Screening Party

2008

When journalist Dennis gets assigned to write about Pretty Woman for Marquee magazine's “Hooray for Hollywood Hookers” issue, he invites five friends over to screen, celebrate and skewer the modern-day Cinderella story. The partiers include his roommate Tony, a burnt-out cruise ship crooner who's desperately looking for a new gig on land; Lauren, a relationship-challenged aspiring stand-up comic; Marcos, a sweet-natured attorney who never met a tangent he couldn't go off on; Ross, an Opera-loving video clerk with multiple tattoos and arsenal of movie fun facts at the ready; and Dr. Beverly Beaverman, the shrink next door who finds Freudian psychological meanings in everything she sees. Together, they do their best to make sense of the 1990 Richard Gere-Julia Roberts romantic comedy classic while discovering that the movie's themes—sex, money, sex for money—resonate in their lives in ways both ridiculous and profound.