Swedish Director William Sten Olsson recently premiered his film "An American Affair" in Washington

Posted by Susanna at 11:30 AM, Feb 28, 2009 (Comments)

Category: People

The ghostlike steps in Georgetown in Washington were in the 1973 film "The Exorcist," which starred the Swedish actor Max von Sydow. Now the steps make a reappearance in the recently released "An American Affair," directed by the Swede William Sten Olsson.

INTRIGUES AND POWER PLAY in the political life in Washington - "politics is the only game in town" - are subjects that continue to fascinate movie and television producers. The latest installment in this genre "An American Affair" is directed by William Sten Olsson, who is from Gothenburg, Sweden, and is the grandson of Sten A. Olsson, legendary founder of Stena Line, the huge ferry company that operates ferry ships all across northern Europe.

"AN AMERICAN AFFAIR" recently premiered in Washington at the E Street Cinema drawing a crowd of Washingtonians who spent the night trying to figure out who the lead character was in real life. In the film the gorgeous blond socialite is named Catherine Caswell, and the story line is a traditional Washington story with juicy ingredients such as politics, power, sex and intrigues that are fascinating not only to Washingtonians but to people everywhere. As implied by the film's title, the fictional Ms. Caswell has an affair with President John F. Kennedy.

WHILE SOME THOUGHT in real life she might be Marilyn Monroe or Judith Exner, many people think she's Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was a quintessential Washingtonian socialite. She was beautiful, lived in Georgetown, was previously married to ex-CIA agent Cord Meyer (whose sister was married to former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee), was divorced during the Kennedy presidency, experimented with drugs, had high-level affairs, kept a detailed diary and died under mysterious circumstances.

THE WORLD PREMIERE was hosted by the New York-based Creative Coalition and the society magazine Washington Life (which was my employer for several years in the 1990s). The premiere drew a good crowd, even though it was scheduled the same evening as President Barack Obama's impressive speech to the nation, which drew an audience of more than 50 million Americans and probably millions of other viewers around the world.

"AN AMERICAN AFFAIR" is being shown initially in movie theaters in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and New Haven, Connecticut.

Cooperation with the local society paper Washington Life Magazine very often guarantees good coverage and publicity in other media.

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