Robert De Niro, co-founder and patron saint of the Tribeca Film Festival, hates interviews. But on Tuesday night, at a dinner sponsored by Chanel, he briefly submitted to a reporter’s inquisition.
“I have to do it,” he said, when asked why he was at Balthazar for this event. “Why shouldn’t I do it?”
But do you enjoy it?
“I enjoy it,” he said, looking stern. “I like meeting people, and I like being part of something that has meaning for the city, and for filmmaking. It’s a positive, good thing.”
Fair enough.
The dinner, which honors contemporary artists who donated works to festival winners, drew a starry crowd, including Leonardo DiCaprio, who sat next to Mr. De Niro, hunched over a plate with a Dodgers cap pulled low on his brow.
At the next table, Katie Holmes chatted with Jane Rosenthal, another founder of the festival. They were seated next to Boots Riley, Q-Tip, La La Anthony and Carmelo Anthony. Nearby, Helena Christensen was squeezed between Alexander Skarsgard and Chloë Sevigny, across from Cara Delevingne, Ashley Benson and Barbara Bush.
At the bar, JR, the artist, mingled with Mark Ronson, the Oscar-winning music producer, as well as Diane Kruger and Debra Messing, the actresses.
“I’m the kind of girl who gets star-struck,” said Angela Bassett, a festival juror, who was wearing a white Chanel blazer over a see-through black top. “But everyone here is awfully nice.”
Chanel dressed many guests for the event, but not Jaron Lanier, the Silicon Valley prophet, who was wearing a T-shirt that had seen better days, roomy black trousers and sandals.
“I am wearing gold lamé high-heeled boots, iridescent necklace sculptures made from an extraordinarily rare abalone, and a crown made of diamonds, with LEDs embedded inside them,” said Mr. Lanier, who, not incidentally, pioneered the field of virtual reality.
“It’s a new technology which has not been seen in New York before,” he said.
Restoring Venice
At the Save Venice ball, from left: Hamish Bowles, Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, Derek Blasberg, Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece and Tory Burch.CreditRebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
Carl Robinson, a homeless New Yorker who has lived and panhandled around the Plaza hotel since the 1980s, was there Friday night in a light rain. He stood out among the hundreds of guests in black tie and ball gowns who were attending the annual Save Venice gala, many in elaborate masks.
“An event like this should be good for a couple of hundred dollars,” Mr. Robinson said.
The money collectors inside the hotel’s gilded ballroom were doing somewhat better, bringing in $1.2 million. “The money goes directly to restore art treasures in Venice — oil paintings, statues, facades, church ceilings and recently, a 17th-century gondola,” said Lauren Santo Domingo, a chairwoman of the event.
A founder of Moda Operandi, she was wearing a green Oscar de la Renta gown and a bronze Bulgari medallion, neatly unifying all three of the evening’s corporate sponsors. At this party, “we’re not saving any lives, we’re not going to make you cry, and there’s no sad speeches,” Ms. Domingo said. “So it gives you a bit of liberty to have fun.”
She was in good company. Other scions of the city’s billionaire class looking to let loose included: James and Nicky Rothschild, Alexander and Bara Tisch, and Tico and Colby Mugrabi. Huma Abedin held court on a blue tufted leather sofa, as Hamish Bowles, the master of ceremonies, chatted with Tory Burch, Lizzie da Trindade Asher and Peter Brant Jr.
Under a large red-and-gold Venetian flag, Karolina Kurkova, Karen Elson, Jordan Barrett, Carolyn Murphy and Shanina Shaik formed an attractive bouquet of long-stemmed models. But nobody out-princessed the actual princesses: Marie-Chantal and Maria-Olympia of Greece, and Mafalda Saxe Cobourg of Bulgaria.
Outside, Mr. Robinson was making slow progress. “Most wealthy people don’t want to be bothered,” he said, holding a large white tub containing 75 cents.
