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2001 |
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What the Oscar fashion show needs is another nude streaker
By KINNEY LITTLEFIELD
of TheColumnists.com
HOW COME Tom Hanks and Kate Hudson and Juliette Binoche get to arrive? I mean I don't get to arrive--not at the Academy Awards, not anywhere. Most people don't get to arrive. Most people just show up where they're going. They're just there. It isn't a process.
But not in Hollywood. Not for the Oscars. Even if you're the tiniest mini-star you must arrive at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and take a good three hours to get from sidewalk to seat, air-kissing all the way.
At the Oscars the arrivals take almost as long as the big bad bash itself.
This year, on Oscar Sunday, that meant all the more time to ogle Jennifer Lopez' nipples through her see-through couture. Wait--that was actually just a twisted-up piece of gauze.
Wowy-zowy.
(Amazing that TV's arrivals reporters didn't bust a gut talking to Lopez. At least on camera everyone managed to keep a straight face).
Now me--here's how I arrived at my appointed destination on Oscar Sunday.
1) Don special Oscar garb:
fleece top, sweat pants, slipper-clogs.
2) Grab caffeine and munchies.
3) Sit at keyboard, stare at tube, wait for some great Oscar
fashion gaff to happen.
But unlike me the stars of La La arrive ever so slowly. And the bigger you are, the more slowly you must arrive.
Julia Roberts finally got on camera about 5:20 p.m. Pacific Time on ABC's pre-Oscar show, only about 18 minutes before the fete was set to start.
She looked overly stylized in her slick coiff, wearing a severe black vintage Valentino and boyfriend Benjamin Bratt.
The fans went wild but Julia was upstaged only minutes later by Icelandic singer Bjork who had some sort of swan around her neck. Oh--it was a whole swan dress.
This year the must-have accessory was your mother. Director Cameron Crowe ("Almost Famous") brought his and so did Hudson ("Almost Famous") whose mom happens to be Goldie Hawn.
It's a hoot to watch the
arrivals reporters scream and scramble to get the hottest stars'
attention. This year Roger Ebert helped do the honors for KABC/7.
He grabbed arriving celebs before E! cable's perennial battleaxe
Joan Rivers nabbed 'em.
Actually, something must have happened to Rivers, who seems to
have mad cow disease.
At least she acted like a mad cow.
I mean geez her coverage of the Oscar arrivals was mindblowingly crass, dumb and tacky this year. Her opening "monologue" on E!'s "Live from the Red Carpet" was a bunch of embarrassing rambling.
"E!," she said, "stands for excitement as well as enema."
Ostensibly Rivers and her daughter Melissa are at the Shrine to dish all the slinky little numbers the nominees and cohorts are wearing.
Since neither of them has much of a way with words--and the red carpet is so crowded it's hard to get a good gasp at anyone's décolletage anyway--the whole E! exercise is pretty pointless.
And pretty darn painful. Rivers elder, for example, asked Asian-American musical performer CoCo Lee what language she and her family spoke.
English, duh.
Plus Joanie spends much of her time kiss-kissing with the old-timers like herself--Julie Andrews, Rod Steiger. They're classics but not much for fashion flash.
And Melissa girl--those dark tortoise-shell shades your wore with that strapless white dress. Ill-considered.
Sadly, Lopez aside, there were remarkably few eye-poppers on Oscar's fashion plate this year.
Taste can be so boring.
In fact this year the glam of golden-era Hollywood was back, from flattened hair to ruby red lips, plunging backlines and more modesty up front than in past years.
Supporting actress winner Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollack") exemplified the look with her slightly blowsy take on Rita Hayworth.
Catherine Zeta-Jones tried for it with her strapless black gown with a bustier-type bodice. Instead she looked more like an updated Miss Kitty from "Gunsmoke."
Juliette Binoche? Really bad retro-flapper.
Kate Hudson looked alarmingly quaint in a fringy high-neck shawl-thing in bla-bla gray.
Sarah Jessica Parker looked very "Sex and the City"--ha! an infiltrator from serial TV --in her skimpy but uninspired little black dress.
In all, a dull parade of designer rags.
One positive note--presenter Ben Stiller looked refreshingly bed-head rebellious with scruffy hair and tie askew. Way to go.
But then so what? All the glad rags and diamond bracelets and stiletto heels and silk-trains-to-trip-over are Oh So Faux.
So much of this stuff is loaned to the glitterati so they can murmur their designer label --"Gaultier" or "Vera Wang" or "Versace"--when Joan springs the Big Q: "Who are you wearing?"
It's a commercial. Just another sell.
It's awards couture, meant to further an image of a Hollywood that vanished in the fresh heat of "Easy Rider" and "Midnight Cowboy" in the '60s.
The Oscars even had a new fashion director whose name I've forgotten to coordinate this year's Glam Look and extend the illusion.
But really, who cares? By the time all the fame-flamed have arrived and crawled through the media gauntlet I'm already bored with all the bare backsides. I just want awards. I want winners.
So now we have them and my oh my.
That means it's time to get busy with my requests for next year's Oscar arrivals.
Let's forget 'em. There's enough canned cool in our culture without the arrivals' annual dose of artificial attitude.
Or make the nominees wear civilian clothes. Or come in costume as their characters.
Or make 'em walk to the Shrine and get all hot 'n' sweaty like normal folks.
Fashion? Once the Oscars are over, it hardly makes a star a bigger star.
Besides, remember Oscar's really good bad old days? The time that bare male flesh flashed briefly across one memorable Oscarcast?
Now that was fashion, Oscar fans. I'll take the fashion statement of a streaker any year.
© 2001 by Kinney Littlefield. The photo is courtesy E! Online.
You can comment on this column or contact Kinney Littlefield with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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