Bright Lights, Big City - Stalking RPattz and the Remember Me Premiere

Pour yourself a cup of coffee, this is a LONG one!

Me, Kerri and Megan in the Big Apple!

Where has the week gone? I can't believe it's Sunday night already. Suffice it to say, there has been cleaning, running around, runny noses and bickering going on. That's where my week went! Anyway - if you read my last post, you know that I went to NYC on Monday March 1st with friends to attend the Remember Me premiere - Robert Pattinson's movie which opens on March 12th. Here are some numbers straight off to break it down - it's kind of amazing:

Total time we were gone: 33 hours
Travel time to/from Union Station: 3 hours
Travel time to NYC on the train: 6.5 hours
Time spent standing outside waiting/watching: 6.75 hours
Time spent sleeping: 5 hours

That totals about 21 hours. The other 12 hours were spent riding in cabs, waiting for trains, walking back and forth, and having dinner. We visited several Starbucks along the way, walked almost 4 miles, and had TONS of fun! It was like Girls Night Out on crack! Let me tell you all about it :)

Monday

Megan picked us up at 8:15 and we drove into DC to catch the 11am train to Manhattan. (Note to Union Station, please mark your parking lot better, it is NOT obvious at all!) The train trip took 3.25 hours & thanks to Kerri we were up-to-date on all the goings-on in New York related to the premiere. We were sad to hear that, because of limited space, you needed to have a wristband to be in the 'fan viewing areas'. We assumed they'd be all gone by the time we got there. While on the train, we made reservations for dinner at Carmine's, Megan's favorite restaurant (and may I just say, the iPhone ROCKS in situations like this? Truly amazing, the information readily available to you at any time, anywhere.)

We arrived at Penn Station at about 2:15 & asked the nice NYPD people where we could find a cab & they pointed us in the right direction. At this point I was trying to hold myself and my nerves together - I've only been to the city a few times, and only with either family, a school group, or most recently with Matt - 13 years ago. It was sort of overwhelming. Anyway. We cabbed it over to the hotel (Hilton New York on 6th Avenue), checked in, and then walked over to 58th Street to the Paris Theater to see what we could see.
Megan and I were looking around, checking out the area when eagle-eye Kerri spotted an official-looking person holding a bunch of blue wristbands - there were plenty of them left, however the only 'fan viewing area' or 'bin' as they were referred to was across the street from the theater - so off to our bin we went! At this point it was about 3:30; red carpet activity wasn't supposed to start until about 6:30 - we had a long COLD wait ahead of us.

I ran back to the hotel for gloves, hot hands, and some water & pretzels & by the time I got back our bin was starting to fill up.

Newly arrived in the BIN! Danny the security man took our picture for us.

Our view of the theater; white tent is the 'will call' area for people lucky enough to have tickets.We're standing to the side of the Crown Plaza hotel;
the red carpet area is across the street from us, as well as the theater.
Media gathered outside the theater before moving into the red carpet tent.Fox 5 news interviewing for their 11pm show

Around 5:30 pm security came over and said 'I'll take 20 people!' We weren't sure if we should go or not, being that we had prime spots at the front of our area and we'd been told Robert Pattinson might come over to say hello. In the end, we tried, but weren't quick enough. We consoled ourselves saying that we had no idea where they were going, but were bummed because we had lost our front row spots at the fence. Happily, not long after that he came back for 20 more - which, of course we jumped at. We couldn't believe it when he walked us over right outside the red carpet tent. Seriously, we were 2 feet away from the wall of the tent, on the back side.

My view to the right; we were across from all the press, at the end of the red carpet;
you can see the exit door behind the press; theater is across the street.

My view to the left. On the floor are cheat sheets so the celebrities know
who the heck they're being interviewed by :)

We were positively giddy at the point, as you can probably imagine. We had no idea we'd be able to get this close, especially after thinking we wouldn't be able to see much of anything. The plastic windows on the tent were a little annoying and difficult to get pictures through, but at that point it didn't matter - we were sure to see SOMETHING!

Around 6:30 people started to arrive, including Pierce Brosnan. Somehow we completely missed him, and I'm not sure how (I saw pictures later of him and there was a lady in the background I DID see, but not him, or his wife - he must have zipped through there). One of the early arrivals was Nick Osborne, the producer of the film, along with his parents. They were so sweet, his parents took pictures of us! They all looked so happy, and his parents were clearly so proud and thrilled for their son.
Another early arrival was Will Fetters, the writer, seen here with Tate Ellington who plays Rob's friend in the film. You can see that they could hear us yelling from outside :)
Now we couldn't see anyone arriving, but every so often we'd hear lots of cheering and all the flashbulbs would go off at the other end, telling us some VIP was arriving. Word got down that Rob and Emilie de Ravin had arrived so we started craning our necks trying to see whatever there was to see. Mind you, the more 'stars' arrived, the more handlers there were as well so it was hard to search all the faces looking for the familiar. Emilie had come down to our end & was interviewing across the way when I spotted Kristen Stewart walking through with Rob's agent, Stephanie. Can I just say - she is absolutely beautiful, and looked exactly like she does in her pictures. She looked very focused on just getting to where she was going, but it was REALLY exciting to see her! I tried to get a picture, but it happened so fast she was past us and gone before we knew it.

Just an idea of what we could/could not see
Emilie de Ravin talking with the press

And then - we saw him. Robert Pattinson! Mission accomplished, we did what we'd set out to do - a blurry picture of Rob, in person :)

This is Kerri's picture, mine didn't turn out. and honestly? I wish I hadn't even bothered trying to take one & just watched the moment unfold before me. In my mind it's such a blur, while I clearly remember seeing Kristen walking towards me. Anyway. He's tall, he's handsome, he looked happy! There was a young girl from our 'bin' who was standing in between the fence and the tent, probably so she didn't get crushed & Rob saw her and touched the plastic in front of her to say hello - very sweet :) And then, before you could blink, they were gone & it was over!

We walked over to the street in front of the theater and could just make out Rob signing autographs before heading in for the show, and at that point we realized how lucky we were to have been standing by the tent - if we hadn't moved, we wouldn't have seen ANYTHING and we certainly wouldn't have gotten an autograph because no one went over there. Fate! (Did I tell you our hotel was unknowingly only 4 blocks away?)

At this point we were famished and cold so we hoofed it back to the hotel, and then over to Carmine's on 44th street for dinner. We walked through Times Square, and tourists that we are, of course took pictures!
Dinner was absolutely fabulous, our waiter was superb, and we thoroughly enjoyed our meal while we recapped our fabulous day. After walking back to the hotel & deciding we'd try to get standby tickets to The View (Rob was to be interviewed), we crashed at 11:15.

Tuesday

Up at 5 am, checked out of the hotel by 6; we grabbed coffee from the Starbucks across the street (and I SWEAR, there is one on every block in NYC!) and grabbed a cab over to The View at ABC's studios on 66th Street. We were waiting in line at the cold dark hour of 6:30. There were 15 people ahead of us, the first ones having been on line since 4:30. Crazy.
At 8 am an intern from The View came out to hand out numbers to every one in line. We were instructed to go 'somewhere' and then report back at 9:30 to see if there were any available seats. We walked up to Broadway & got more coffee at yet another Starbucks, along with I think every other person trying to get standby tickets to a morning show in the city. Rumor has it that Steve Guttenberg was sitting there at the window. We didn't see him, so who knows?

At 9:30 we were back in line, waiting, when some of The View's staff came out & said they wanted to tape us for their 'cold opener'. Using a little flip recorder, they did two practice runs and then a final run of all of us chanting 'Pattinson' & finished up with a little schpiel said by one of the girls at the front of the line. Fun!

We waited and waited and waited, and while we were waiting, a group of people walked past us to enter the building & Kerri started quietly saying, 'that's Rob's parents! It's his parents!'

His dad is on the left; his sisters have long hair;
unidentified friend on the right.

At this point it was around 10am and taping was supposed to start at 11. We knew at this point that it didn't look good for us, but everyone was still hopeful. In the end, people who actually had tickets were turned away, and no one on standby got in - but we WERE on tv!

Screenshot courtesy of Matt - thanks hubby!

After that, we walked back up to Broadway, grabbed a cab back to the hotel to collect our luggage and head back to Penn Station. We caught the 11:30 train back to DC, and were home by 5:30 - only 12.5 short hours after we got up :)

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If I were to do this again, I'd do a couple of things differently:

1) Go up the day/night before so as to be there early to get a better viewing spot at the premiere.
2) Bring a better camera. If I'd brought the good one, the flash wouldn't have bounced off the plastic tent so much.
2) Hit the Today show. Rob came out & signed autographs & one lady we met had terrific pictures, with no annoying tent in the way
3) Skip The View. The studio holds 189 people and they issue 300 tickets for every show. It's not uncommon for ticket holders to get turned away, and stand-bys rarely get in.

All in all we had a CRAZY AWESOME time and I'd do it again in a heart beat! Eclipse comes out in June - who's with me? :)