Jodie Foster, after all these years. Photograph: Reed Saxon/AP
It took Sacha Baron Cohen to draw attention to the disparity between the idea and the reality of Hollywood's Super Sunday. "Where's the sun?" he asked red carpet host Robert Osborne, aka that bloke on TCM. "What's going on? This is supposed to be Hollywood."
Around him celebrities shivered in their finery. Valentino may make a lovely frock, but he has not a clue about creating a look to survive a cold snap on the red carpet. Fortunately, the rain held off, and the already spongy red carpet retained its, er, springiness without being reduced to mush.
The assembled celebrities must have been grateful, although there was little evidence that any of their feet actually touched the ground. Standing alongside the red carpet was like witnessing a veritable blizzard of celebrity. As showtime neared, celebrities were backed up tux-to-tux. If there is a celebrity equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, this was it.
However there are, as we know, celebrities and celebrities. The organisers of the Academy Awards are also aware of this, dividing the red carpet with - what else? - a red velvet rope, to create the Oscar equivalent of airport check-in apartheid: a fast lane for the über-famous, and a slow red carpet for the regular ho-hum-level celebrity. Beyond the red carpet were the press and the technical staff, also decked out in their finery. And beyond them was the public, chosen by raffle to be seat-fillers for the telecast. The public were easily identified: they were the ones in jeans and sweatshirts.
But who was interested in them? Indeed, who was interested in the first people to make the block-long walk down the red carpet? Who were these people? Accountants? Agents? Were they ordinary people dressed up as stars? How did these intruders get in?
The person to win the prize for first nominee to tread the red carpet was one of the writers - who knows which one - nominated for the Borat script. "It's amazing," he told Osborne. "It's surreal." He was, he said, blown away. It was a theme to which others would return.
Meanwhile, along came Wolfgang Puck, chef to the event. He had, he said, made 3,200 chocolate Oscars for the evening. These things matter. "You're as famous as the stars here tonight," Osborne told Puck, whose teeth gleamed like a true star. But then he was gone and Osborne was introducing another star as famous as the stars: "Ladies and gentlemen," he proclaimed, "Keith Robinson." The crowd stalled. Fortunately, Osborne is an old pro. "Who played the brother in Dreamgirls." The crowd obligingly cheered. That Keith Robinson.
But their good cheer was broken by the intellectual blob that is Al Gore. "How are you, Al?" asked Osborne, "What's it like to be here at the Oscars?" By the third syllable of his reply, Gore had reduced the entire excitable crowd to a state of deep slumber. "I'm grateful that it gives me the chance to talk to more people," Gore intoned. (Mind you, his reputation for stand-up was salvaged somewhat during the ceremony by a heavily scripted skit with DiCaprio, as Gore's much-rumoured - and much-denied - announcement that he was going to stand for president was drowned out by the orchestra as he overran his time limit.)
Back on the red carpet, all the stars made sure they stopped off for a chat with the good hacks - sorry, troops - of the American Forces Network. But perhaps the organisers didn't want anything too political to spoil the picture: the poster proclaiming "Support our troops" that had been positioned behind them at the start was gone after half an hour. Perhaps the light plane trailing the "Bring our troops home" banner overhead had somehow spirited it away.
But the crowd was not interested in such real world matters. They had gathered for glamour, for a glimpse of the untouchable, to see what Jodie Foster looks like after all these years. The answer is she looks hard, but then she always did. When she told Osborne that she was here to present the In Memoriam section to Hollywood's fallen, Osborne responded somewhat inappropriately with: "Yeah, that's always one of the highpoints for me."
And what to make of Rachel Weisz's strange concoction? Up close - yes, I was there - the shimmery material turned Rachel's skin, well, a very pale green. A most unfortunate condition. But weirdness wasn't restricted to Weisz. How could it be, when Gwynnie was just a step away? Not the she was wearing anything particularly weird. She just exuded weirdness, from her jagged red lips all the way down her sleek hair. Speaking of hair, there was something preternatural about John Travolta's head.
By this time, an hour before the opening of the ceremony, the flow of celebrities had hastened to a deluge. Meryl Streep, making an early claim to the "What is she wearing?" prize, came past just after Paltrow. Behind her was Celine Dion in green, doing a passable impersonation of the wicked witch. Behind her, Kate Winslet, who for some reason was clutching a gold Easter egg.
And standing behind them, Scorsese hoisted himself up on his tippy toes to put the death hug on best director rival Stephen Frears. "Ah, Steve!" exclaimed Scorsese, before hooking his arm round Frears's neck and putting his mouth close to his ear to whisper something not for public consumption. But Frears was too awestruck to be intimidated. "It's not like this in England," he announced, before confirming the mantra that it was an amazing night.
