Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Where one goes to go really Gaga
Jennifer Garner smells like cucumbers: Inside the most exclusive Oscars party
SHHHHH, Jennifer Garner is approaching and we mustn’t look too eager, must ever so casually move over on the leather bench to show that there’s room here if she wants to sit – those strappy heels look so uncomfy, Jen – and finally, we’ve done it. Vanity Fair magazine’s current cover star folds up her ball gown and plops down next to us.
She smells like cucumbers, and America.
To the right: Whoopi Goldberg in high-top sneakers. To the left: Faye Dunaway in a pantsuit.
The Oscars ceremony might be one of the most prestigious events in the celebrity world, but the Vanity Fair celebration is the most exclusive after-party – in which all of the movie stars in all of the land are brought to one large building to get away from the mortals.
It’s harder to get into than the White House and every person there is famous.
Inside is the demystification of celebrity. Inside is the anthropological exercise of our times.
Rooney Mara! Hello, and you are eating french fries and your dress looks much less doily-ish in person. Jason Bateman! Hello, and you have a very large head. Near a cluster of high-top tables, Paula Patton, aka Robin Thicke’s ex, brushes against the shoulder of Emily Ratajkowski, aka Robin Thicke’s mostly naked music video muse.
There’s Eddie Redmayne, chatting with Captain America Chris Evans. They are intently stroking each other’s tuxes.
Eddie’s looks like it is made of velvet, and he is saying “Shut up! Shut uppp!” but in a delightful British way.
Fight through the hipster-eyeglassed cadre of screenwriters to get outside for a breath of air, because that’s where the cigarette smoking is happening, and that’s where host Graydon Carter is shaking hands, and so that’s where we expect the fun, naughty people to be.
“It’s great! It’s great,” Jon Hamm is reassuring someone out on the patio. Then that person walks away and Hamm turns to comic Louis CK and says, “That’s all actors ever need to hear: ‘It’s great, it’s great.’
Ohhh, the first big Oscar winner has arrived.
Brie Larson, changed out of her blue ceremony gown into something pink and slouchy. She slowly makes her way through the herd of photographers outside
And then – please let us through, Daisy Ridley, pardon us, Sissy Spacek – we’ll follow Larson toward the bar, where another guy keeps bellowing at her – I always said you were the real thing!” – while she orders a drink, and then we’ll follow her… Well, we won’t be following her anywhere, because suddenly the path is blocked by Michael Keaton and Liev Schreiber and Rachel McAdams and a bunch of producer-types with a bunch of Oscar statuettes.
“Is that Gaga?” someone shouts. “It’s Gaga!”
Just like that, the crowd loosens, lubricated by the desire for Lady Gaga, as people whip out their iPhones and surge toward the corner where Gaga graciously poses for selfies – selfies with Gwen Stefani, selfies with Taylor Swift visible in the background, and, while we debate our own desire for a selfie, we find that Jason Segel is standing on our dress.
“How many burgers have I had?” demands a deeply concerned Seth MacFarlane at the In-N-Out stand outside.
The counter lady holds up three fingers. “Three? I’ve had three burgers?”
“We could say it’s two if that would make you feel better,” she says, handing him another one. “So this would make three?” “If you want it to be.” “Just tell me,” he begs. “Tell me how many burgers I’ve eaten.”
Oh, dear. Ben Affleck has arrived, and, after maintaining an appropriate quarantine in the outdoor-smoking portion of the party, he begins to migrate toward the leather-sofa portion of the party, where Jennifer Garner still mingles. Just two days earlier, she had broken her silence about their divorce in a soul-baring interview published by Vanity Fair; now we are watching them move towards each other as if watching a slowmotion collision.
They greet each other warmly and linger near each other at close proximity; it’s all very friendly and grown-up and – this is hard to explain – but the weird, complicated humanity of it makes us feel that we belong here at this party for the absurdly rich and famous. We are all just people, after all.
Then a starlet approaches, the name escapes us, but young and fresh-faced, the kind you’d see in a Disney musical, and she greets us a bright smile. “You look just like Emma,” she purrs, tracing a line in the air around our face.
Oh really? Emma Watson? Emma Stone? Emma Thompson? All Emmas are good Emmas.
“Emma,” she starts again. “My publicist’s dog-walker.” Right, then. Leonardo DiCaprio and Alicia Vikander have come and gone. Actually, a lot of people have gone. The tables are littered with empty champagne flutes, the floor is littered with crumbs.
“See you at the next party?” a woman calls to her friend.
“This is the last party,” the friend cackles back. “The only party.”
The stars of the world, and their publicists and dog-walkers, all head out into the Hollywood night. – Washington Post