what did they say that has caused such a fuss? The Transom recently saw the version of Born Rich that screened at Sundance and took some notes. In that version, Ms. Floyd, the daughter of renowned golfer Ray Floyd, took Mr. Johnson on a tour of the Southampton social clubs to which her family belongs. Of the Meadow Club in Southampton, she said: "People would not be very excited if someone came in with a black person." When Mr. Johnson pointed to a black person playing tennis, Ms. Floyd replied: "Oh, he's probably a pro."

At the Southampton Bathing Corporation, Ms. Floyd told the filmmaker, "I brought three Jewish girls to the club today for lunch," then added prophetically: "Who knows, I may get kicked out tomorrow." Ms. Floyd did not return calls seeking comment.

Mr. Johnson, who sounds like Kermit the Frog imitating Mr. Rogers, doesn't have too many embarrassing moments -perhaps because he's the director-but there was one tense scene with his father, James Johnson.

"Your nervousness about this film could mean you're nervous about who you are," Jamie told his clearly uncomfortable dad. "Is it that you do not want me to make the same mistakes you did?"

"Maybe," said Johnson père .

Ms. Trump and Ms. Bloomberg didn't fare badly at all in the film. And young Mr. Newhouse's only real faux pas was his remark that "my family has about $20 billion of attainable assets."

The real loose lips, it turned out, belonged to Cody Franchetti, Milliken textile heir and great-great-grandson of Italian aristocrat Giorgio Franchetti, and Mr. Weil.

At times, Mr. Franchetti sounded like a junior Berlusconi. "I find guilt [over wealth] absolutely senseless. It's basically for old women and nuns," he said in one scene. In another, he looked in the mirror at a new jacket he's wearing and said: "Clinton wears this kind of thing. It's so vulgar. See how low the lapels are!"

But Mr. Franchetti was not above a little vulgarity himself. After pronouncing that "It is the duty of the rich to cultivate themselves," he told Mr. Johnson: "I'm reading a book and I'm thinking about a pussy, but I find when I get the pussy, I'm thinking about the book."

As for Mr. Weil, it's understandable why he hired attorney Mike Heller last September to sue Mr. Johnson, charging that the documentary had "caused myself and my family irreparable personal humiliation and damage."

Early in the version that screened at Sundance, Mr. Weil seemed reluctant to take part. "I really can't believe I'm doing this," he said. "I have sort of apprehensions. I would worry about what my parents would think. Describing a bunch of people's wealth-it's just kind of tacky."

But Mr. Weil eventually became quite comfortable in front of the camera as he described the ups and downs of growing up wealthy. "I was picked up from school to go on holidays in a huge limo. It was embarrassing," he told Mr. Johnson. "I made an effort to identify with, like, maids working in our house or baby-sitters."

He also talked about his experiences with drugs. "We had incredibly precocious drug habits that we made such a point of flaunting to the world," he said. At boarding school, if some small-town kid came up to me, I could be like, 'Fuck you, I'm from New York. Piss off-my family could buy your family.'"

By all accounts, Mr. Weil remains one of the subjects of the edited Born Rich -like everyone involved, he signed a release form-but whether he and his lawyer were successful in at least trimming some of his comments is a matter of speculation.

Mr. Weil, Mr. Heller and Mr. Johnson declined to comment for this article, but one source familiar with the film said that Mr. Weil "looks a lot better than he did before."

And though an HBO spokeswoman told The Transom that "we did not change the content of the film," explaining that the only changes to the film were the addition of music and graphics, a number of Born Rich 's subjects were under the impression that the documentary had changed since its Sundance debut.

"The parts with Jamie and his dad were trimmed down a lot," said Mr. Newhouse. "Of course, it was cut for time, and now it's more about the other kids."

This past July, Mr. Johnson invited Mr. Hornblower, Mr. Newhouse and Ms. Trump-the three participants who come out best in the film-to accompany him to Los Angeles to promote the film at the Television Critics Association convention.

Mr. Hornblower, who now works as a research analyst at a small New York investment firm, took the trip-though, he said, he has some regrets about doing the film. He wishes he hadn't revealed how much money he made each year and dislikes how he was portrayed in an article that the film's producer, novelist Dirk Wittenborn, wrote for W magazine. "I just feel the hair going up on my neck," Mr. Hornblower said. "I just cringe."

And, of course, there's the "embarrassment and humiliation with family," Mr. Hornblower said. "They realize I did it, it's something that can't be erased and they trust me and they love me so there's no reason to get upset or mad." But he added: "It's worse for other kids though. You really see some kids that don't come across very well. You will not like them after seeing the movie."

Mr. Newhouse, who's currently working at the family-owned newspaper in New Orleans, the Times-Picayune , was considerably more opaque about his family's reaction. "I'm going to have to say I really don't have an answer about it," he said.

Mr. Newhouse, who was a college freshman when he was first interviewed, trained virtually all of his criticism for Born Rich on his performance: "The parts where I thought I was well spoken weren't nearly as good as I thought," he said. "He got some stuff of me fencing. I was really flattered, but I was angry at myself cause it was not my best fencing."

The Condé Nast heir also noted that he had changed a great deal since he was first interviewed in 1999. "I like the things I said, but I think I'm a little less bitter now," he said. "It was my first year of college and I had a lot of things going on and I just wanted someone to say it to and put it down in concrete." He still remains on friendly terms with Mr. Johnson.

As for the other stars of Born Rich , Mr. Newhouse said: "Some of these kids just said some terrible things, if you ask me it just said bad things about them."

Juliet Hartford, the daughter of A.&P. heir Huntington Hartford and a 27-year-old model and artist living in New York, said she doesn't really have a problem with how she's depicted in the film, but she added she didn't know if she would have done Born Rich if she knew how many people were going to see it. She also said she thought Mr. Johnson was trying to make a documentary along the lines of Seven Up , the series of British documentaries, most of them directed by Michael Apted, that revisited a group of British children every seven years. "I think Jamie wanted to film people again in five years, but I don't think anyone's going to agree in five years to be filmed again," she said.

Mr. Franchetti said that, for the most part, he enjoyed the film, which he saw at Sundance. "It's not that flattering for me, but I think it has a good dose of humor," he said.

If he was upset about anything it was his portrayal in the press. Because he talks about modeling in the film, Mr. Franchetti complained that a number of publications labeled him as a "model" in their coverage. "It's something I did, but that's not what I do now," he said. Asked what he does now, Mr. Franchetti said, "I say 'nothing.' It's not anyone's business to be defined by what you do."

Mr. Franchetti said that he has been unable to decide whether his family thought it was a good thing for him to be "direct" about his wealth in Born Rich , or wished he had kept his mouth shout. "Coming from a family where you just never talk about these things and it is so taboo, it's actually detrimental growing up to have this secrecy about it," he said. Mr. Franchetti paused a bit, then said: "My family I think is quite, they feel, they're indifferent. I'm indifferent. I think it is what it is. I've been living alone since I've been 14 so I'm very independent. So I don't really care."

-Alexandra Wolfe

The Grateful Dead

"I think there's more than just dead people in here," said Jerry Orbach, a.k.a. Law and Order 's Det. Lennie Briscoe, standing in the back of Elaine's on the evening of Sept. 25. He was staring at a suspicious pile of coffee-table books titled Law and Order: Crime Scenes , the latest creation by prolific producer Dick Wolf and the show's on-staff photographer, Jessica Burstein.

Mr. Orbach, hunched over and wearing a Briscoe-like red paisley tie, picked up one of the plastic-encased tomes and handled it furtively. The Transom suggested that he rip off the plastic wrap and peer inside, but-stickler for the law that he plays-he just shrugged and set the book down. "No, I can't," he said. "It's sealed."

Had he opened the book, Mr. Orbach would've found photos of (among other things) a severed arm, a half-dozen gushing head wounds, two deaths by drowning, a child run over by a car and a dead camel. But they were all just actors. The photos, along with character bios, script excerpts and a lively essay by Mr. Wolf, comprise an homage to the 13-year-old series.

"At any given time, there are well over nine million people across the world seeing one of the shows on one of the outlets," said Mr. Wolf, his sharp eyes glistening below his pronounced brow. "It's like visual nicotine. Some people get addicted."

Just then, as in a real episode, a wealthy, Pucci-clad divorcée entered the room. It was Sharon Bush, the perky, blond soon-to-be ex-wife of first brother Neil Bush and the mother of model Lauren Bush.

"I love Law and Order ! Of course!" she tittered. Whether she was referring to the show or to the fact that she was in town to visit her divorce attorneys was unclear, but the irony seemed to escape Ms. Bush. Logic seemed to escape her, too. "I watch it all the time. But I don't watch TV, except with my younger daughter, and she only watches The Bachelor ."

Which means you don't watch Law and Order , ma'am? Just the facts, please.

Ms. Bush's brow furrowed. "Well, my daughter is really too young for it. Of course I also watch the news, but the news is depressing," she said. Suddenly remembering her right to remain silent, she whispered something to the restaurant's proprietress, Elaine Kaufman, and then dashed away.

Good thing Ms. Bush didn't bring her kid to the party. Outside the restaurant, Nicole Vicas, a 26-year-old platinum-blond actress, was sprawled on a cocktail table, playing dead behind yellow crime-scene tape. Her face had blade marks on it; her hair was caked with blood. At 8 p.m., she took a break and groggily considered her motivation for the part. "This is really hard. I've been on the show before," she said, licking fake pus off her thumb. "But last time I was dead, I think I was shot. That was easier." She spit out some blood and the smiled. "But at least I'm getting paid really well. And I got a picture of me dead with Jerry Orbach."

-John Gallagher and Anna Jane Grossman

The Transom Also Hears ….

· The solid-jawed gentleman with a video camera documenting the Sept. 29 benefit "A Life As Art: A Tribute to Mickey Ruskin and Max's Kansas City" was too young to have gone to the old Max's on 213 Park Avenue, but knew someone who could bring him up to speed.

"My father went to Max's," said 33-year-old Jojo Pennebaker, whose father is Don't Look Back documentarian D.A. Pennebaker. Now, Pennebaker fils was making his own documentary about Max's, which he's calling A Walk on the Inside , and his pappy isn't involved. Mr. Pennebaker said the film "is something from which I've been able to reconnect with my father." He looked around the room at the middle-aged men and women, consuming pizza and holding forth on their old friend Andy, and said, "It's amazing to see them as the human beings that they are. I can relate to them now. [Growing up,] these were people that were just odd-looking half uncles to me at the beach."

-Elon R. Green

· That DUMBO finally is the new Tribeca! On Friday, Oct. 10-just in time to start the weekend brunch line snaking around the corner-Bubby's Pie Company will open a Brooklyn outpost on Main Street in the neighborhood that has become popular with artists and Wall Street guys who like converting factories into big lofts with Sub-Zero refrigerators. Bubby's original location, on the corner of Hudson and N. Moore streets, has offered comfort food to Wall Street guys, artists and Robert De Niro since 1990.

-Rebecca Traister