Los Angeles - From tall Tyler Hilton to diminutive Ginnifer Goodwin, the "Walk the Line" stars came out in force last night, celebrating the film's premiere and kicking off the AFI Fest 2005 at the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Those two actors are showcased in the new biopic of Johnny Cash and June Carter, but all eyes at the gala were on the two leads in the film, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Both their performances are generating scorching heat in the race toward Oscar; they'll be hard to beat, as will the movie itself.

Director James Mangold and his producer/spouse Cathy Konrad beamed as Hilton, who plays Elvis Presley in the flick, joined co-producer James Keach and his beautiful wife Jane Seymour in showing off their pearly whites.

Mangold happily explained his feeling about his film, which covers the early years of Johnny Cash's life, from poor sharecropper to country/rock superstar. "The big thing that I wanted to do was touch on the very start of rock and roll, I loved this moment in rockabilly music. I loved the idea of people making music because they loved music and not because they saw the video or how to market themselves. A very big point for me in this movie is that John didn't arrive at Sun as the man in black. He didn't already know his marketing angle. He didn't have it worked out. He was just trying to be heard and however that would work or not work was fine, but he just needed to be heard. What was magic to me about that moment in time was that it was a moment before the term 'rock and roll star' existed."

With characters like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis (played by Waylon Payne, also at last night's party), Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins, the movie is a who's who of the heart of rock and roll's beginnings in the 1950's, that's just packed with great music. Amazingly, both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (whose hot hubbie Ryan Phillippe accompanied her last night) did all their own singing as Cash and Carter, to terrific effect.

"We were very lucky in some ways, terrified in other ways, that we had six months of rehearsal where we just had to basically immerse ourselves in their music," said Witherspoon. "I don't know where Joaquin found the voice, because it was creepy how authentic it was. He really immersed himself, but I got to see that and slowly take that journey and see him become more and more like John. Every day we took voice lessons. Joaquin took guitar lessons. I took autoharp lessons. I wasn't going to fall on my butt in front of everyone or I was going to try as hard as I possibly could not to!"

"Walk the Line" opens nationwide on November 18, when you can see just how Witherspoon and the rest of the cast pulled it off.- Jenny Peters