In her smart, gracious way, Sarah Jessica Parker fielded questions about the Sex and the City movie [1] when she accepted the first ever Vanguard Award at ShoWest in Las Vegas. Though it's news to me, there's apparently a rumor going around that one of the characters will die in the movie. Trying to address the question without revealing too much, Parker explained that they wanted to make a "grown up" movie with some "seriousness." ComingSoon has more from ShoWest [2]:

What we tried to do is it's a grown-up movie and I think those people that have seen it have been very surprised. There's a seriousness about something that happens in this movie and it's really about real life and your own complicity and disappointments and the necessity of friends at certain points, but really, as a grown-up to really take care of yourself. There's still plenty of ribald, salty, dirty stuff, but I think it's a really smart story. I think Michael Patrick (King, writer and director of the film) wrote a beautiful screenplay and selfishly, I feel like he wrote the role of a lifetime for me, and it was just an amazing experience.

So, the death is neither confirmed nor denied. This news has revved up my imagination, distracting me with thoughts about who — if anyone — might die in the movie. Does the part of the trailer [3] when she drops her phone take on new significance? Interesting. Seriously, May 30 can't get here quickly enough.

For more of Parker's thoughts on the movie, .

• On SATC's shifting audience: "I think we recognized very clearly who the base audience was — not 'base' in a negative way — but who our audience started out to be at HBO and that was obviously primarily sophisticated women and the homosexual community, and then along came straight men, as they do. Then of course, it went into syndication, a broader audience was reached, and those demographics changed a lot. The audience became a lot younger, they reached areas where people normally don't generally get HBO, so that all changed. . .We just really wanted to tell a great story and we really encouraged Michael to write a screenplay that's about who those women are now."
• On making the movie: "Honestly, the best part was just being there on set the first day, being together. It took a lot to get this movie back up and running, and I spent the last year and a half of my life just bringing it all together, and to find ourselves on the set playing again, surrounded by a lot of crew members that have been there from the beginning and surrounded on the peripheral by hundreds of women and curious paparazzi. It was really kind of heavenly to be there again, shooting at the perfect time of year, the most romantic time, late summer/early fall, and. . . it was a thrill, the whole experience from the first day to the last."
• On SATC-type shows like Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle: "Here's what I think is great: HBO cleverly 10 years ago made Sunday night a standing date for a lot of women in America, but I think it's great that network television thinks the female audience has an important place in terms of revenue and audience and advertising dollars. Obviously, people realize that there's an audience for programming that's aimed primarily at women, so I think that's fantastic. It means there's job opportunities in New York, it means work for people and hopefully interesting ideas about who women are at certain times in their lives, so I think that's fantastic. . . I wish them great luck."

Photo courtesy of New Line Cinema [4]