Farewell, 2009...

Gotham Bar and Grill occupies an enormous space on East Twelfth Street in what is technically Greenwich Village. Not the fourth-floor walkup West, but the lower Fifth Avenue Village. Twenty-five years after its opening, a veritable millennium in restaurant years, Gotham retains a singular New York City sense of energy and spectacle. The high ceilings, the parachute-fabric-swathed lighting, the floor-to-ceiling windows--day or night it feels exciting to be there. Working at Gotham back in the Nineties, we encountered a lot of boldface names, although the restaurant rarely closed for a Page Six-type event. We were likelier to see Dustin Hoffman stroll in incognito like Ratso Rizzo in a rumpled trench to see if we were still serving lunch, or Robert Redford unassumingly making his way around the perimeter of the dining room to a quiet table in the back.

We do remember one red-carpet event from our days and nights on Gotham's checkerboard parquet: the Spring 1998 premiere party for the movie The Object of My Affection, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. The movie, based on Stephen McCauley's 1987 novel about a pregnant women who becomes attracted to her gay best friend, pulled together quite a number of theretofore underappreciated talents: Hytner was fresh off his smash Lincoln Center Theater Carousel revival, and Rudd was skimming the first crest of a career on the rise. As for Aniston, in addition to Friends, still high atop the ratings, she'd recently scored a singular personal (and professional) coup: dating Brad Pitt.

Pitt didn't attend the premiere party, but there were the prinicipals and plenty of others to note. Bret Easton Ellis, an early arrival, made a beeline for the food. Janeane Garofalo jumped whenever we proffered our lighted Zippo for her frequent cigarettes. Amy Irving asked us not to poke her with the serving utensils, and the model Hoyt Richards looked surprised when addressed by name. As for the stars, we didn't see Mr. Rudd, but during hors d'oeuvre passage in the rear dining room, we noted Miss Aniston's near-empty martini glass, and glided over to ask if we could get her another. "Yes," she said, pausing Rachel-style to drain the contents. "A Cosmopolitan. But..." --she raised the index finger that had been wagged so often at Ross (and Joey and Chandler)--"...with olives." She smiled her crooked half-smile. "I know. You probably think I'm weird." Not at all, we replied, smiling in an understanding way. A girl who drank Cosmopolitans with olives? Way to go, Brad. We got your girl's back...

We remember this event not just because of the rare conjunction of so many celebs in the Gotham's loft-like space, but because the crowd was unexpectedly loose and easy-going. With not a little sadness, we particularly remember one late arrival to the party. She showed up around the time the DJ put on an uptempo remix of that season's smash single, Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partiro. An actress from a movie we loved and will always love, Brittany Murphy grabbed us by the wrist as we were passing with an open magnum of Veuve Clicquot and pulled us to the center of the dance area. She threw down a few good moves, so we threw caution to the wind, passed the magnum to a backwaiter, and joined her for a scant but unforgettable moment during which we became an even-bigger fan than seemed possible by her now-legendary performance in Clueless. We know that few line readings will ever match up to the razor-sharp snap! in her comeback to Alicia Silverstone, "You're a virgin who can't drive..." We were particularly intrigued by online rumors linking her to an impending adaptation of D.M. Thomas's novel The White Hotel. Sadly, suddenly, we are now left, like others, wondering.

We'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the many bright spirits we said goodbye to in 2009. May they rest in peace. And to the rest of us, best wishes for 2010.