domain name www.CondeNastOnline. com, which, as any coffee addled, sleep deprived PR intern can attest, might allow a phony RSVP to sneak by the virtual velvet rope on its way to a guest list database, granting De Silva unfettered access to those gilded elbows that he so desperately wanted to rub against. PR veteran Cristina Civetta had more than one of his business cards thrust at her. “Each time was a different story, once he was a music industry executive, next time it was a talent agent, then the inevitable magazine editor. We caught on to the guy pretty early on and put his picture on every clipboard in sight.” Nadine Johnson, one of the most powerful publicists and event planners on the planet, echoed C i v e t t a 's s t r a t e g y. “We all have guests' photos on iPads. We had the ‘Zkipster’ programmer build a special field for this. They —Nadine Johnson peek at the list and try to read a name aloud which is very hard to do with iPads. A big favorite is ‘I work with Russell Simmons' or that notorious RSVP that comes from a fake LVMH address in Paris.” Gawker managed to wrangle a first hand account from a savvy bartender at the after party of the New York Surf Film Festival in 2008: “He drank vodka straight all night like it was water, and sweat like he was on fire. After learning that I was an actress, he gave me a professionally printed business card claiming him a Managing Partner of Red Wagon Films and said, ‘We can get you a SAG award, you're very pretty.’ Several vodkas later, he asked for my email address so that he could take me to the premiere of Changeling on Wednesday.” As most guys will admit, drunkenly scamming on pretty girls doesn’t exactly qualify as a game changer. What does set De Silva apart however, is his almost sloppy The Talented Mr. Ripley meets Catch Me If You Can's bombed Frank Abagnale Jr.'s ability to assume new identities, a talent that caught the
A big favorite is ‘I work with Russell Simmons’ or that notorious RSVP that comes from a fake LVMH address in Paris.” fully crowbarred his way into progressively higher social circles, ultimately crashing down into of Manhattan’s most closely guarded venues: Rikers Island. With pockets too shallow for his $7,500 bail, the equally diminutive De Silva was forced to spend his last weeks leading up to trial behind bars. SCENE contacted the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, who was more than happy to provide us with Priyantha’s most recent misdeeds: 1. PL170.25 Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree (1 count) 2. PL155.30 (1) Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree (1 count) But how does one man go from annoying social gnat to convicted felon? As it turns out, the acceleration was rather exponential. De Silva took to the streets in 2006 after registering the surprisingly clever 54
attention of actor/legend Tony Danza at a recent cocktail party SCENE attended. “I love guys like this, they fascinate me—it’s almost a perverted art form,” he began, instantly remembering a tale from his past. “There was this shmuck running around town for years pretending to be my brother. He would use it everywhere, you name it: nightclubs, cocktail parties, industry stuff, he even used it to get into a hospital I was in just to say he did it! The best part though, he called himself Jeffrey Danza. I mean, come on, Jeffrey Danza? I think they locked the guy up years ago.” It’s pretty ballsy to strut up to an event uninvited, it’s really ballsy to strut up to an event uninvited and pretend that you’re a loved one of someone inside, or in Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir’s case, the boyfriend of the guy throwing the party: “A really swift crasher came to the door and told my team, who have heard it all, that he was Daniel Benedict [Saffir’s longtime partner]. They looked at him and laughed and basically said, ‘You picked the wrong name to crash with.’” When an invented title failed to pass the litmus test, De Silva would often result to brute force: “Do you know who I am? I could destroy you!” Journalist Jennifer Wright would recall in an exchange she overheard between De Silva and an unassuming door girl, adding, “I used to run into him occasionally at parties and he would mention that he made Slumdog Millionaire. For a second I always paused and wondered ‘Is this what Jay Gatsby would do? Is this the 21st century equivalent of saying you hunt tigers on the Bois de Boulogne?’” It would make sense that De Silva would seek out the Jay Gatsby model of the American dream: create your own myth, and then become it. But where Gatsby succeeds, De Silva fails. Gatsby is a lovable character that fills his summer evenings with fascinatingly beautiful people eager to be in his presence; he is charming, graceful, and yes, a bit mysterious. De Silva, on the other hand, is a man incapable of having a good time even at the parties he crashes. “They found him asleep on a table, somewhat disoriented. The guards offered him medical assistance, which was refused, and he was helped into a taxi,” a rep for the American Antiques Gala Preview told the gossip column “Page Six.”
DUSTIN WAYNE HARRIS/ PatrickMcMullan.com
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you haven’t met Priyantha De Silva, there’s still a good chance you’ve encountered him, perhaps when he was pretending to be someone else: cherubic cocktail chaser, uncredited Academy Award-winning producer, conspicuous Condé Nast editor, philandering philanthropist, ICM agent or the creator of the Kardashians. Some say that if you put your ear to a martini, you can almost hear his overdone debonair voice: “What do you mean I’m not on the list? Don't you know who I am?” Priyantha De Silva was that really, really sweaty guy of Sri Lankan descent who success-
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