PARIS IS SCENE OF NEW “SEX AND THE CITY” DEBACLE

A major media promotion in Paris to boost the premiere of Sex and the City 2 turned into a fiasco that has angered some of the participants, the New York Post reported in its “Page Six” column. Warner Bros., which is distributing the film in France, had arranged for a dozen prominent authors to appear at a local restaurant to speak on topics that related to the milieu of the movie. (They included Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, and Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook.) New York Agency, a p.r. firm hired by the studio to handle the event, had arranged for the Café Etienne Marcel in Paris to be transformed into the Sex and the City Café. (From the blurb: “Many other activities await you, like the discovery of American novels, workshops, makeovers and makeup, and … the selection of the most beautiful shoe.”) But the Post said that the authors invited to speak found themselves stuck in a small, dark, back room without microphones and having to compete with music coming from speakers. “An agency rep gabbed throughout, and, worse, said nothing when the cafe made the writers pay for drinks,” the Post said, quoting one of the authors as calling the stunt “a complete nightmare,” and adding, “but we got the sense that Warners couldn’t care less.”