On the 'road' carpet at the Cars 2 premiere

Larry the Cable Guy was there!

In place of the usual red carpet, stars of the movie Cars 2 walked down a "road" carpet--a two-lane black carpet complete with white-striped center line--at the movie's premiere on Saturday night in Hollywood, Calif.

The usually traffic-clogged Hollywood Boulevard was closed for two blocks as limos dropped off the famous, the somewhat less famous and a bunch of people who were largely ignored by everybody. All walked under an arch emblazoned with a big green "START." After running the gauntlet of paparazzi there was another arch marked, "FINISH." Nice touch.

From there they went into the glorious old El Capitan Theatre to see the movie.

At the end of the road carpet were three of the full-size character cars made by TFX of Camarillo, Calif., about which we wrote previously: Lightning McQueen, Finn McMissile and Tow Mater.

While Owen Wilson (McQueen) and Larry the Cable Guy (Mater) got huge whoops from the throng behind the barricades, we might have been the only one there who knew who Lewis Hamilton was. Hamilton voices one of the cars in the movie named, surprisingly, Lewis Hamilton. He's a McLaren, appropriately enough. Hamilton was accompanied by his girlfriend, the former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, but we had to look that up on the Internet.

Other voice actors were similarly anonymous. Ever hear of Emily Mortimer (Holley Shiftwell) or Eddie Izzard (Sir Miles Axlerod)? How about Bonnie Hunt, who voices Sally the Porsche 911? But at least voice actors can go out of the house without being mobbed.

Cars 2 opens on Friday, June 24.

By Mark Vaughn