GREEN & GLOVER: A cast party in D.C.

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By Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover

Cast party

Diners at Oyamel in Penn Quarter were all atwitter Monday night after Jack Nicholson walked in and was ushered to the back room, where he joined a private cast party for the James L. Brooks romantic comedy being filmed around town. Shortly thereafter, lovebirds Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal swept by the bar to meet up with Mr. Nicholson and other members of the crew.

Mr. Gyllenhaal wore a button-down plaid shirt, somewhat reminiscent of the character he played in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." The very petite Miss Witherspoon was dressed casually as well, in dark blue skinny jeans and an off-the-shoulder black shirt. That's all we could gather from our glimpse; they were walking rather briskly, as celebrities often do.

Family ties

Sunday will mark the 30th anniversary of the untimely death of Philippe Cousteau Sr., the adventurer son of French ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.

The 38-year-old Cousteau was destined to carry on the family legacy until he crashed his PBY Catalina flying boat into the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal, in 1979. Mr. Cousteau's American wife, Jan, was pregnant with the couple's second child at the time of his death.

Now living in the Washington area and active on the D.C. social circuit, Mrs. Cousteau, her 33-year-old daughter Alexandra and 29-year-old son Philippe Jr. will return to the river for the first time since the tragedy.

We hear the trip was arranged by the youngest Cousteau, who runs the local nonprofit EarthEcho International and is a correspondent for Animal Planet, as a therapeutic way for the family to honor Mr. Cousteau's memory.

Speaking of famous family names, we ran into an Eisenhower this past weekend, as in Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the Sequoia, the legendary presidential yacht.

Although the Sequoia was decommissioned in the 1970s by President Carter as a government spending cut, the boat is still used for special functions, and in this case was anchored at National Harbor for a fundraiser for Luke's Wings, a local nonprofit that flies family members of wounded soldiers abroad to be with their loved ones while they convalesce.