I looked all around the Vanity Fair party for Paul McCartney and couldn’t find him. Your account makes me so jealous. I guess I’ll just have to make do with my dim memories of the Beatles at Dodger Stadium in the summer of ‘66. Were you even alive then?
Great column this morning. You were everywhere and saw everything. I love your line about Sean Puffy P. Diddy Puff Daddy Combs “dancing with his cellphone.” I, too, saw David Schwimmer and Audrey Tautou leave together, so I don’t know when she might have had the time and inclination to romance Tobey Maguire, per “Page Six.” Maybe they just groped each other in the dark. During the power outage. I mean surge.
By the way, what do you make of the hot rumor that the real reason Will Smith and Jada Pinkett left the Oscars early was not because their daughter was sick, but because Will had a backstage dust-up with Ethan Hawke—who was allegedly doing pro-Denzel trash-talking about the Best Actor award? Smith threw a punch, so goes the rumor, and the result was the big red bruise on Ethan’s cheek. But the various spokespeople involved insist that the “bruise” was a lipstick smear from Pauletta Washington, wife of Hawke’s Oscar-winning Training Day co-star.
How, and why, do these rumors get started? As far as I could tell, Oliver Stone was nowhere in evidence, and you and I both saw Mr. Hawke at the Vanity Fair party cutting the rug with Mrs. Diller (by whom I mean Diane von Fürstenberg, never mind the snide comments of a DreamWorks publicist). Mr. Hawke’s cheek was miraculously bruise-free, lending credibility (at least to my mind) to the Sloppy-Kiss Theory.
Meanwhile, this year’s Oscars once again, despite the earnest efforts of everyone, were glacially paced and, according to the Nielsen overnight, drove away viewers by the millions, snoring. I don’t know about you, but Whoopi Goldberg most definitely outstayed her welcome with me, and her one-note jokes (especially her lame attempts at laugh lines after Robert Redford accepted his special life achievement Oscar) were gratuitously ungracious and didn’t do much for her reputation as a comedian. The Wall Street Journal’s Tunku Vardarajan is especially good on this today. I much preferred the days when the Academy Awards were beset by streakers and Vanessa Redgrave’s political Tourette’s syndrome.
Anyway, as you can tell, the red-eye made me just a little bit cranky. I’m sure your next dispatch will cheer me up.
Best regards,
Lloyd
