Sarah Jessica on Working a Tough Crowd

By Rebecca Winters

SARAH JESSICA PARKER likens Meredith, her character in this fall's film The Family Stone, to another manicured go-getter with a public relations problem: John Kerry. "Kerry had it in him," the Sex and the City star and outspoken Democrat says, but like Meredith, "he just couldn't get it across the footlights to the people." Instead of red staters, Parker's rigid, pencil-skirt-and-pumps-clad city type is attempting to win over the Stones, her fiance DERMOT MULRONEY's large "nubby, woolly, pajamas-all-day, college-town" family--played by, among others, CRAIG T. NELSON, DIANE KEATON, LUKE WILSON and CLAIRE DANES. That's almost a voting bloc on its own.