Holy Crap, I Went to the Oscars!
After years covering the awards, you'd think I'd be a little jaded. Nope, my first-ever night at the show got me genuinely inspired, teary and footloose
It was by far the starriest bathroom break of my life.
Somewhere in the first third of last night’s Oscars, right before Sean Baker won the award for best editing and cemented the sense that Anora was going to go all the way, I ducked into the ladies room in the lobby level of the Dolby Theatre, where all the people with good seats inevitably wind up. As I entered, Rita Wilson was sweeping through in a diaphanous pink gown, while future best actress winner Mikey Madison patiently waited for traffic to clear at the exit. Later I washed my hands while Gal Gadot and Ana de Armas chatted with separate friends at their own sinks.
This is not necessarily the glamour you imagine at the Oscars, where the fashion is magnificent and emotions run fierce. But it captures the odd balance of high and low you get at the Academy Awards, a trade convention held inside a mall that also represents the golden hopes and dreams of millions. You can be Madison, rising to the top of your profession at only 25, wearing a custom gown and on the verge of inking your place in Hollywood history — and you’re still going to have to wait in line for the paper towel dispenser.
Sunday night was my first time attending the actual awards show, after years of spending the night working at the Vanity Fair party. (When I tell people this, I don’t get too much sympathy — fair enough.) But it really did give me an entirely different perspective on the evening, which, yes, features the cavalcade of stars you’re used to seeing on television, but also thousands more regular, working Hollywood people who are all just a little dazed to be there. It makes the celebratory vibe of the night all the more powerful, particularly during a ceremony like this one that gave so much time to honoring designers, songwriters, and other craftspeople.
Maybe it’s just Stockholm Syndrome, as Conan O’Brien joked when the ceremony stretched well into its third hour. But being at the Oscars is surely enough to make anyone a believer in the Oscars, and to leave someone like me — deeply invested in the process whether I like it or not — genuinely inspired. It helps that there were great winners, some terrific speeches (and some, well, less terrific ones) and even a victory from the coolest Latvian cat in history.
I’ll dive into the winners in much more detail on today’s special edition of the podcast, with returning guest Tyler Coates; subscribe here to make sure you don’t miss it. Below I’ll do my best to capture the highlights of what I saw that wasn’t on TV, from the bustling chaos of the carpet to the dance floor at Neon’s after-party, where Anora’s Mark Eydelshteyn boogied jubilantly to the film’s signature Take That song. My feet may never recover; I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Arriving in Style
If you tuned into my live Substack appearance while I put on my makeup and failed to remember the name of the designer of my dress (fashion companies, please sponsor me!), you may recall my plan to attempt to travel on foot to the Dolby from my hotel, a very reasonable 15-minute walk. This plan quickly turned to disaster for all the reasons you might imagine — the crowds on Hollywood Boulevard and the police barricades put in place to block them, mainly — so I required a heroic Lyft rescue to actually get where I needed to go. I do highly recommend the experience of hopping into a taxi and announcing, “Hi! You’re taking me to the Oscars!”
After my Lyft driver navigated us through the truly impressive security gauntlet, and I walked on to the red carpet (my feet already hurt, a bad omen), the first star I saw making her way in was June Squibb, whose presentation of makeup and hairstyling would turn out to be one of the evening’s highlights. I couldn’t help shouting, “I love your dress!” and the 95-year-old star gamely shouted back, “Thank you!” Her funny, spirited turn at the mic alongside Scarlett Johansson was a little redemption for the Thelma nomination that could have been.
Once you’re in the red carpet area, you’re pretty quickly separated from the presenters and nominees — aka the people whose pictures actually get taken — and the regular rabble, who walk behind the risers of photographers and attempt to sneak a peek at the action while also posing for their own shots. The polite but forceful security team resorts to shouting, “There are more statues inside!” (referencing the giant Oscars that cry out for a selfie) to try to keep people moving, but who can blame us for wanting to keep our feet on that carpet as long as possible?
Eventually I met up with my seatmate, The Ankler’s own Richard Rushfield, who introduced me to my first insider secret: Station yourself by the executive arrivals photo area, where it’s much quieter, and you can people-watch all you want. I watched Wicked’s Ethan Slater walk by on his own, absorbed in his phone, a full half hour before his girlfriend, Ariana Grande, swept by in her enormous pink confection of a gown. Every executive who stopped by to talk to Richard wanted to know what he thought would win best picture; most agreed that Anora had the edge, but nobody seemed to be anticipating the sweep that was in store.
By the time I started running into the awards strategists and studio publicists I’ve been working with on these same films since September, the weight of the season really started to catch up to me. We’ve been at this for so long, and with the votes already tallied there was something surprisingly light about the mood. I tested this theory on a few people throughout the night, including some nominees, and there did seem to be a consensus: The Oscars are, weirdly enough, one of the less intense nights of the awards calendar. Well, maybe that’s only if you don’t win.
A Wickedly Good Watch
Thank you, Conan, for the snack box, and for giving me the superior Raisinets while Richard got stuck with the dreaded Dots.
Perched on the second mezzanine, Richard and I were far from the stage but had a great view of the sweep of the big performances, particularly Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s big opening number. Backup singers were stationed in the small viewing-balcony seats, which had screens that brought the stage effect out into the crowd. The lifting of the scrim, which had a rainbow projected on it and hid Grande for the beginning of her performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” was dazzling. There was a moment when I realized I was sitting at the Oscars and watching Cynthia Erivo sing “Defying Gravity” live in front of me and, reader, I cried.
After that I faced what I learned is the eternal challenge of any reporter at the Oscars: trying to watch the show while also partaking in the absolutely unbeatable people-watching in the lobby bar. As I write I’m still catching up on the speeches I missed while watching Karla Sofía Gascón be carefully escorted through the lobby, reporters very firmly told she was not available to give quotes. I had to watch the musical Bond tribute on the lobby screens — I was not the only person somewhat puzzled by why we were doing this, of all things — but got to see Nickel Boys director RaMell Ross and The Substance director Coralie Fargeat cut it up together at the bar. At least I heard Kieran Culkin’s acceptance speech from inside the room and also caught the puzzling sight of him walking through the lobby later, accompanied by his wife but not the statue he so recently acquired.
Once I made it back in the theater, I got to see the team from The Brutalist in the front row grooving to “Ease On Down the Road” during the Quincy Jones tribute, and I witnessed an absolute melee in my mezzanine when Mikey Madison won — I suspect some members of her family were up there with me. The acoustics inside the Dolby make it hard to hear the crowd that’s not immediately around you, but the show seemed to go over well from where I was sitting. Even Adrien Brody’s very long speech got appreciative applause and laughs in all the right moments in my section. Maybe that’s the Stockholm Syndrome Conan warned us about.
Dancing the Night Away
Riding escalator after escalator to the Governors Ball, held immediately adjacent to the Dolby, I chatted with Greg Kwedar, the director of Sing Sing who was nominated for the film’s screenplay. His next project Train Dreams was a hit at Sundance and has been picked up by Netflix, which means he and his longtime collaborator Clint Bentley could be right back at the Dolby next year — a prospect he was not exactly ready to start planning for when I spoke to him. Maybe he could get a good night’s rest first?
Once inside the Governors Ball, though some people were clutching Oscars or getting them engraved toward the back of the room, everyone was back on something of an even playing field — part of the club, if only for the night. I stopped to congratulate Flow director Gints Zilbalodis, shortly before he slipped away for a return visit to In-N-Out Burger (having also stopped there post-Golden Globes), and then he was corralled for a photo with the team behind documentary short nominee Instruments of a Beating Heart. Academy President Janet Yang looked thrilled to have pulled off such a successful show, and though of course she would never confirm anything, seemed to agree with my suggestion that O’Brien would be welcomed as a return host.
On my way out the door I chatted briefly with Nickel Boys stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson, who said they’re much more likely to be recognized in a room when they’re standing together as a pair. Both they and their director, Ross, seemed to be genuinely enjoying watching the room around them, but I was also struck by how often they were stopped and congratulated on their film, which joined A Complete Unknown as the only best picture nominees to go home empty-handed. It’s a corny saying but I swear it felt true: It really is an honor and a victory to be nominated. And if you don’t have a real statuette, you can do like Inside Out 2 director Kelsey Mann, whom I spotted eating one of the chocolate Oscars at the dessert table.
My night ended at Neon’s party, which naturally became an Anora-fest. Each time a member of the cast or crew made their way up the enormous staircase at Soho House in West Hollywood, the entire room broke out in applause, but it was when the DJ played Take That’s “Greatest Day” followed by t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” — both songs featured prominently in the film — that the jubilant spirit really hit. Come on, of course I took the opportunity to join in.
Yuri Borisov and Mark Eydelshteyn hit the floor for t.A.T.u.👇🏼
For the indie film veterans in the room at the Neon party, there was still something surreal about the notion that Sean Baker, he of the scrappy movies made on iPhones and about sex workers, now had four Oscars, tying Walt Disney’s record for the most won in a single night. Surrounded by well-wishers, Baker seemed as dazed and dazzled as anyone else.
I’ll have more on the podcast and in this newsletter later this week and next — making more sense of this year’s winners and what, if anything, we’ve learned from this most chaotic of seasons. For now, as I board my flight to return home to reality, I’ll savor this lingering sense of awe about Baker’s four Oscars, about three awards for my beloved The Brutalist, and about how even the teams from Oscar-less Nickel Boys and Sing Sing seemed well-celebrated.
The Oscars are, at their best, a tribute to the work of filmmaking at every level. I think we pulled that off this year.
Slight correction - I had rec'd Rasinettes, but before you came I actually traded them with the lady on the other side of me for her Dots - which I haven't had since youth and found refreshing, not overly sweet and delightful. Thank you Conan!
I might be mistaken, but I think the four Oscars in one night for Walt Disney were for more than one film?