Oscar party platter
‘Cold’ weather doesn’t put chill on LA bashes
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Oscars weekend was in full swing, with industry execs, rainmaking agents and power publicists making the rounds bundled up with umbrellas, our Alexandra Steigrad reports.
On Friday, p.r. veteran Peggy Siegel headed over to the Beverly Hilton for the ICG 55th annual Publicists Awards luncheon, while others opted for the inaugural International Women of Power Luncheon attended by actress Michelle Williams.
That evening, Emma Stone hosted Women in Film’s Celebration of the 2018 Female Oscar Nominees at the Crustacean in Beverly Hills.
But it was the agencies that owned the night, with UTA, CAA and WME throwing shindigs at private residences tucked away in the fire-scarred hills of LA.
On Saturday, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg were forced to cancel their annual picnic lunch on their lawn in Beverly Hills due to rain. However guests braved the unseasonably chilly weather — in the 50s — in Santa Monica for the Independent Spirit Awards.
But all eyes were on Sunday, the day of the Oscars, and its large after-parties.
Most guests will swing by the Governors Ball in the Dolby Theater’s ballroom, then head to the Vanity Fair party — if they can score a ticket. With larger-than-life former Editor-inChief Graydon Carter out of the magazine, many Tinseltown types wonder if his successor, Radhika Jones, has enough gravitas to pull off the party with as much gusto and prestige.
While some said it wouldn’t matter, since the VF party is the place to be, others took a more skeptical tack, emphasizing the importance of this year’s party as a proving ground for the newbie editrix.
Still some shrugged that party off altogether and said the more exclusive soirée would be Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary’s private party, which has a strict no photos policy. Cellphones are left at the door.
No star power er
The Academy Awards may be the film industry’s Super Bowl, butut some in Hollywood appear to be takingking a knee on this year’s ceremony.
Even as workers prep the reded car-carpet, tents and security gates around the theater, many industry insid-siders are looking past Sunday.
“Can you believe the Oscarss is this Sunday?” a top agent told Steigrad. “It’s like, who cares?””
While there’s al-ways a sense of awards season fatigue following the Golden Globes, this year has a slate of smaller, less flashy moviess nominated, with no big stars expected to take home the golden statuette.
“There are no movie stars [expected to win] this year,” the agent added.
Most people expect Gary Old-Oldman to take Best Actor honors rs for “Darkest Hour” and Frances Mc-McDormand to win Best Actress ss for “Three Bilboards Outside Ebbing,bing, Mis-Missouri.”
Allison Janney (pictured) isis largely expected to win Best Supporting Actress for “I, Tonya,” and Sam Rockwell kwell Best Supporting Actor for “Three Billboards.”
Even if those actors don’t win, there’s still a dearth of major celebritiesties and splashy films nominated.
“The Oscars feel like the Independent Spirit Awards,” an exec said, noting that the industry has changed a lot in recent years as insurgents like Ama-Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and HBO arere creat-creat- ing critically acclaimed original series. Now, the eexec said, there are only two types of fifilms in theaters, the big superherohero blocblockbuster type, or the smaller indie prodproductions. On top of that, the industry is still shell-shocked from the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the subsequent #MeToo movement. And there’s th no more fitting a place for f the industry to acknowledge e the fallout than at the Oscars. O “It just doesn’t feel like a celebratory c time,” an insider offered.
School daze
Before the GQ cover shoots, the heartthrob status and becoming the youngest Best Actor Oscar nominee in nearly 80 years, Timothée Chalamet was competing in his middle school talent show. As a seventh-grader at BBooker T. Washington middle schschool on the Upper West Side, ChaChalamet entered the talent show andand wwon over the audience with his versionvers of the viral YouTube video “EvolutionEvolu of Dance,” our Nicolas Vega reportsreports. The “CallCall MeMe By Your Name” star waltzed to classical musmusic, grooved to Michael Jackson’sson’s “Thriller” and finished by throwing down to Soulja Boy’s “Crank That.” Nick Reade, , who was in the eighth grade at the time and served as a student judge, told On thethe MoneyMon that Chalamet’s performance was best in show. “I rememberremembe feeling that he blew away the com pet i ti competition ,” Reade said. In what hopehopefully is not foreshadowing, the 22-year-old Chalamet ended up placing second in the show,sho losing out to a strings ensemblesemble of eighth-graders.