Los Angeles
When I boarded the plane for Los Angeles in New York last Friday to attend the Vanity Fair Oscar party, as well as several others, the beautiful Uma Thurman was just ahead of me, looking every inch the star (she is, after all, 6ft tall) even though she was sans maquillage. She sweetly turned to me and said, ‘I hear you and your husband are not sitting together — I’m happy to change seats with you if it helps.’ I thanked her, and explained it was OK, because the airline had just bumped Rosie Perez so that Percy and I could sit together.
Each year, before the Oscar ceremonies, every designer in the world jostles to give a gown to one of the precious few A-list actresses, because if she is photographed on the red carpet it’s worth tens of thousands of dollars in free publicity or, should she win, hundreds of thousands. Some designers even pay the stars to wear their dresses. At the Peninsula Hotel we were bombarded with gifts of watches, sunglasses, chocolates, vodka and every possible unguent for hair and skin and I’m not even a presenter.
The big event on Friday night was veteran ICM super-agent Ed Limato’s cocktails and dinner (dress ‘casual chic’) at his gilded estate on Coldwater Canyon. It was a freezing night, but nevertheless our host greeted us in shirtsleeves (very nice shirtsleeves, mind you) and bare feet. At dinner in the beautifully tented garden, our companions were Dominick Dunne, who filled us in on the latest Aaron Spelling lawsuit, the ever-chic Lynn Wyatt, who always flies in from Houston for this weekend, Wendy Stark, one of the richest and most influential girls in town, and Alana Stewart. Suddenly we were joined by a tiny wizened man who planted himself at the end off the table, accompanied by three young Anna Nicole Smith lookalikes in barely-there minis and by Steve Bing (remember him?). I was puzzled by this ménage à cinq until Alana whispered, ‘It’s Hugh Hefner with his three live-in bunnies.’ The girls go with him everywhere — yes, everywhere.
At noon next day we drove up to Coldwater Canyon again for a party at the palatial estate of mogul Barry Diller and his designer wife, Diane von Furstenberg. Contrary to popular opinion, when they are not ‘on show’ most denizens of this town dress down. Shirley MacLaine laughed hys terically at my outfit because I wore a skirt as opposed to the rest of the jeans-clad crowd. ‘I’m always in my jeans,’ she howled. ‘They must be pretty dirty by now,’ I retorted.
Oscar day: Percy and I breakfasted at the roof-garden restaurant of the Peninsula, which was packed with high-powered studio executives dressed worse than the derelicts that you find on the streets of any major American city. At 4.30 p.m. we arrived at Morton’s restaurant for the lavish Vanity Fair party. The bar was buzzing. Since the editor, Graydon Carter, is extremely selective, only 200 people were invited for the seated dinner, and three hours later another 300 or so arrived for drinks.
When the telecast began the guests would not stop chatting (after all, they hadn’t seen each other since yesterday). Some of the more dedicated movielovers hissed angrily to shush them. TV sets were prominently displayed, gorgeous arrangements of peach roses, candles and, wonder of wonders for California, ashtrays and inscribed silver Zippo lighters on the tables. We could smoke! Mick Jagger hugged me, as did Kirk Douglas who, at 90 and after a stroke and the resulting speech impediment, was more charming and sprightly than ever. I sat next to my old pal the ever-tanned George Hamilton, who agreed with my Oscar choices.
When George Clooney stepped up to receive his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a hush descended and he said, ‘OK, so I’m not winning best director.’ There was cheering and clapping, but the ceremony seemed to go on for ever, with too many technical awards and not enough glamour, although Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Kidman made up for it. Finally, when the wry, whimsical Jack Nicholson announced the long-awaited best picture, the crowd gave a massive cheer. They had obviously wanted Crash to win all along, even though the boring Brokeback Mountain was theoretically the favourite.
At the after-party we sat in a banquette with the usual suspects, watching the celebrities arrive: the popular Best Actor winner, Philip Seymour Hoffman, loped in sans Oscar (he’d left it in the car); Jennifer Lopez said hello sweetly; Faye Dunaway sat with us for hours, trying to get George Lucas’s attention (he finally relented); Vince Vaughn arrived separately from Jennifer Aniston but they were quite close once inside; Jamie Falco admitted to us that he wasn’t a kid from Brooklyn at all, but a West Coast beach bum, and Willem Dafoe eyed us suspiciously from the other end of the banquette. When, at midnight, we finally left, we ran into a petite woman in a lavender décolletage dress. We kissed each other on both cheeks fondly and she said, ‘It’s good to see you, Joan.’ ‘Why, Madonna, I never knew you cared!’ I replied.
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