“Dinner For Five”

Tonight on IFC at 8

IF you are a film freak,

you’ll love “Dinner For Five,” Saturday night’s premiere on Independent Film Channel.

Of course, if you’re a film freak you probably have your remote already pre-programmed to IFC, because, let’s face it, where else do you get to see movies made for $8,500 starring your neighbor’s best friend’s nephew?

I was fully prepared to hate “Dinner For Five.” I thought it would be a bunch of annoying, pretentious actors sitting around eating dinner and talking about their “craft.” It’s more like a bunch of not-pretentious actors eating dinner and talking about craft service, (the grub laid out for actors during shoots).

Hosted by Jon Favreau (writer/actor/ producer of “Swingers”), the show is simply five actors – Favreau, Peter Berg (“The Last Seduction), Joey Lauren Adams (“Chasing Amy”), Jeanne Tripplehorn (“Very Bad Things), and Kevin James (“King of Queens”) dishing up while chowing down.

The show is shot in segments – from the actors talking about how they got their big breaks, to what producers expect you to bring to the table (not the craft services table) before you can even begin to talk to them about a project.

There are some real yucks here, especially from Joey Lauren Adams. Adams tells of the unreality of going from nobody from nowhere to suddenly being awakened by CNN because unbeknown to her, she’d beeen nominated for a Golden Globe.

She says she arrived at the ceremony with her mom, and “it was like a war zone with helicopters hovering overhead and people screaming.”

She then goes on to tell how Harvey Weinstein did not want her for the part in “Chasing Amy,” and was angry that they didn’t get Renee Zwilleger. When she was nominated she figured Weinstein would congratulate her anyway. Instead, when she said hello, he said, “Why didn’t you return my call?”

She was flabbergasted and said “I never got your message,” whereupon Weinstein says, “Oh come on, Renee!”

Afterward, feeling her oats (or maybe “rye” would be more accurate seeing how she was way tipsy), she went over to Weinstein, figuring she had something on him, and proceeded to make a complete fool of herself.

I also like that the actors are very open to telling all kinds of crazy on-set stories about how awful it is to do sex scenes.

A really funny one is told by Jeanne Tripplehorn, who tells how in one scene she’s supposed to bite Christian Slater’s er, well, it’s not his nose. For protection, Slater was fitted with a metal cup. And yes, she broke her tooth. What a girl has to do for her art.

The show is followed by Favreau hosting the televising of Scorcese’s “After Hours,” and “Insomnia” with everyone’s favorite superstar, Stellan Skarsgard. Or maybe that’s Skarsgard Stellan.