My Night at the Divergent Premiere
For those of you who don’t know, last night I was lucky enough to attend the Chicago premiere of the new movie Divergent, based on the books we all know and love!
How did I get tickets? Sheer luck. Seriously. My friend Heidi found the notice as soon as it went up, and she, Tara, Ashlee all jumped on it before the event “sold out” within minutes.
The evening started out with a lot of waiting in line. Thankfully we came prepared:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel came down the carpet first, shaking our hands and high-fiving us and generally chiding us for not doing the Polar Plunge this week with Jimmy Fallon. Then the actress who plays Molly came too.
First up was Veronica Roth herself. Here she is recognizing Heidi and getting psyched she came out:
HAHA a little blurry.
Anyhoo, for those of you who don’t know, Ansel (Caleb in this movie) is also playing Gus in the upcoming The Fault in Our Stars movie. And, to be honest, I wasn’t too pumped about that. Past tense.
I used to work for a major TV talk show here in Chicago, and we saw a lot of celebs come and go. People used to ask me what they were like, and I used to say “they look expensive.” There’s just something about certain people the oozes star quality. That’s what it felt like to meet Ansel.
He was so handsome in person (and I never thought that previously!), his suit was impeccable, his cheekbones stunning, and he looked me right in the eye when he talked to me. I sound swoony, but I was impressed. Oh, and when someone in the crowd yelled “Okay,” he yelled it right back. He’s got the TFiOS thing down pat already!
She also looked me directly in the eye and talked to me for a bit, asked me questions. That so impressed me — she was genuinely friendly. I was a bit tongue-tied honestly, but she was a natural at handling the crowd!
Oh, and she was surprisingly tall. I’m 5’7″ 1/2 and we were all struck by how tall she was. Oh, and gorgeous of course.
AHHH FOUR! This part was all a bit of a blur. I will leave it at that lovely image.
Veronica, Shailene and Ansel all signed my book, which was double cool.
Pure insanity. After that nonsense was over (turns out I have a low tolerance for screaming tweens), it was movie time!
WOW. You guys, I can’t think of a YA movie adaptation I so thoroughly enjoyed, other than the Hunger Games movies. After all the bombs lately, we really needed that.
The chemistry was amazing, the acting impressive, the action explosive…I really have nothing but good things to say about it. Phew, right?
A nice bonus for me as a Chicagoan was that the city was a gorgeous backdrop. A lot of movies pretend to be set in Chicago but totally fail in terms of botching the geography and culture. Sure, it was bombed-out Chicago, but it totally nailed it.
Okay, this is probably full of typos and some of the pictures are cray, but I am throwing this together before work so please forgive me and just rewatch the trailer to pump yourself up. The movie comes out March 21!
