Being Julia: DMB snags 'Dreamgirl'

What's the difference between a Pretty Woman and a Dreamgirl? About 15 years.

Julia Roberts, whose role opposite Richard Gere in 1990's Pretty Woman shot her to fame, even at age 37 is proving she can still make hearts pound in "Dreamgirl," the newest video from the Dave Matthews Band.

"I just needed the work," Roberts joked to MTV.com in an August 18 article.

In fact, Roberts is a longtime fan and friend of Dave Matthews, and the video marked a chance for the two to work together.

The Band hardly needs an A-list actress to attract listeners, however. DMB's current tour has been at #1 for at least a month. With 24 cities reporting, concerts are averaging 30,624 fans paying an average of $43.92 per ticket, for a per-concert average gross of $1,344,865, according to Gary Bongiovanni of concert tracking magazine Pollstar.

"It looks like Dave's having a good year," he deadpans.

While DMB is a "huge headline attraction," Bongiovanni says, there are still bigger rock stars.

"I don't know that I'd put them in the same league as Paul McCartney, the Stones, or U2," he says. The Stones, he points out, can gross as much as $8 million per show. But that huge number is thanks to ticket prices as high as $400 in some locations. The higher gross, therefore, "doesn't mean at the end of the day that [DMB] won't play to more people," he says.

While DMB's own fame is already strong enough to sell out stadium shows that gross more than such icons as Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Santana, and Sting, adding Roberts to the mix is sure to earn the video a few extra viewers and maybe make some new DMB fans in the process.

"Hopefully, having Julia in it will spike record sales a bit," Matthews teased to MTV.com.

In the video, Roberts– who, like Matthews, is married and the parent of twins– plays a woman in a dream sequence. As she is pursued by a faceless man, her surroundings change in sudden– and surreal– ways. One minute she's in a garden, the next she's facing a looming building; she hides in a pipe that becomes a clothes dryer, then sits on a park bench that turns into a church pew.

The members of DMB appear periodically throughout to guide her.

"The idea, originally, was there would be this dream and this woman stumbling through, being pursued by a group of people, which would be unusual for Julia," Matthews told MTV.com. "We thought, 'We could be those dark, creepy people,' and then, 'No, maybe we could separate ourselves, and be the characters helping her through the dream.'"

Although she and fiddler Boyd Tinsley share a kitchen, and although the Dave moves in for a kiss, it's bassist Stefan Lessard who gets to play Roberts' video hubby.

The video, which debuted on VH1 on August 15, can also be seen online at VH-1.com.

Julia Roberts is DMB's "Dreamgirl."
PRNEWSPHOTO

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