There's an old Sufi curse: "May all your dreams come true." And so I arrive in LA. The TV is full of talk about being clear about your goals and aligning your behavior with your values; eharmony offers an online personality profile and ehurrydate.com specialises in four-minute blind date meetings. The evening news is dominated by the shooting of a 400lb tiger, yards from a freeway and a school (it escaped from a private collection but no one will come forward to admit so and advise on capturing it).

LA is waiting for the rains to subside. There are sandbags at all the trendy hotels to prevent water pouring from the patios to the bedrooms. Coming from a wet and windy Britain this is surreal, until I hear that our composer John Murphy, his wife Charlotte, and their baby Jude, have been driven from their home by a landslide caused by the rains. Red tagged, as they call it here.

Peter Rice, the boss at Searchlight, tells me that Sideways has overtaken 28 Days Later (pictured, right) as Fox Searchlight's top grossing movie in the States. (Imagine how delighted I am about that.) He's hoping for 50,000 people to see Millions at special invite screenings before it opens. You can't help gulp at all those lost customers, but the theory is that as Americans love sharing their feelings with each other, then for each person that likes it, that's potentially five other ticket sales, and so on and so on...

"CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW CRUEL LIFE CAN BE?"

At the Publicist Guild Awards luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I'm to present the International Media Award. In reality it's a chance to plug Millions as the film opens in LA and NYC first as a platform release. When I get onstage, Scotsman Craig Ferguson, now a chatshow host on US TV, hands me a piece of paper with the old Sufi curse on it and the details of what the award is and who has won it. The letters swim like hieroglyphics in front of me... some of the names are unpronounceable... I say "Thank dog I'm not dyslexic" and get through it, but as I get offstage I realise I forgot to mention Millions.

All the gossip backstage is of Paris Hilton, who has had her cellphone hacked - all her contact numbers and emails have been stolen and posted on the internet, as well as some topless pictures of herself and another woman. Can you believe how cruel life can be? Paris is just about to open in her first movie, a slasher thriller where - judging by the trailer - she will die a horrible death... and then this happens.

I ring her people to ask if she's got any advice about publicising Millions, but all the numbers have been changed and I am on my own again.

Currently on release in America, Millions is scheduled to be released in the UK on Friday 27th May 2005.