Kevin Costner plays another new one... Photograph: SERGEI KARPUKHIN/REUTERSLet me paint you a picture of a glittering charity party. It is advertised for weeks with giant billboards on which Woody Allen appears beside Steven Seagal for the first time (unless you count the lost posters for Hard to Analyse, the experimental underground film the pair made in the 1980s). Both stars attend. Woody plays the clarinet; Seagal dances. The ultimate Lost in Showbiz fantasy? No, last Saturday night in Moscow.
I know what you're thinking: "Yeah, if you're drinking Bacardi." But you couldn't be more wrong – though I am currently drinking Bacardi – because this actually happened.
Last weekend, as the Guardian among others has reported, a cavalcade of already very rich Hollywood stars flew to Moscow to attend a lavish charity event – or rather, what purported to be one. But we shall come to their calamitous error of judgment later, as well as a discussion of their fees.
For now, let's continue with the guestlist: Jeremy Irons, Francis Ford Coppola, Sophia Loren, Dionne Warwick, Orlando Bloom, Andy Garcia, Isabella Rossellini, Andrea Bocelli, Mr Big off of Sex and the City – oh, and Kevin Costner with his band. Unfortunately, Dustin Hoffman was a late no-show. I know the convention with fantasy parties is to say you'd have Mandela and Hitler and whatnot, but doesn't this event instantly supplant worthy little fantasies of taking the Fuhrer to task over the Wannsee conference during the starter, then telling Mandela you loved his book over pudding?
No tickets to the event were sold, but Russian riot police encircled the venue. On stage, a young Russian girl whose wish was to dance with a movie star got to waltz awkwardly with Steven Seagal, which to me would have proved dreams can come true, but to the 10-year-old probably ensured nightmares will endure. Certainly until she finds a therapist she can trust in her late 20s.
Other highlights? Woody Allen autographed a black Hummer. And when Kevin Costner's band – Modern West – played, he insisted on explaining at length to the audience what each song meant, with one standout number apparently being about a female Apache chief. I guess that's the nice thing about a Costner gig – "the new stuff". Though of course Kevin's such a notorious "charmer" that he'd never play any of his hits even if he'd had any. Indeed, it's slightly amazing to find Kevin sharing a stage with other big hitters, given his reputation in the industry. (I always suspect the choice to star virtually alone in Dances With Wolves was almost made for him, on the basis that no other actors could bear to share a set with him at the time. Even the wolf was on the phone to his agent every night. "Please, you gotta get me out of this. I'm chewing my paws off here.")
Anyway, back to this party. What was the charity, you may ask? Well that's just it, you see. It's called the Federation Fund, it is run by one Vladimir Kiselyov, and it emerged from nowhere last year, only to become immediately mired in questions about, erm, a lack of actual fundraising. Its only previous event featured our beloved Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn, Costner again, and Vladimir Putin himself performing Blueberry Hill. I know, I know. It's almost too much. It's the showbiz version of Stendhal syndrome, so-called after the dizziness the 19th-century French author is said to have felt on seeing the treasures of Florence. You could faint at the beauty of it all.
Unless you were the mother of a sick child, who made an appeal via Radio Free Europe some time after the event.
"A very strange situation has arisen," she wrote in an open letter. "Before and after the concert there was talk about handing over funds [to hospitals], and now it appears that no one had promised anything."
Kiselyov's response? To warn off reporters, according to the Russian media. "No one will tell you anything," he is reported to have said. "The Federation Foundation is doing its work and you should do yours."
Um, hello, is that central casting? You're missing a Russian Villain Type.
So what is the Federation Fund doing, and why do so many big celebrities keep doing it with them? Well, Kiselyov now claims not to be raising money, but "raising awareness"? But of what? "Why on earth are [the celebrities] coming to Moscow for some unclear story?" wonders the director of a conventional Russian children's charity in the New York Times. "Were they given that much money? Maybe they were not paid, maybe Putin asked them personally. It's so unclear that I want very much for someone to explain it to me."
The default assumption when unknown moguls from the former Soviet Union behave in such a confusingly showy manner is that they are laundering something – a dirty suit, or a penchant for boiling people somewhere in the Urals. I'm joking of course. But don't you just adore this surreally brilliant way of pursuing what oligarchs call a "strategy of visibility"? Suddenly just buying a London football club looks so unambitious. Next time I see Roman Abramovich sitting glumly in his glass box watching Chelsea-Bolton and looking like at least no one can ask him to explain the offside rule because he basically owns them all, I shall imagine him thinking: "Why aren't I watching Kevin Costner do some of his 'new stuff'? Why have I spent nearly ?50m changing my mind on managers when for a fraction of that I could have purchased the last remnant of Costner's dignity and had a laugh into the bargain?"
Questions, questions. You can't help feeling Chris Noth was feeling a rather ickle Mr Big at this particular event. I note Chris admits he pocketed his fee, though apparently "some" others waived theirs.
So yet again, this column finds itself asking the question "how much money is enough?", an inquiry we're so often forced to make with reference to the fantastically well-remunerated celebrities who make these lucrative, desperately underresearched little jaunts for "charity". Of course, there are many other complex questions. Like, "Hey! Woody Allen! Does your agent have the internet? Because when you type this guy's name and charity into Google, the missing funds story from the Putin event is literally the first thing that comes up." When LiS knows more of the answers, so will you. You may officially tag this story as "developing".
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