The Dink Movie Premiere: Mary Steenburgen Got Snubbed at Open Play, Ted Danson Fell Head Over Heels for Pickleball, and Ben Johns' Celebrity Foursome

You know how everyone at open play decides how good you are as a pickleball player before you've hit a single ball? Your paddle, your shoes, your warmup, whether the next twenty minutes are worth their court time?

It happens to beginners. It happened to an Oscar winner, and she told us about it over dinner.

Rivulet invited us to what we understood was a cast party for The Dink movie. Instead, we ended up at a table for eight on a terrace at Soho House with Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson. The next night we were at the premiere in Westwood watching the cast come through when we spotted Ben Johns across the atrium and decided the polite thing to do was run him down. Then we hosted a happy hour before a screening for our own pickleball community in Dallas:

This week we get into:

Our "is this really happening" moment at Soho House, and how fast it turned into the easiest conversation of the trip

Mary's paddle stack story, involving a group of strangers making up their minds about her, and what happened after that

What Ted said about the people who keep turning up at his house for dinner now, and how casually he said it

The celebration that gets under Ben Johns' skin, and the nearly identical one he finds hilarious

His celebrity foursome, which he admits has no chemistry in it whatsoever, plus the pick that made Lauren want to switch partners

What the whole cast had to learn before shooting, and what all of them did together on the final day

Why the trailer undersells this pickleball movie by a wide margin

Aaron Chen and Cleo King, and the scenes that land harder than the marketing lets on