It’s Oscar time! I know this because the British media, usually so prudent, has transformed itself into naked advertorial for films that usually — not always — tell America the lies about itself it most wants to hear. This is why Argo will win Best Picture. Bad Muslims want to kill us! (If I am wrong, feel free to write to me to tell me I am wrong. I will ignore you; but I promise I’ll be hurt.) So, where to go on the night of America’s mass (and failed) psychotherapeutic experiment? This glittering night when we worship the most self-hating people we can dig up — that is, actors. (How I love this paradigm. It is my favourite paradigm.) The madness is explicit.
The answer is Planet Hollywood, of course. Where else? They had the Expendables 2 premiere there, and host birthday parties for people who have PRs who hate them.
Planet Hollywood was founded by Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in the early 1990s. (Of course the vibe is pure 1980s greed, because Hollywood is always sulking ten years behind the rest of culture. Hollywood has just invaded Iraq.) I saw them in London on the night it launched, cruising in baseball caps in some godless limousine on the South Bank (probably the last time a limousine contained stars).
This was part of a celebrity restaurant phenomenon that reached its apogee with the Fashion Café, which failed when the supermodel backers realised that the sort of people who like food don’t like them. (In fact, brand experts think the word ‘fashion’ makes people feel sick.) It used to be by the Trocadero Centre, where rent boys lurk, near the Rainforest Café, another themed restaurant where you can buy, if you wish, a hat that makes you look like an elephant — well, slightly. Now it is on the Haymarket, a noble slope of dirt popular with tourists on Saturday nights.
It is an orange barn, full of people screaming and eating burgers and pizzas and fajitas all bigger than their heads. The walls are full of screens and the screens play Terminator 2. (Why 2? 1 was better.) There are also artefacts, usually clothing from Hollywood movies; for instance Bruce Willis’s shirt from Die Hard 3. (Why 3? 1 was better.) He was so little. Does he mind? There are also the ski goggles of Roger Moore (as James Bond) in The Spy Who Loved Me and the bullet that made Mr Big explode in Live and Let Die. A fake newspaper hailing Hugh Grant as prime minister (from Love, Actually) is very frightening. He might yet do it. And the Holy Grail (from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is here; yes here. I found it.
The website, which flogs dining packages to Shrek the musical, calls it ‘Hollywood-inspired dining’. What is that? It can’t be actual food. Actors don’t eat food — not food like this. This is a binge ’n’ starve joint. For some reason I think of Kirk Douglas’s mad ‘I still got it, baby’ stare, usually given when he is being photographed with his son, Fatal Attraction Michael. Kirk is still sexually competitive at 96. With his son. Now that is hunger.
It also says ‘Dine with the stars’. Yes, one-dimensional stars. Ex-stars. Dead stars. Stars who died after eating ribs bigger than their heads. Here, I am dining inside a smelly copy of Heat magazine, one which someone left on the Tube, near a takeaway box that used to contain kebabs but no longer does.
The food, I am sorry to say, is inedible. The waitress is charming, sinking. When I tip her, she cries.
There is, again, a shop that sells clothing. I am sorry I am currently reviewing restaurants that sell clothing. The new hot restaurants will open soon, when the birds sing out, and I will stop.
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