Oscar’s Glow Offers No Warmth for Those Chillin’ in the Limo Line
Of all the mind-altering experiences of Oscar night--the walk through the red-carpet canyon of screaming fans and flashing paparazzi, the realization that you are expected to go six hours fueled only by one tiny puff pastry--nothing compares with the wait at limousine pickup.
With a midnight March wind whipping down Highland Avenue, you stand shivering in a strapless evening gown, eyeing all the men in tuxedos and swearing you will never go to the Oscars again without a male companion, preferably your husband, because he is required by marital law to surrender the jacket.
Then, backing under a heat lamp, you realize that those waiting for cars with you are not other hapless non-nominees. There is Dame Judi Dench, who knew better than to go strapless in March, and Ben Kingsley chatting amiably. Just behind you are Nathan Lane and Ian McKellen, Peter Jackson and several people clutching Oscars.
As a slow-moving river of limousines, an unrolling satin bolt of limousines passes by--none of them yours--you notice that Oscar statuettes are everywhere. They are propped up like drunks on newspaper boxes while their owners shout into cell phones that they’ve been waiting for their car for 45 minutes now and it’s freaking cold out here; they are tucked into armpits as the winners rub their hands together for warmth. A few are even waved wildly like a wizard’s staff over the relentless rush of black steel, as if Oscar had the power to summon limo No. 639 from the depths of Highland. Which, it turns out, he does not.
Meanwhile, names are being called out with the numbers--extraordinary names like Maggie Smith and John Nash--and there they were, these famous people, scurrying between limos, disappearing into the dark warmth of their cars as other equally celebrated people gazed longingly. Jackson, writer and director of “The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” reserved his car with the name Underhill, which made this Tolkien fan laugh out loud even as she wondered whom you had to sleep with to get in a car, any car.
For fans of democracy, there was something encouraging about the fact that Hollywood traffic showed no favoritism, that Dame and dame, winners and non-nominees huddled under the same heat lamps, sipping the same complimentary espresso, warmed mostly by the same rising frustration at the wait. In the end, we’re all just people, and none of us can fly. But it is a bittersweet epiphany because if, after all this, all the flowers and gowns and gilt and street closures, the coverage, the campaigns and the sheer brutal size of the thing, if after all this, winning an Oscar doesn’t get you your limo the moment you want it, then, really, what the heck is it good for?
