GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?

Never Trust Anyone Over 23- Except Damon Dash

Richard Johnson and Richard Turley get a groove on with the hippity-hoppity generation.

Photos by Karen Cunningham

"Enough already with the octogenarians," the staffers at this magazine keep imploring the stuffy gerontophiles who host the Gotham dinners. In an effort to get "with it," Richard Johnson and Richard Turley decided to skew young for a change. On July 25, we invited the film actress Leelee Sobieski, who is 19 years old (we've got cats older than that); the painter Isca Greenfield-Sanders, who is 23; the concert pianist Soheil Nasseri, also 23; and, for gravity, the hip-hop impresario Damon Dash, who's pushing 32. We were welcomed at the Monkey Bar in the Hotel Elysee on East 54th Street by director of operations, Mathew Glazier. This sophisticated watering hole has been the refuge of theatrical legends like Tennessee, Tallulah, Marlene, and Noel. The cuisine is superb and the honky-tonk piano in the bar never takes a break. Oh yes, the plugs: Leelee has two films, Max and L'Idole, at the Toronto Film Festival this month. Isca shows at Lombard-Freid on West 26th Street. Soheil has four solo concerts this season at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, beginning September 17. And Damon is now directing a feature film called Death of a Dynasty.

DINING AT THE MONKEY BAR Left to Right: Richard Johnson, Soheil Nasseri, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Richard Turley, Damon Dash, and Leelee Sobieski.

GOTHAM: Great suit, Damon. No Roc-A-Wear?

DAMON: I almost didn't make it. I'm shooting a movie and I wear sweats. I'm still shooting now. But I gave my word, so I'm here.

GOTHAM: Where are you shooting?

DAMON: At the Time hotel. I have to go back

GOTHAM: Vikram's [Chatwal] hotel. I spoke to Vikram a couple of days ago. He was on his way to St. Tropez with Puffy [Combs] to charter Liz Taylor's old yacht, the Kalizma. Your movie is a comedy?

DAMON: An extreme comedy. A spoof. It's about me and it's about Jay [Jay-Z]. But I don't play me and Jay doesn't play Jay. And we get into a beef over a model chick, but what it comes out to be is a publicity stunt.

GOTHAM: Leelee, how old are you?

LEELEE: Nineteen.

GOTHAM: And she starred in 14 movies.

LEELEE: Made 14, starred in 11.

DAMON: That's about the most confident 19-year-old voice I've ever heard. Sounds 35. Wait a second. You were in that movie, right, where that kid goes away to school, he's like a bad-ass?

LEELEE: Here on Earth.

DAMON: Yeah, yeah. Ha! She's cute!

GOTHAM: And she was Joan of Arc in a huge television series. Where do you go to school?

LEELEE: I go to Brown.

ISCA: I went to Brown.

LEELEE: What did you study?

ISCA: Double major, painting and math.

[They discuss the painting faculty at Brown.]

GOTHAM: Leelee, what is your major?

LEELEE: Probably fine arts. The thing I like to do the most is painting.

DAMON: [To Isca] You're a painter?

GOTHAM: She paints from photographs, and she just sold a painting to the Guggenheim. [To Isca] Did you bring the catalog of your show?

ISCA: This catalog is from my senior thesis at Brown, in fine arts. I met an Italian dealer who gave me my first show.

GOTHAM: How do you work?

ISCA: I begin with photos on the computer. I make a composition based on a number of them- taking figures from one and landscapes from another. And I make something that to me transcends the boundaries of photography and becomes a painting. Then I make a scan of it and I print that image on watercolor paper and use watercolor ink and gouache and sort of destroy the integrity of the photographic information. Scan that, enlarge, and print that on canvas. Seal the whole thing. I engineered this technique to combine so many different areas of art.

LEELEE: Your work is beautiful. [Looking at catalog]

GOTHAM: When do you show again, Isca?...................................6.MORE