Jun 1, 2007 01:42 PM
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Hollywood, 8:49 AM
Tue Feb 9
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The battle for the entertainment industry's hearts, minds, and huge, filthy piles of cash raged on at the home of noted local political hacktivist Brett Ratner, who on Wednesday night generously hosted a campaign fundraiser for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. At the event, a mere $250 donation afforded Young Hollywood a rare chance to get close enough to the candidate to discuss matters of policy while gyrating to the strains of "It Takes Two" at Hillhaven Lodge's in-house disco, and an upgrade to the VIP level of patronage bought each Clinton supporter 90 seconds of face-to-face time with the senator in Ratner's famous photo booth. Var recaps the party, including an obligatory roll call of attendees:
With a minimum ticket price of $250, Ratner's event was aimed at "young Hollywood," but the crowd would more accurately be described as "young-ish," as it drew a mix of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, hardly the hardcore tabloid-bred nightclub crowd of the Sunset Boulevard. Nevertheless, paparazzi was in full force as web site TMZ.com captured donors as they crossed Benedict Canyon Road to Ratner's home, called Hilhaven. Inside, it was a bit more staid than when Ratner allowed "Entourage" to shoot a scene in which bikini clad women wandered around his property, a riff on his image as the consummate party host. He did, however, open up his basement disco, installed when Allan Carr lived there in the 1970sStars such as Eric Dane, Rebecca Gayheart, Will.I.Am, Jeremy Piven, Angie Banicki, Michelle Trachtenberg, Brent Bolthouse and Chris Klein mixed with Steve Bing, James Toback, Quincy Jones, Brian Grazer, Kevin Smith, Holly Wiersma, Pauly Shore, California State Assemblyman Mike Feuer and political and fund-raising consultant Noah Mamet, among others. New NBC chief Ben Silverman also was there, often consumed with pressing business, and eying and typing into his Blackberry. Absent were any gift bags — people asked — as the campaign forbids such gifts at the risk of violating finance laws.
While those pesky campaign finance laws prevented the distribution of freebies, the disappointed looks on the faces of empty-handed donors hoping to get at least a Kiehl's sampler and a coupon for a Burke-Williams rubdown for their contributions did give the politically nimble Clinton an opening to address the hot-button issue of gift bag taxation. Over the disco's state-of-the-art sound system, the senator pledged that once elected, eliminating the hated, controversial tax would be the topmost item on her agenda, supplanting "the bullshit that you don't need to care about, like health care reform and the Iraq and whatever."
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