Lessons ‘Sam’ Taught Them

True to form, Sean Penn avoided reporters at Monday’s premiere of his new film “I Am Sam,” leaving others to speculate on the sentimental picture’s chances of earning an Oscar nomination. In the film, Penn portrays a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his 7-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning) with the help of a high-powered but self-obsessed lawyer played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Jessie Nelson, director and co-screenwriter, said it took years to find a studio--ultimately New Line Cinema--to produce the film. But Nelson’s perseverance paid off.

To prepare for the film, Penn and Nelson made several visits to L.A. Goal, a nonprofit organization that provides programs for disabled adults. Nelson said that while working with the people at L.A. Goal, she learned “that we’re not all that different. They have huge strengths that we don’t have.” Pfeiffer told us that during filming she realized her own prejudices against the mentally disabled. As a child, she said, she was taught that the mentally disabled “would either be stared at or they would be ignored.” She added that relating to disabled people is “something we don’t talk about as a society.”

The premiere at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater in Beverly Hills drew a large crowd, including musicians Aimee Mann, Michael Penn and Ben Harper, who perform on the film’s powerful soundtrack of Beatles songs.

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Being Ali

While researching the life of Muhammad Ali for Columbia Pictures’ film about the boxer, writer Gregory Allen Howard said he developed tremendous admiration for the man.

“When you’re around him, you don’t even think about [his Parkinson’s disease],” Howard said Monday by phone from Northern California. “I learned humility from Ali ... and sweetness. There’s nobody like Ali. He treats everyone the same.”

Howard wrote the original screenplay for the film based on more than 2,000 news articles and 50 interviews. In 1996, he traveled with Ali to Cuba to meet Fidel Castro. “Ali isn’t easily impressed,” Howard said. “But he was impressed with Fidel. He looked almost like a child when Fidel walked in. He was amazed.”

Ultimately, Howard’s script was rewritten by Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson, Eric Roth and director Michael Mann. But Howard called the final version “spectacular.”

“People under 35 years old don’t really know what he was like when he was young,” Howard said. “You just can’t imagine what it was that the most famous man in the world was a black man who was articulate and funny and proud to be black.”

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Party Animals

It’s all about politics for Judith Light these days. The actress threw a party Monday night for House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) at her home in Mulholland Estates.

About 70 guests turned out to hear the congressman speak, and chip in a little political contribution. (By the end of the evening, checks overflowed a discreet little tray in the hallway.)

Arianna Huffington, famous for her own political parties, stopped by the living room to see who was there, then promptly went into the adjacent library to talk on her cell phone. A frequent Huffington guest, Harry Hamlin, was in the crowd, as was actor-environmentalist Ed Begley Jr.

“It isn’t just a party, and isn’t that lovely? It’s about content,” said Light.

The speaker, once described by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) as a fellow “prairie populist,” talked at length about AIDS, the war on terrorism and the Middle East conflict. (His solution: send former Sen. George J. Mitchell, who helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. To illustrate Mitchell’s persistence, Gephardt said the senator once negotiated for three days about one word during the talks.)

On a question about Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and civil liberties, Gephardt was both personal and partisan. “I’ve known the attorney general for 30 years,” said Gephardt. “I’m not a fan.”

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Mary, Marry?

Hip-hop soul queen Mary J. Blige, 30, isn’t obliged to say whether she is or isn’t engaged. Though the singer admitted that she mentioned to a reporter her pending nuptials, she told us she was caught off guard when it appeared in print in the New York Times last week.

We caught up with the singer at the recent Divine Design fund-raiser in Santa Monica, but she wouldn’t give us the details on the engagement. She said she didn’t want to talk about the E-word or the M-word or even the man who was her dinner date.

When we asked for her companion’s name, she said politely--but sternly--not necessary. This from the woman with a current bestselling album titled “No More Drama.”

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Special Delivery

Actress Jennifer Grey and husband writer-actor Clark Gregg are the proud parents of Stella Gregg, who was born Monday night in Los Angeles.

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Times staff writer Michael Quintanilla contributed to this report.