From being hugged by Shirley Bassey to sharing a fag with Juliette Lewis, Oscars night in LA turns out to be one magic moment after another
Hollywood is all about moments. Everything is moments in these days of Twitter and Instagram. A moment is all we get, so actually Andy Warhol was pretty off-mark with that 15-minute thing. Outstay your moment nowadays and they play the Jaws music. The "jump the shark" moment, they call it out here.
My mad weekend in LA started when Harry Potter and Gandhi were on my flight out, or Daniel Radcliffe and Sir Ben Kingsley as it probably says on their passports. And at the GREAT British nominee party held by the ebullient consul-general Dame Barbara Hay, I had what I call a Marshall McLuhan moment, as in when, in Annie Hall, Woody Allen produces the great cultural theorist in a cinema queue to back him up in an argument. I was chatting to Col Needham, founder of IMDb, joking about what celebrities I could magic up to impress him. So, I grabbed George Lazenby to whom I'd been talking a bit earlier, and actually heard myself say: "Well, let's start with James Bond, shall we?"
Lots of fun Brits at that party, including the Anna Karenina posse of Seamus McGarvey, Sarah Greenwood and Jacqueline Durran. It was good to see actress Kate Ashfield, too, the Shaun of the Dead star who has moved out there, glammed up the hair and is having a great time.
After that Bond incident, Needham generously invited me to his table at the Indie Spirit awards the next day, down on the beach at Santa Monica. I bumped into Emily Mortimer who was looking amazing in a gold Chanel jacket and giving out an award and all that, but was also filming for her new Sky series Doll & Em, in which she plays a bitter actress called Em.
Harvey Weinstein was enjoying the success of Silver Linings Playbook (hardly very indie, really, is it?) winning big – everyone from that movie except poor Bradley Cooper seemed to win – but Jason Isaacs and Lennie James were down there, Sam Rockwell and Martin McDonagh, Jack Black and Jason Schwartzman, Kerry Washington and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (she's a very funny woman, and great in Smashed) and the crew from my favourite, proper indie film of the year, Gimme the Loot.
Having a Bond to hand might be cool, but nothing beats actually having an Oscar in your mitt. That's how I got into the Vanity Fair party on Oscar night. My friend the documentary producer Simon Chinn won an Oscar a couple of years ago for Man on Wire. So he's an old pro at all this and promised me that if, at the end of the ceremony he was "holding a little gold man" for his Searching for Sugar Man, he could basically get me in anywhere.
The smart thing in LA on Oscar night is actually to walk and avoid the jam of hundreds of black limos ferrying stars to post-award parties. I passed Mark Ruffalo. And Tommy Lee Jones. And Don Johnson. I stopped to have a cigarette with Juliette Lewis. I don't really smoke any more, but when Juliette Lewis offers you a fag on Oscar night, you take it.
Then Shirley Bassey walked on by. For me, her rendition of Goldfinger was the best thing about the whole ceremony. "Fabulous," I said to her. "You won the Oscars with that tonight, you know." And she stopped, clasped me by the shoulders and kissed me. On the street, right there on Sunset Boulevard. I know!
Jean Dujardin, Oscar winner last year for The Artist, walked by a moment or two later and gave me a man hug. I was standing by the makeshift Vanity Fair security gate where women with clipboards check all the numbers on the limo windscreens and read out the names of the occupants into headsets like mini-CIA agents. They even make the drivers wind down the blacked-out back windows to prove the celebs are actually in there.
As the cars purred slowly by, I overheard some ridiculous sentences, like: "Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, together." Or: "Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, yes that's definitely you." And: "Jeffrey Katzenberg, in the front, Oscar on lap. Steven Spielberg in the back."
Standing at this odd spot in the universe, under a full silver moon, awaiting my golden ticket like Charlie at the Chocolate Factory, I eventually found Simon Chinn and his director Malik Bendjelloul, a very happy, gentle soul, who was cradling his Oscar in his jacket, like a golden baby.
And these babies get you in. There were eight of us, to two Oscars. Then there's a security scanner machine, like at an airport, only it can't be very secure because, what do you know, two heavy golden Oscars don't actually set it off.
Gael García Bernal gave me an "Hola hombre", looking super cool in a midnight blue tux. He introduced me to his wife, and then he uttered the immortal words: "And do you know my friend Salma Hayek?"
And then in we went, to the throng of fame. It was like Madame Tussauds, but moving. Although actually, some of the women's faces were not moving. Does Botox deflate after, say, six hours, I wonder? Is that why they have to go home, like modern Cinderellas, whose faces now only last for an evening?
And, really, there was nothing happening. Celebrities were just milling about, everyone bumping into one another because everyone's really not looking at anything except what other celebs they might spot. Celebs are the worst offenders for craven celeb spotting, I discover.
There's Shirley Bassey again, talking to Joan Collins and Jackie Collins. Joan seductively fondled Simon's Oscar, before heading off to meet Quentin Tarantino.
I go to sit next to Helena Bonham Carter, because she's fun and doesn't care that people always shit on her red carpet dresses. She's talking to Danny Huston, who's always a hoot, and who always has fags. Catherine Zeta-Jones, in fact, is also sitting in my booth, having one of Danny Huston's fags.
Yes. At the Vanity Fair party, you can smoke indoors. Anywhere you like. Everyone in there is so famous and fabulous that normal laws of the land do not apply. You can't tell someone holding an Oscar that they can't smoke. You can't tell them anything. Tonight, just for tonight, like James Cameron once said, they're kings of the world.
And anyway, the DJ put on Michael Jackson's PYT and the dancefloor suddenly got a busier. I could sense Silver Linings Playbook star Chris Tucker gearing up for an MJ impression and, well, it has been known for me to bust out my own one at these sorts of occasions – bar mitzvahs, weddings and Oscar parties. So there I was, having an MJ dance battle with Chris Tucker.
Somewhat chuffed with this, I texted my wife back home in London. She texted back saying: "Well done darling. But don't, on any account, do your Freddie Mercury. Please. Just sayin."
It seemed like the right time to leave. The place was emptying. The dream was fraying. I walked outside to where I'd left my car. Only I couldn't remember quite where that was. Or what just happened. Ang Lee was now in front of me on the pavement, eating an In-n-Out Burger, and trying not to get mustard on his Oscar.
I walked down Sunset and off into the sunrise.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/02/trailer-trash-oscars-party-diary-2013
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