THE KUDOS CRASHER

A view from inside

An Academy Awards interloper recounts walking the carpet, cruising the Kodak and hanging with Clooney and Spielberg.

Richard Rushfield

The Kudos Crasher

March 7, 2006

After a long, hard winter's march. the trophy trail ends at the Big Enchilada — the 78th annual Academy Awards. Tonight, my tux gets to take one last cruise around the block, as I am a ticketed and parking-permitted guest at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre. My yellow brick road really has led to the Emerald City.

The (cordoned off) boulevard of broken dreams
With the parking permit affixed to my windshield (where big chunks of it will remain when I try to remove it later) I drive to the metal gates placed along Sunset at Wilcox. The police see my permit, wave me past the barricade, and suddenly I am driving down a wide-open Hollywood Boulevard. Well, wide-open save for the cement barriers in the street that force my car through a serpentine, mad-bomber-stopping roundabout.

After parking, I make my way to the red carpet entrance. Before venturing down the carpet proper, one must first pass through a giant white tent that houses a row of magnetometers. The tent is bathed in a pale white glow and cushioned from the pandemonium outside, which makes the effect a bit like the security check-in for heaven.

After passing through security, people huddle at the far end of the tent, composing themselves before making their walk down the carpet de tutti carpets.

The route runs through a canyon of fan bleachers on one side, while the press stands on the other. People hang out of windows from the buildings that line the street, and perch on the El Captain Theatre marquee to watch the spectacle. Everywhere you look, hundreds of camera lenses are pointed at the carpet.

I enter with George Clooney, who calls, "Hello, boys," as he steps before the still photographers. Roger Ebert interviews Dolly Parton. From the bleachers, a fan yells, "Gary Busey! Gary Busey!" If I linger for a moment or my gait slows to less than a brisk crawl, security people pounce and say, "Please keep it moving. Let's get inside the theater."

Where the carpet makes a right turn and goes up the steps into the Kodak, a line of ominous looking women in blue blazers and grey skirts awaits. I talk with their leader, Talcia, who tells me, "We're people movers. We move the people who make this show. If a star is loitering, we say, 'Star, you're loitering. Follow me.'''

Kingdom of gawking
One might expect that after moving past the frenzied fans in the bleachers and the ravenous media hordes, you would enter a pristine collegial world where these attendees, drawn from the top ranks of the industry, would invoke a blasé attitude to the hysteria.

Instead, familiarity seems to have fostered only deeper, if better dressed obsession. The theater lobby is filled with people craning their necks to see who walks in. There are tuxedoed gawkers standing in a line by the door, and more well-clad gawkers hanging down into the stairwell.

The math tells the true story. While this may be the greatest concentration of star power on earth — perhaps as many as 150 stars inhabit the building — that leaves approximately 2,850 seats to be filled by people who are not celebrities.

And though they may be titans of their industry — executives with green-light power at their fingertips, producers and directors, agents whose phone calls make the mighty tremble — the walk down the red carpet reminds everyone there is only one currency that matters: star power.

Either you're a star or you're not, and the majority of people in tuxes decidedly are not.

Pre-show jitters
Fueled by the red carpet experience, the mood inside is positively giddy with excitement. The question, "Can you believe we're here?" seems to be on everyone's lips, and only a few feign disinterest in the excitement.

People mill around feverishly. The sound of Roger Ebert interviewing Terrence Howard is piped into the bathroom. The crowd parts as Rachel Weisz shimmers by. A violin trio plays "The Way You Look Tonight." Over the intercom, an announcer pleads, "Please take your seats. The 78th annual Academy Awards will start in 15 minutes." No one heeds his call.

A word from our sponsor…
I take my seat in the distant peaks of Mt. Kodak. Around me, women have squeezed their gowns into the movie theater-sized chairs. Perhaps the funniest part of being at the Oscars is the sight of people trying to do normal things in elaborate gowns and tuxes — trying to eat a salad while standing up, moving sets around onstage, and squeezing into little seats.

As the final countdown begins, on the main floor a flood of gowns rush to their seats in the final seconds, and throughout the opening montage people stumble toward their seats in the dark theater.

As Jon Stewart takes the stage, looking from our vantage point like a lone stick figure on a giant skating rink, the attention is rapt and the laughter muted but appreciative. But as it is with watching Oscars at home, attention soon drifts. By the first break, people are freely chatting in the seats.

The big question posed to me by every friend who learned I was attending was about what happens in the theater during the commercial breaks. Does the host entertain the crowd with insider off-color jokes? Does George Clooney dance in the aisles? Does Jack Nicholson get into fistfights with ushers?

Well, the answers to these questions are no, no and no. What happens during the break is precisely nothing. Some loud orchestral music continues from the cutaway and the ABC commercials are shown on the giant screen. Otherwise, everyone just sits quietly or makes a run for the bar.

The real show
As at any good Oscar party, there's only so much watching of the show that people can take before the party's center of gravity moves to the buffet. Or, if you are at the show itself, to the basement lobby bar, where a midsized party flows and ebbs throughout the evening.

I step into the fairly packed George Eastman room about half an hour into the show. In one corner, the shockingly tall Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dame Judi Dench wait for what seems to be the VIP ladies room with fur-clad controversy-stoking NYC publicist Peggy Siegel. (There is no line however for the general public's ladies room, so why they are waiting for this one is a matter of concern.) A man asks to borrow my pen and justifies his request by saying, "I just won an Oscar with my sister." (Turns out he's John Canemaker, winner for best animated short).

Later in the show, a young researcher for the academy tells me she just enjoyed a brush with the man of the hour, George Clooney. As they both waited to get back into the theater, she approached him and, noticing his Oscar trophy, asked if she could hold it. "You can have it!' he answered, and allowed her a prolonged encounter with the statuette.

As the night wears on, the room fills with people carrying trophies. A crowd soon forms in the lobby bar around the group of Frenchmen carrying stuffed animals, the "March of the Penguins" crew, who after winning their award, party in the bar for the rest of the night.

In contrast to the stunned and dizzy smiles the rest of the winners wear, the Gallic corner whoops with abandon. "Look, we put our ties on the Penguins!" one of them points out to me, showing the bow ties now bound around the stuffed dolls' throats.

He goes on about the penguins: "We had four," he says, "but I was so happy I gave Lauren Bacall one backstage."

It's hard in here for a pimp
The bar's oddest moment comes, unsurprisingly, during Three 6 Mafia's rendition of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." The elegant crowd in the Eastman room initially stares, mouths agape, at the 'hood set, but soon heads start bobbing.

By the end of the song, the music has taken hold and the entire little room is hopping up and down, swaying back and forth. The spectacle of a few dozen people in evening gowns, long gloves and tuxes stomping to "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" is worthy of a very mediocre film about the stuffy uptight crowd learning to loosen up.

A few minutes later, after winning their award, Three 6 Mafia marches through the lobby pumping their Oscars over their heads. The entire lobby stops to cheer them on.

Where were you when 'Crash' won?
I return to my seat for the big award. If before the show friends wondered about the commercial breaks, after the show all anyone asked was what was it like when "Crash" won?

Well, after a night of total predictability and canned spectacle, it was like the statues suddenly came to life. More to the point, it was as though a bomb blast suddenly sucked every bit of oxygen out of the room and out of the lungs of every individual in it.

It's rare in life that one witnesses moments of true shock, but in the Kodak Theatre at the moment the crowd was informed that "Brokeback Mountain" was not, in fact, their champion, a wave of pure, giddy, roller coaster-like shock spread through the room.

And then, people rushed for the exits to beat the crush at the valet.

Spielberg Town
It's hard to remember that there was a time (way back in the '80s) when Oscar seemed hell-bent on snubbing Steven Spielberg at every turn. Today, it's clear that Mr. Steven Spielberg is the mayor of the Governors Ball.

Seeming unconcerned about the "Munich" shutout, Spielberg and his coterie took up a post just outside the entryway and played self-appointed host as the multitudes streamed by. Acting the gracious Grand Man of Film, Mr. S. received admiring handshakes and congratulated winners.

The director of "Tsotsi" stopped to kiss the ring, saying, "it all started with you." The "Wallace & Gromit" filmmakers (their project was produced by Dreamworks Animation) also stopped to chat. Spielberg told them, "It seems like just yesterday we were in that restaurant talking about this."

Gary Busey sticks his head into the circle and begins to tell Mr. Spielberg something, and almost immediately an event staffer is at his elbow, gently but firmly guiding him away and inside.

When Spielberg makes a phone call, a whirlwind of chaos suddenly opens around him. A borderline hysterical woman in his entourage barks to a young event staff, "Get ______ on the phone, A-SAP!" The event staffer hollers into her headset, in full crisis mode, "Get ______ on the phone, A-SAP!"

Moments later another staffer appears and they go into conference mode. The hysterical woman, blood in her eyes, soon grabs the young event staffer again, "I need a floater! Get Wolfgang and have him send a floater to me! I was supposed to have a floater!"

Inches away, Spielberg chats on the phone, oblivious.

The ball unchained
Inside, the ballroom is a winter wonderland done in all white with what seem to be giant ice crystals hanging from the ceiling. There is nothing particularly ball-ish about the party, however, as almost no one uses the tiny dance floor at the back of the room. Mobs form around the tables for the various films, hovering over the stars as they try to eat.

But contrary to the Ball's reputation as a place where stars pay their quick respects before fleeing to glitzier climes, many stay for a good hour or two. George Clooney himself doesn't pack it in until the crowd begins breaking up almost two hours after the show as Wolfgang Puck stands in the doorway, saying good night to his well-fed guests.

At the escalator, I am given a tiny little Oscar statuette made of chocolate, which ironically at this biggest show of the year constitutes the entire gift bag for non-celebrities.

And thus my awards journey, which began two months ago on a shuttle bus to the People's Choice Awards, ends in the Hollywood & Highland Center underground parking lot, where five floors belowground a long line of valets stand at attention and bring my Scion.

I drive up and up, out of the lot into the air and back into a world without gift bags, where no photographers scream at the front door and acceptance speeches are never ever cut off by the orchestra.