They may have spent their whole lives preparing for this moment, practicing their acceptance speeches in front of the mirror while clutching hairbrushes like statuettes, but for those who emerged victorious from the Academy Awards, the reality of actually being handed an Oscar clearly takes some getting used to. Backstage in the press room, we got a front-row seat as winners staggered through, looking like deer caught in headlights coming from every direction.
Even the first winner of the night, Kieran Culkin, who made his film debut aged seven in Home Alone, looked like he was levitating over the stage. “I’m not fully inside my body right now,” he murmured through a wide grin. “I’m trying my best to be present.” Despite his dazed look, Culkin characteristically still cracked jokes, making fun of the numbers journalists had to hold overhead to get the moderator’s attention: “Number two-thousand eight hundred and sixty-four… what’s your question?”
There weren’t quite that many of us, even if it seemed like it from the stage. I was one of around 175 journalists from 40 different countries and territories who made it through the barriers that cordon off a long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and past the bomb-sniffing dogs to be the first to greet actors and filmmakers as they celebrate what may well be the high water mark of their professional lives. “This is the pinnacle of my career,” said Paul Tazewell, the first Black man to ever win the Oscar for Best Costume Design for his work on Wicked, before movingly describing his journey through an industry without role models. “The whole way through, there was never a Black male designer that I could follow, that I could see as inspiration,” he said. “To realize that that’s actually me, is a Wizard of Oz moment. There’s no place like home.”
The mood in the room was generally jubilant, as you might expect, but there was also a smattering of awkward moments. When someone brought up the ailing Pope, currently in the hospital with double pneumonia, to Oscar-winning Conclave screenwriter Peter Straughan, whose film focuses on the election of a new Pope, the room fell silent and he quickly changed the subject. “It’s bad taste to bring his health into a celebratory atmosphere,” said the British playwright. “But we all wish him well.”
There was also an unintentionally comic moment when one journalist starts praising the Palestinian-Israeli collective behind Best Documentary Feature winner No Other Land for their powerfully political speech, only for it to turn out that the people she’s talking to are actually the men who did the Visual Effects for Dune: Part Two.
One of the most riotous moments of the night backstage occurred when Flow won Best Animated Feature Film. It’s the first Latvian film to even be nominated for an Academy Award, let alone to win one, so the Latvian contingent in the press room reacted by cheering and hugging each other. When director Gints Zilbalodis arrived, he told Latvian Public Radio, in both English and Latvian, that he’d be “celebrating tonight!” There’s also a suitably carnivalesque outbreak of joy when Brazil’s I’m Still Here wins Best International Film.
Those moments are about as close as we get to a party atmosphere. There’s no alcohol back here, so we have to listen on enviously when, during one commercial break, Best Actor nominee Colman Dolmingo comes onstage to urge those in the main audience to toast to Los Angeles with little bottles of tequila secreted under their seats. He then instigates a brief “dance party” and encourages the whole crowd to take selfies. In the press area, sans booze, we’re left to console ourselves with sandwiches, cookies and, for some reason, mountains and mountains of jumbo shrimp.
The show, as usual, ran late. At the allotted end time of 7 p.m., there were still five awards left to be handed out, and they were five of the biggest: Best Original Score, Lead Actor, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Picture, not to mention a musical tribute to Quincy Jones. Energy backstage started to flag. Host Conan O’Brien got a big, knowing laugh when he joked that if you were still enjoying the show, “you have something called Stockholm syndrome.” As the awards came thick and fast at the end of the night, things started to overlap. Lol Crawley was in the middle of discussing the finer details of The Brutalist’s cinematography when Mikey Madison’s surprise win over Demi Moore in the Best Actress category was announced. “Great performance,” he said, craning his neck to see a screen as the room was momentarily distracted. When Daniel Blumberg, another winner for The Brutalist, this time for Best Original Score, arrived in the room, I asked him how it feels to go from recording cult favorite drummer Steve Noble in his kitchen to standing on the Oscar stage. “Bizarre,” he replied, another deer in the Hollywood headlights.
It was almost 7:45 p.m. by the time Best Picture was announced, which by then was a formality. Having swept almost all of its categories (bar Cinematography), Anora was both a predictable and deserved winner of the night’s biggest prize. Writer-director Sean Baker, who had already swept up the awards for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing, thanked the Academy for supporting “a genuinely independent film.” Made for $6 million by a tiny crew of just 40 people, Anora is a true indie success story. Back in 2017, Barry Jenkins won Best Picture for Moonlight, which cost just $1.5 million to make. His most recent film was the $200 million Disney CGI musical Mufasa: The Lion King. Backstage, talk turned to whether Baker might be tempted down the same blockbuster road. That’s a question for another night, however. Tonight, finally, it was time to get a drink.
