Shortly after midnight Tuesday morning, the sexy sirens led a bawdy chorus of Happy Birthday to You as Tarantino welcomed a bear hug from Grindhouse co-director Robert Rodriguez.
Earlier on the Orpheum Theatre stage, executive producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein thanked the directors for following them to The Weinstein Co.

after the brothers' ugly 2005 split from Disney.
But the celebration was not without mishap. Just before the star arrivals, a water main break flooded the red carpet, causing Tarantino to fret about ruining his "groovy" black boots.

"I'm glad they fixed that," he said.
Opening April 6, Grindhouse is actually a double bill of Rodriguez's sicko zombie flick, Planet Terror, and Tarantino's road rage revenge tale, Death Proof. Homages to low-budget '70s exploitation fare, the films are tied together by movie trailers for such fictitious features as Don't!

and Werewolf Women of the S.S.
"Two movies for the price of one," noted Rodriguez, differentiating the film from Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vols.

1 and 2, which Rodriguez joked were actually "one movie for the price of two."
Kurt Russell, who plays Death Proof's Stuntman Mike, came without companion Goldie Hawn, who was in New York. But he has agreed to appear alongside her in Ashes to Ashes, a "woman's story" that Russell said Hawn is writing and will direct after years of development.

"My character holds a mirror up to hers," said Russell of the plot. "It's going to be Goldie's opus."
Death Proof's Rosario Dawson wowed in an emerald Donna Karan gown, while McGowan opted for a sexy, strapless red Bill Blass a bit more glamorous than the machine-gun prosthetic leg she sports in Planet Terror.

Distracted on the red carpet by Rodriguez affectionately snapping photos, McGowan blushed, saying, "He's going to embarrass me later."
It has been a year since Rodriguez announced his separation from wife Elizabeth Avellan, who is a producer on the film, yet remained in Texas with their five children: Rocket, Racer, Rebel, Rogue and Rhiannon.
Though noting that, at 7, Rebel is "way too young" to attend the premiere, Rodriguez said he had no reservations about casting the boy in Planet Terror as a character who "meets an untimely fate.

"
Blaxploitation films are a genre that film legend Sidney Poitier successfully avoided.
"I can't tell you exactly why, but I made a conscious choice to avoid them because they did not seem true to my heart," said Poitier at the after-party, showing his support for daughter Sydney Tamiia Poitier, who appears as Jungle Julia in Death Proof.
"My father was pressured to do a lot of that stuff in the '70s, but he chose to play black men in a light that they were not seen in at that time," boasted the 33-year-old of her Oscar-winning dad.

But Josh Brolin, who plays Planet Terror's zombified doctor, recalled his own father, actor James Brolin, slumming in 1977's low-budget The Car, about a possessed killing machine with "dark windows, chasing people and running them over."
Young Brolin watched such schlock at drive-in theaters with an uncle who "would get drunk on a 12-pack of beer.