The gossip from this week’s premiere party for Grey Gardens at the Pierre Hotel has been all about whether exes Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are back together. From reports, they giggled, they hugged, they kissed, and she clung to him with tears of joy streaming down her face. She told reporters they’re “just friends,” and he stuttered and rolled his eyes while repeating the mantra. Then, having fooled the world, they went and canoodled at the Bowery Hotel.
Well, sort of. We were there, and they definitely have chemistry. But what was sweeter than their obvious care for us was the story of old-fashioned love-letter writing Long told us. See, Barrymore used a Method preparation to play Little Edie Beale and went into seclusion, “No contact with friends, no cell phones, no BlackBerry, no newspapers, no magazines, no computers, no cars, no television. Nothing, for three months,” she told us. But the no-contact part isn’t exactly true. “She’d write,” said Long. “Letters on a typewriter. Beautiful, profound, poetic letters on a typewriter.” Long, for his part, didn’t write back. “I was not in that world. I felt like I was watching from a distance,” he said. “Without getting too much into it, you know, I had a way of communicating back. It wasn’t just met with dead air: ‘Hey, I got all your letters.’” We’re picturing chaste rendezvous under the withering vines of the Grey Gardens set, cats and raccoons romping in the distance as he wistfully plays with her prosthetic arm fat.
View our Party Lines slideshow.
