Diary – 3 March 2007

For years, one of the highlights of the Oscar season was the star-crammed party that über-agent Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar threw first at the Bistro in Beverly Hills and later at Spago in Hollywood. Invitations to this party were the most coveted of Oscar night, and Lazar trimmed his guest list with the ruthlessness that Genghis Khan applied to his victims’ heads. Several years ago, as I walked into the Spago party, I watched as an overly buxom starlet posed and preened for snappers outside the restaurant, having been refused entry. She was Anna Nicole Smith, whose life even then seemed like a bit of a train wreck, and now in death seems even more luridly bizarre.

***

Oscar Time, or the Awards Season as it’s now called, starts five months before the actual evening. By December, when dozens of DVDs of the current crop which the producers deem Oscar-worthy are received by the approximately 5,000 Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences members, the race is in full heat. Some of these movies are obviously Oscar-worthy — Babel, The Queen, The Departed — but a great many are not even worth the postage. However, as one of the 1,200 acting members of Ampas, I dutifully watch as many as I can or, preferably, go to the cinema to see the ones that I feel deserve the justice of the large screen. In order to do this, Ampas provides a card stating that you are a voting member and should be allowed access to certain movies free of charge. This card works very well in NY or LA, but some towns have never seen or heard of the Oscars, much less this card. Recently I went to see Notes on a Scandal in a remote outpost of Denver and presented my card to the cashier.