Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

4:38 p.m.: I have on my lap a copy of the show rundown. Under threat of my life, I can reveal no more. Sorry.

4:39 p.m.: Well, okay, a bunch of awards will be handed out tonight. Just remember: You didn't get it from me.

4:40 p.m.: Tom O'Neil, the awards-show blogger for the Los Angeles Times, timed Ruby Dee's work in American Gangster and came up with a whopping four minutes or so.

4:41 p.m.: If Dee wins Best Supporting Actress, will she set a new standard for award-winning brevity? O'Neil seemed to think so. To double-check, I call the Academy's on-call librarian. "We haven't timed every single winning performance," she tells me, but she adds that it's believed Beatrice Straight's six minutes in Network is the current record.

4:42 p.m.: So, what I'm hearing is that I'm pretty much only a few minutes shy of being Oscar-worthy material.

4:50 p.m.: Also in my crowded lap is a copy of tonight's official program, which they hand out to the Kodak Theatre crowd, I guess, in case you forgot you were nominated.

4:55 p.m.: The program makes for good reading. I just learned Jon Stewart's tux is by Armani, Coca-Cola is it at the Governors Ball and Sylvester Stallone is still worthy of a shout-out in the thank-you section.

—Filed by Joal Ryan

Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 5:26 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

5:05 p.m.: Now we're rocking: The skies are clearing, and George Clooney, Forest Whitaker, Philip Seymour Hoffman and—"Who's that chick in the silver?" asks one of my compadres along the railing above the red carpet—Renée Zellweger are all filing into the Kodak.

5:06 p.m.: Even from two stories up, Zellweger's Wonder Woman-size bracelets are drawing stares.

5:07 p.m.: By the way, having now seen Clooney from two stories up, I can confirm regarding the actor and his hair: no bald spot.

5:08 p.m.: Oh, and it's nicely parted, too.

5:10 p.m.: The PA announcer issues yet another "last call" to its red carpet walkers. The Oscars wants its audience seated, pronto.

5:11 p.m.: Ruby Dee is the latest to heed the warning. The 83-year-old, on the arms of two women, bypasses the photographer's pen and slowly heads into the mouth of the Kodak.

5:15 p.m.: Jeez, it looks like even Regis Philbin is moving into the theater. I think that's my cue to return to the pressroom. Regis is always where the action is.

—Filed by Joal Ryan

Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 6:02 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

5:40 p.m.: For what it's worth, even as Jon Stewart's monologue hits and misses, I'm expecting a good Oscars. For my purposes, this means winners who aren't on autopilot backstage because—thanks to the writers' strike and the blighted awards season—they haven't been collecting trophies all winter.

5:42 p.m.: For example, costume designer Alexandra Byrne, the first winner of the night? Boy, when she makes it back here, she's just going to be bursting with two months' worth of anecdotes about seams and hems. I can't wait.

5:56 p.m.: Well, maybe Byrne went to a bunch of costume-design awards shows I never heard of, because she's pretty low-key.

5:59 p.m.: And, no, she does not regale us with anecdotes about seams and hems. Nuts.

6:11 p.m.: Ratatouille's Brad Bird just got out of the photo room, and the blinding flashes have him seeing stars—no small thing, considering he's only looking at a bunch of reporters. "I can't even see you right now," he confides.

6:17 p.m.: Bird, as you might suspect of someone whose film celebrates rats, is cool with the rodents. As you might not suspect, his love is contingent on whether "they've washed up."

6:23 p.m.: "It wasn't a problem," Oscar-winning La Vie en Rose makeup stylist Jan Archibald says of convincing Marion Cotillard, the film's star, to shave her eyebrows. "She wanted to look as good as possible."

6:24 p.m.: Um, so to recap: In order to look as good as possible, you're supposed to shave your eyebrows?

6:25 p.m.: My stylists are so fired.

6:29 p.m.: Want to see everyone's heads swivel over to the TVs in the name of prurient interest? Have Jon Stewart say, "And here's Owen Wilson."

--Filed by Joal Ryan

Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 6:54 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

6:38 p.m.: I just spotted two uniformed members of the Armed Forces in our midst. I'd be worried that maybe we were under attack except for the fact that they were both holding plates of cake.

6:42 p.m.: The Oscar-winning art directors of Sweeney Todd are personally gabbing away back here, with nary a concern (much less awareness) that Tilda Swinton's Supporting Actress win just ruined a lot of people's Oscar pools.

6:48 p.m.: In retrospect, it might have helped my reporting this year if I'd been born in, say, Paris. Philippe Pollet-Villard, the Live-Action Short Film winner, is about the billionth person back here tonight who's fielded, and answered, questions in French.

6:49 p.m.: I should have known something was up when I saw the petits fours on a tray outside.

6:58 p.m.: Anton Chigurh takes orders? We've just been informed "Javier Bardem got called back to his seat."

7:03 p.m.: So, how does Tilda Swinton feel? Maybe try her later in the evening. "I'm kind of working on that answer," she tells us. "You could tell me my dress fell off [on stage], and I'd believe you."

7:04 p.m.: If you thought Swinton was a kick on the telecast, you should hear her back here. She may be the first esteemed Oscar winner to say stoked (as in, "I'm so stoked"), reference Zoolander (as in, "I had a reverse Zoolander moment" upon hearing her name read from the envelope), drop a dude (as in, "Dude, Hollywood is built on Europeans") and name-check Siegfried & Roy (as in, I have no idea what...I was too busy jotting down the Zoolander comment.)

7:05 p.m.: "She looks like Eric Stoltz," I hear a nearby reporter snipe—and I wish Swinton had heard, so she'd have a comeback for that, too.

7:06 p.m.: During her acceptance speech, Swinton pledged to give her Oscar to her agent, Brian Swardstrom, and she says she did—the Oscar in her hand now is apparently a prop. "I'm a man of my word," Swinton says. "I've given it away."

7:07 p.m.: And yes, Swinton insists her Oscar—make that, former Oscar—really does look like Swardstrom.

7:08 p.m.: Swinton, like a lot of people, thought Ruby Dee was going to win. But her real pick was "anybody but myself."

7:10 p.m.: It doesn't sound as if Swinton is done ribbing George Clooney, whom she got good in her acceptance speech. "There are scores to be settled," she warns.

7:13 p.m.: Swinton gets in the first word on Marion Cotillard's surprise Best Actress win: "Fantastic!"

—Filed by Joal Ryan

* Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 8:15 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

7:30 p.m.: Last year, sound mixer Kevin O'Connell, Oscar's all-time loser with 20 nominations and 20 losses, got smacked down as a complainer by one of his colleagues who was lucky enough to not lose. Tonight I asked the winning Bourne Ultimatum crew, of whom O'Connell was not a member, if they wanted to pile it on. They did not.

7:31 p.m.: Not to complain, but it's so much more boring when people are gracious.

7:37 p.m.: Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard is smiling, giggling, nearly gasping for breath and—but of course—speaking in French.

7:38 p.m.: "There's just joy," Cotillard offers in a language even I can understand. "It's so unexpected that it's surreal, but I love it."

7:41 p.m.: To say Cotillard is ecstatic is to understate her absolute giddiness: "I'm so totally overwhelmed with sparkles and fireworks and everything that goes, Bomb, bomb, bomb!"

7:45 p.m.: Egged on by a reporter, Cotillard, who is probably highly susceptible to just about any suggestion right about now, breaks into song—a few lines of Edith Piaf's "Padam Padam."

7:46 p.m.: Cotillard gets a round of applause, which is nice because I think she can really use the lift.

7:47 p.m.: I try but fail to get called on in order to pose a question to Cotillard. I actually don't have a question. I just want to talk eyebrows. Or lack thereof.

7:58 p.m.: Yesterday, I saw North by Northwest on TCM. Tonight its production designer, honorary winner Robert Boyle, is on the stage before me. It's official: The Oscars are neat.

—Filed by Joal Ryan

* Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 8:40 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

8:15 p.m.: When Jon Stewart told "Once" songstress Markéta Irglová she could complete the acceptance speech she never got to start, she was dumbfounded. Irglová, it seems, has seen her share of Oscars and heard a lot of Oscar winners cut off before their time. "It didn't make much sense," she says of the do-over she was offered. "But it was great to get the chance. I'm really grateful."

8:18 p.m.: Funny thing is, back here, where Irglová has just about all the time in the world to say whatever she wants, her partner Glen Hansard is doing almost all the talking.

8:24 p.m.: The goopy secret of There Will Be Blood has been revealed! According to Robert Elswit, its Oscar-winning cinematographer, the oil in the oil saga was made with "industrial material used by McDonald's to thicken their milkshakes—and I'm not kidding."

8:46 p.m.: Boy, you'd never know the writers went back to work only a week and a half ago—until you look at the clock, and see that the show ran less than three hours.

8:50 p.m.: Er, scratch that—the show has time-warped my brain. I just put a call into the ever-helpful Academy librarian, inquiring about the last time an Oscars ran so short, and she informed me that the show ran about 20 minutes long. As she reminds me, "It's been on since 5:30."

8:51 p.m.: Oh, that 5:30.

8:52 p.m.: In any case, the librarian tells me this terribly, terribly long show is actually the briefest Oscars since 2004's clocked in at about three hours and 15 minutes.

—Filed by Joal Ryan

* Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 9:17 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

9:03 p.m.: Juno's Oscar-winning screenwriter, Diablo Cody used to be a stripper—in case you haven't heard. And if you haven't heard, then you wouldn't have a clue as to what was being discussed back here because, to the best of my knowledge, not a single reporter has actually uttered the word stripper. "You've had such an interesting life story," begins one question.

9:05 p.m.: If Cody had a dollar for every time a reporter referenced her prior career—another reporter-coined euphemism for the perfectly legitimate profession that dare not speak its name on Oscar night—she says she would "probably pay off everybody in the journalism world not to mention it again."

9:06 p.m.: Just so you know, Cody was kidding. Mostly, I guess.

-- Filed by Joal Ryan

Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 10:53 PM

Categories: oscars 2008, backstage report

9:12 p.m.: I get the first crack at the night's big winners: No Country for Old Men's Joel and Ethan Coen. Noting their success, I ask how Roderick Jaynes, their alter ego, was dealing with "his" loss in the editing category. "We haven't talked to him," says Ethan. "We know he's elderly and unhappy, so probably not well."

9:14 p.m: "It's a good thing he's a writer," a nearby reporter cracks as Ethan, who wasn't all that chatty on the telecast, stumbles, stammers and finally gives up on answering a question.

9:16 p.m.: Between them, the Coens won six Oscars tonight, covering their shared wins for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and yet I don't see a single one on stage with them now. I guess they needed a third Coen brother to handle all the hardware.

9:20 p.m.: Unlike virtually every other winner back here tonight, Best Supporting Actor champ Javier Bardem is not speaking in French. He's speaking in Spanish, which I studied for three years in high school. And then forgot.

9:23 p.m.: Muy! Bardem just said muy! That means very.

9:24 p.m.: I'm not going to lie, that'll be the extent of my translating work tonight. Unless Cotillard runs back in and shouts oui! In which case, I'll be happy to tell you that that means yes. (Don't mention it.)

9:25 p.m.: "You know, I said some pretty good things there in Spanish," Bardem jokes when he at last fields a question in English.

9:27 p.m.: Bardem is delivering quite a beautiful soliloquy about all the things he loved in his fellow nominees' performances. In case Casey Affleck is interested, his work was likened to a "piece of jewelry."

9:28 p.m.: Bardem uses more humble imagery when it comes to his own achievement. "This is a lottery. I won," he says simply. "That doesn't mean I am better than the rest, that's for sure."

9:34 p.m.: Best Actor winner Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't seem nearly as scary-intense as his There Will Be Blood character, so I feel safe in asking him whether he expects to be comped with milkshakes in the near future. "I'm very much looking forward to all the milkshakes I can drink for the next 25 years," the good sport says.

9:36 p.m.: Another reporter asks the esteemed thespian, who doesn't strike one as an individual who spends a lot of time on YouTube, if he's aware of the "I drink your milkshake!" phenomenon. "I am completely aware of it," Day-Lewis says. "I think it's fantastic."

9:38 p.m.: There's a simple reason Day-Lewis kissed George Clooney after he won. "George has been there for me," Day-Lewis says with a somewhat straight face, adding, "I had to kiss someone. I kissed my wife, and in the interest of parity, I kissed George."

And with that, I'm kissing the 2008 Oscars goodnight.

—Filed by Joal Ryan

Posted on Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 11:08 PM