KUDOS CRASHER

A rush, a crush and ... a par-tay?

Random notes and quotes from a looong night inside the Kodak.

By Richard Rushfield, The Envelope

February 26, 2007

As many awards shows as a hardened Kudos Crasher like myself has been through, there is still a rush of adrenaline each time I approach the carpet. And no show knows how to generate that rush better than the Papa Bear of them all, the Academy Awards, year 79.

Knowing full well that buildup is all, there is a whole yellow brick road one must traipse down before getting anywhere near the carpet itself, an off-camera preshow to the preshow if you will.

The road to Kodak (is Kodak even a company anymore?) starts about a mile away from the theater itself, where after pushing my very unlimo-ly Scion through Oscar-adjacent traffic on Sunset Boulevard, I am waved through the police cordon at Wilcox and permitted to drive like conquering royalty down a closed off Hollywood Boulevard.

Hundreds of people line the street, their faces peering expectantly into mine as I drive past. When they see that I am a nobody, those faces turn blank or wince in annoyance. We careen through an obstacle course of barricades, our car zig-zagging back and forth across the road, through an inspection stop or two then finally hand the car over to the valets.

Step into the lights
Arriving guests are X-rayed and magnatomitized in a dimly lit white tent, where it feels a bit like we are inside a cloud, suggesting we're about to pass through the gates to heaven. I step out into the sudden rush of a zillion flashes popping at once, cameras lining the carpets, fans clicking away from bleachers and sniperlike on the roofs of neighboring buildings.

All red carpet is not made equal, however, a fact underlined by the velvet rope down the middle of this one – celebs on one side, mere "academy guests" on the other. Academy guests loiter and gape at the celebs across the rope – making it clear that on this half of the carpet, we're pretty much just like the masses up in the bleachers, albeit slightly better dressed.

My colleague, Rachel Abrahamowitz, and I hit the carpet just as Rachel Weisz does, and she gets to experience hundreds of voices screaming "Rachel!", a rush for half a second until you realize this fuss has nothing to do with you.

Split personality
Near the carpet's end, our walk suddenly turns ugly. A security man asks us to move on. Wanting to prolong our preshow, we move three feet ahead. Another asks us to move again, and we shuffle three feet more.

When I scribble in my notebook, we are pounced on by the security guard and an escort, who accuse of us being autograph seekers. When I say, I'm something much worse, I'm a journalist, we are frog-marched -- guards before and after us -- to a security station just outside out the Kodak's entrance.

The detail on duty examines our tickets and IDs and asks, "Are you a guest or are you a reporter?" I answer, "Both." Our interrogator shakes his head sternly. "You can't be both. You have to decide, are you a reporter or a guest? There are no reporters inside."

I persist in insisting on my dual identity until, for reasons, unexplained, we are suddenly frog-marched forward again, clearly bound for Guantanamo Bay it would seem, but instead deposited at the door of the Kodak. Guests and journalists alike still.

In Crowd adjacent
In the ground-floor lobby, people pace nervously as an announcer intones the least-scary warning ever over the P.A.: "Please take your seats, the Academy Awards will begin in 45 minutes."

The combined or overlapping posses of Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz valiantly hold the room's physical and moral center – clearly the cool kids.

To a knot of young women, Cameron performs a fairly biting parody of herself, talking at a thousand words a second, gesticulating wildly. "I gotta get the ... out of this dress, that's all I know," she says at one point.

At the other end of the shared entourage, Leo plays the confident, quiet BMOC, nodding and grimacing as people whisper in his ear.

Cameron talks about her use of electric lighting, and conservation thereof. "I don't turn the lights on unless I'm in the room. And even then I turn them all the way down. It's sexy!"

The countdown is on
When the 10-minute warning is called, a panic breaks out. The crowd surges toward the balconies and the tuxedoed stampede turns slightly scary on the stairs.

The P.A. announcer counts down the minutes to airtime, warning that anyone not seated when the show begins will have to wait 25 minutes until the first commercial break. Sasha Baron Cohen fights against the tide to get down the stairs.

Inside the well-chilled theater, no one is seated. With three minutes to go the crowd on the ground floor is milling freely – Cameron can be seen still working the aisles.

Par-tay Central
Just before the show, producer Laurie Ziskin comes on stage to so-so applause. "Oh my God," she screams to the mingling masses, "You look so beautiful! Are you ready to party?"

The "par-tay" theme will persist throughout the night. At the commercial breaks, instead of soul-restoring silence the crowd is treated to DJ music spun by KCRW's Liza Richardson and entertained by a dancer who boogies through the crowd in the orchestra section.

Ziskin asks the 150-some nominees to rehearse standing up in unison for the show's opening, telling them they don't have to be "statues. You can high-five. You can wave 'hi mom.'" The lights dim. Everyone finds their seats and the party begins.

Let's focus, people
Oscar is an unforgiving room to play. The crowd is too hyper and manic to give themselves up to any bit. The room is too big, the house lights stay on, the air conditioner blasts. Blackberries sit in every other lap. Only the heaviest schmaltz can truly focus the crowd.

The smaller moments, like Ellen's wanderings through the audience, are swallowed by the vast cavern. Another unfortunate effect of the fiesta-theme, especially after being charged up by live dancing to "Sex Machine" at the break, is that it's all the more painful when the show comes to a crashing halt for every sound editing award and acceptance speech.

And for the first two hours, we get a lot of those. After Alan Arkin's speech, it's clearly time to stop trying to watch and head down to the bar. Going down the stairs I pass Jackie Earl Haley, having just lost out to Arkin and now climbing the stairs alone. Where could he be going, I wonder? Leaving and reenacting his scene from "Breaking Away"?

Where the action is--sort of
Traditionally, the best action at the Oscars happens in the tiny ground-floor "George Eastman Room" bar. Last year, most of the A-list sneaked out by mid-show and held court there.

But this year the big names put in little quality time in the Eastman. Most of the stars drift through and grab a drink, but few stay long. Perhaps they are all partied out from the fiesta in the theater.

Crowding around the TV in the bar, we strain to hear Al Gore and Leo's joint speech. One line seems to produce massive applause in the theater, if indifference in the bar. "What'd he say?" I ask the woman next to me.

"We went green."

"Excuse me?"

"The Oscars are green ... noticed in the bathroom there was a sign that all the toilet paper is recycled."

On my other side a man offers a mock cheer, "Hooray! We're green."

Whatever you say, Mr. Eastwood …
Clint Eastwood enters the bar carrying a plastic container of Kodak Theatre sushi. The crowd gives him a space at the bar where he is monopolized by Fox's dean of the gossip corps, Roger Friedman. When "Happy Feet" wins, the unflappable Eastwood seems momentarily aroused. "George Miller, he's a great director," he says. "He's also a physician."

"Really?" I ask.

Eastwood nods. Whether it's true or not, no one is going to argue with Clint.

Stars--they're just like us
I hear an amazing story from the wait staff that Peter O' Toole just wandered from the lobby into the kitchen. When one of the waiters asked, "Can I help you?" He replied, "Oh, I'm just looking around" and proceeded to inspect the contents of the pantry.

At another break, Sasha Baron Cohen makes plans with his parents to rendezvous after the show. Jennifer Hudson wanders through with director Bill Condon and is immediately set upon by a string of reporters who emerge from the corners of the room.

In the bar, I eavesdrop on a conversation among Cate Blanchett, Peter Saarsgard, Maggie Gyllenhaal and, briefly, Sasha Baron Cohen. I am distressed, downright heartbroken, that over the course of 20 minutes these respected thespians say not one thing remotely interesting.

They discuss how to use their Blackberries, jet lag, pictures of kids ... very much like every conversation I've had with every one of my most boring friends with whom I have nothing in common.

Depressing beyond description to think that these people sit here at the center of the center of the universe and still have to politely make banal chit-chat with semi-strangers. If they can't break free of that, what hope is there for me?

The home stretch
As the show crosses the three-hour mark, the crowd in the theater seems excited but entirely deflated, if that is possible. The Michael Mann montage is viewed as a room might watch a commercial when it is too tired to change the channel.

But as the final Big Awards come on, it's time to sit up straight and pay attention. Wins by Forest Whitaker and Martin Scorsese get big whoops of applause from the invigorated crowd. When it comes time to hand out the big one, the crowd braces itself, murmurs "Oh" … and immediately races for the exits.

Even the DJ music and the dancing man and good feelings for Scorsese can't dilute the crowd's need to not be sitting in these seats anymore.

And so AA79 lurches to a halt. As the celebs and industry types surge toward the Governor's Ball, there's still a sense of euphoria that even the four hours, the extraneous clips reels and the tedious acceptance speeches cannot take away.

In fact, maybe those things even increase the luster. For all its foibles and bloatedness, there is no event on Earth that can match the high-octane glamour and vertigo-inducing sensation that comes from standing on top of the world at Oscar night.

Presidential inaugurations and Super Bowls try for star quality, but Oscar has it in sewn right into its double helix. And that is why, for all the bother, no one ever regrets coming down to the Kodak.