‘Serendipity’ Screening

Still shaken by Terrible Tuesday, we decided it was time to pull away from CNN and go out. Dinner and a movie, how tough could that be? The movie was a screening of “Serendipity,” starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. The dinner was hosted by Miramax at the House Restaurant in Hollywood.

Cusack and Beckinsale play strangers who meet at the Bloomingdale’s glove counter, spend the most fabulous evening of their lives together, then part. Ten years later, they find each other again.

Everybody was on edge. Just before producer Simon Fields stepped to the microphone in the screening room at the Directors Guild building, the contraption let out a thundering thud and squeal. Startled audience members flinched and ducked. But the movie was just what the doctor ordered. It’s sweet and magical and funny and life-affirming. The plot twists stay just on the right side of hokey, and we forgot our worries for a while. “If we go to war, this is what we’ll be seeing in theaters,” US Weekly’s Todd Gold whispered from a couple of seats away. Better comedy and romance than big explosions and special effects, we whispered back.

Then reality barged in, uninvited. The Christmas scenes of a glittering Manhattan left us mournful. And yes, director Peter Chelsom somberly acknowledged, the towers of the World Trade Center were edited from a couple of scenes.

At dinner, guests could talk of little else but terrorism and the specter of war. One exception was co-star John Corbett, who partied like it was 1999. We looked up from our creme brulee to see the blond seated next to Corbett draping her leg across his lap. Then the woman across the table from him undid a few buttons of her blouse and gave her cleavage a lift. Was it like this in London during the Blitz? Corbett didn’t want to talk to a buttoned-up, not quite blond newspaper columnist and, frankly, we weren’t all that interested, either. Suffice to say that in “Serendipity,” just as in “Sex and the City,” his character can’t find the right engagement ring.

Cusack never planned to attend and Beckinsale couldn’t bring herself to indulge in self-promotion. “She just doesn’t feel that it’s an appropriate time to be celebrating,” her publicist said. “If this were a benefit for the victims, she’d be there in a minute.”

Actor Jeremy Piven, who plays Cusack’s wisecracking, obituary-writing best friend, made up for his “Serendipity” co-stars. “This is a lot of people’s first function,” he explained. “They promised me that it would be very intimate.” Piven’s drumming fingers and spastic left knee betrayed the raw nerves just beneath the surface. He hopes the movie will provide audiences some much-needed escapism. “I need to escape,” he said. Amen to that.

Piven said the tragedy of Sept. 11 “always seems to be looming,” and he has wondered about his role in a scary new world. “How can I contribute? We’ve always needed the jesters and the storytellers,” he said. “If you stop thinking about all this for a moment and lose yourself in the story, it’s a great movie for these times. It’s like a love letter to New York. There’s something kind of ethereal in the story and the way it’s told. This could maybe be a little tonic movie for the times.”

At the end of the night, we did feel better. Miramax plans a New York premiere for “Serendipity” on Oct. 3; it opens in theaters nationwide Oct. 5.

Open Checkbooks

Add America’s sweetheart to the million dollar club. Julia Roberts, who lives in New York, donated $2 million to relief funds for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist acts, her publicist said .... Hugh Hefner has asked that $100,000 of the money to be raised Saturday, when he’s roasted by the New York Friar’s Club, be split between the city’s police and firefighters’ relief funds .... The comedy improv troupe the Groundlings donated proceeds from Saturday’s shows to the firefighter’s relief fund

On the Peace Train?

Yusuf Islam, formerly known as singer Cat Stevens, denies rumors he is associated with a militant Muslim group in Britain. “Like most Muslims all over the world, I want to state without reservation that massacres like those committed in the United States have nothing to do with Islam or with the beliefs of most Muslims,” he said in a letter to the French newspaper Le Figaro. The 1970s pop singer said he’d heard that a French television report linked him to hard-line Muslim activist Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Islam, who changed his name after converting to the religion more than two decades ago, called the terrorism of Sept. 11 “an appalling tragedy” and cautioned against a violent counterattack: “This situation must not be exacerbated by reprisals on even more families and innocent communities.”

Timing Is Everything

In normal times, Oprah Winfrey’s book club picks are kept secret until she reveals them on her television show. But a 10-day delay caused by the terrorist attacks allowed some copies of Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” to hit bookstores with the Oprah Book Club sticker affixed to their covers before Winfrey could announce her choice on the air Monday.

Celebrity Courthouse

Cher signed autographs for jurors Friday after they found in her favor in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial of a wrongful-termination lawsuit. Salvatore Sampino, a former accountant at the diva’s latest Malibu home construction project, alleged that he was forced out of his job after he raised concerns about labor violations. He sought $100,000 in lost wages and $150,000 for emotional distress. Cher insisted that Sampino never actually worked for her but for a subcontractor. Jurors deliberated for a day before awarding Sampino nothing.

Times staff writers Louise Roug and Gina Piccalo contributed to this column. City of Angles runs Tuesday-Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes.com.