At last, the buzz over the Sex And The City movie premiere is being deflated. It got so bad earlier this week that even the Times was reduced to hyping the official PR line about the opening in a cutesy video while failing to note the hundreds of unwitting publicity slaves turned away with tickets in their hands. But now the backlash stories are coming in waves, tearing down some small edifice of the celebrity-industrial complex before our very eyes. We've learned that many tourists in line paid "hundreds of dollars" for their worthless passes. It emerged that one of the stars made have shown up high on cocaine. The woman with the bum $19,000 ticket was lied to worse than anyone thought. Even the food sucked! There's talk of the show being way past its prime (you don't say!). And now movie producer New Line has been reduced to public bickering with Radio City Music Hall over who is at fault for the whole Tuesday night fiasco:

"The movie studio gave out way more promotional tickets than could fit in the orchestra," said one insider. "Radio City managers told the New Line people, 'You can solve this by opening up the mezzanines, which have 2,700 more seats - but they wouldn't do it."



However, a New Line source countered, "It was Radio City Music Hall making that decision. They took control of the fan line. They turned the fans away."

People get upset about Sex And The City selling vacuous lies — about New York, about relationships, about sex, about life — but now the enterprise has gone and done something that really will, for once, help hundreds of its most fervent fans start behaving more independently.

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