Sure, Sunday’s Academy Awards are Hollywood’s ultimate celebration, but what everyone wants a piece of is the red carpet.
That includes the stars and their publicists–who plot their red carpet strolls with surgical precision — the high- and low-tech media–that try to cash in on the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for celebrities looking designer-label fabulous–and two 19-year-olds from Beaver Falls, Pa.
“Excuse me, sir. Can I have a scrap of the carpet?” nursing student Kristy Holoweiko asked a tall, burly worker on the crew laying down the 500-foot-by-33-foot carpet along Hollywood Boulevard last week.
He went into his snake’s den of discarded swatches and pulled her out a nice one.
“You didn’t get it from me, OK,” he told her.
The red carpet itself is not a new phenomenon, but it has grown to such iconic status that many believe it now overshadows the actual Oscars show. Inside the Kodak Theatre, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be honoring such serious works as “Brokeback Mountain,” “Crash,” “Capote” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Outside, the red carpet will be flaunting Hollywood glitz and glamor.
No wonder everyone keeps trying to make the awards show shorter while the red carpet coverage just gets longer and longer–with ABC doubling the length of its preshow this year from a half-hour to an hour.
And no wonder that for the nominees and other stars, preparing for the red carpet has become as demanding as preparing for the actual Oscars. After all, only 20 percent of the nominees win, but everyone runs the gantlet of TV crews, paparazzi, print reporters and fan-filled bleachers.
Just knowing when to show up requires a planning and coordination feat.
“My theory is if you’re nominated in the technical categories or the lesser categories, you show up way early, before the Tom Hankses and the Tom Cruises and the Catherine Zeta-Joneses show up because you’re more likely to get them on the air, like on E!” said Los Angeles-based publicist Ziggy Kozlowski, who will be accompanying nominated “Crash” writer-director Paul Haggis down the carpet. “If you do have one of the [high-profile] nominees or one of the major presenters, you always want to get into the camera shot for ABC [closer to the awards’ beginning].”
All about timing
Flamboyant actress Sally Kirkland, who has walked the Oscars red carpet 16 times since her 1987 best actress nomination for “Anna,” is savvy to the importance of arriving promptly to avoid getting aced out by the bigger names.
“I used to have my limo driver get there an hour early and drive around to find the perfect time to arrive,” she said. “But it doesn’t always work because you get stuck [in traffic].”
So one year Kirkland, fearing her moment was passing, slipped off her 4-inch heels, fled her gridlocked limo and barefooted it to the carpet’s entrance. “I ran up there, put on my shoes, and I was still the first person to be interviewed by Channel 7,” she recalled.
The red carpet has a long Hollywood history, dating back to 1920s movie premieres. As for the Oscars: “There have been fans lining up in the bleachers back as far as the ’30s,” said Damien Bona, co-author of “Inside Oscar” and solo author of “Inside Oscar 2.” “But I think in terms of the red carpet as it is today, that’s a relatively recent phenomenon. I think it actually coincides with the emergence of E! [Entertainment] Television [in 1990]. They were probably the first national broadcaster to cover the whole thing.”
E!’s choice of a new carpet interviewer in 1995 accelerated the process. “You have to give credit or blame to Joan Rivers because when she started doing it, it took on a life of its own and became something that people really looked forward to,” Bona said.
On Sunday E! will be providing all-day red carpet coverage, starting at 11 a.m. and lasting until ABC takes the reins. Meanwhile, Joan and daughter Melissa Rivers will offer four hours of carpet duty on the TV Guide Channel and syndicated L.A.-based stations, and other networks (such as CNN), will chime in from the sidelines.
Then comes ABC’s preshow, beginning at 6 p.m. and running until the 7 p.m. awards telecast (both on WLS-Ch. 7). ABC’s carpet telecast has drawn significant viewership since it debuted awkwardly with Geena Davis at the helm in 1999. It drew 26.4 million viewers that year and 27.7 million last year (compared with 42.1 million viewers for last year’s actual awards show) despite following those hours of cable and syndicated coverage.
You can count Bruce Bibby, who provides cheeky celebrity coverage for E! under the name Ted Casablanca, among those who think the red carpet has overtaken the actual Oscars in terms of cultural interest.
“Yes, absolutely,” he said. “I think Cher began it. Cher began the awareness of `Hey, maybe there’s something else to this show than the show,’ but she began it in a spirit that I long for, which is [creating] outrageous moments. Now it’s that In Style school of who’s the most stylishly put-together, which I find unbearably boring. But there’s a thirst for it.”
Bona traces the beginning of the name-brand fixation to Jodie Foster’s well-publicized red carpet stroll in Armani in 1989. Now some publicists actually hand out cards in the press line detailing what designers their clients are wearing.
This shift has, by definition, changed the nature of the event.
Veteran London Daily Mail entertainment reporter Baz Bamigboye said when he started reporting from the red carpet 10 Oscars ago, the questions were “about what they thought of the other performances, what films are they doing next, what are their influences. You had a real conversation.”
More Top Picks Best Color Changing Smart Bulbs For Kids Rooms
Now Bamigboye finds he must focus less on movies because “there’s all of this other stuff I have to pay attention to. Was Keira Knightley’s gown full length or did it come just below the knee?”
Injecting spontaneity
The competition for memorable clips and sound bites has taken the red carpet even further from its roots. “Lately they do this new thing,” Kirkland said. “They ask anything.”
On last month’s Grammy Awards red carpet, Kirkland was quoted scolding Britney Spears for breast-feeding with implants (Spears has denied this) and driving with an infant in her lap.
While the evening’s suspense used to revolve around who would win or say something surprising, now it has as much to do with the red carpet interviewers’ antics to seize the spotlight. Will E!’s Isaac Mizrahi inspect any of the actress’ underwear or grope their breasts as he did with Teri Hatcher and Scarlett Johansson, respectively, on the Golden Globes red carpet?
E! President and CEO Ted Harbert said it’s only natural the carpet correspondents should try to inject spontaneity into an event that has become increasingly calculated.
“Producers of the actual awards ceremony drill the nominees and presenters in advance, rehearsing them in concern about the clock,” he said. “The winners read their comments often from notes. The red carpet is a rare chance to see people speak off the cuff, to see the unexpected.”
“Everybody is trying to get funnier and funnier,” publicist Kozlowski said, “so it’s just getting a little too off-the-cuff.”
But he said he doesn’t advise clients to prepare quips in advance. They should just arrive looking great and maintain a sense of humor.
The latter can especially come in handy when you’re best actress nominee Helena Bonham Carter (for “The Wings of the Dove”), and you’re wedged in the press line between Madonna and Kate Winslet in the year of “Titanic.”
“We got stuck,” Kozlowski said, recalling that 1998 event. “Literally, we could not move. And no one wanted to talk to her. She was remarkably good-natured and thought the whole thing was funny.”
———-