The Wake

On Oscar Sunday, I had the unique pleasure of attending the oldest and largest Oscar party outside of California, Hollywood 2004, at the Historic State Theater in Minneapolis. The event is a benefit for the Minnesota AIDS Project.

Initially, I have to admit to a level of shock at entering the big event, because the glitz and glamour was definitely present in high volume. There were loads of people with too much time and money. I even remember overhearing one woman speaking of $3,800 as “nothing.” There were young men in underwear, holding wooden swords and painted gold, in the likeness of Oscar. One of these young men was a University of Minnesota student named Nick. There were two rather grotesque drag queens with moustaches. I am pretty sure this may be the only event I attend in my life where I am in the minority for not being a millionaire, and for being straight.

After the initial shock wore off and my adjustment to the fact that some of the women there may have spent as much on their dress as on a half semester of tuition at the “U,” I began to enjoy the evening. There was a silent auction to benefit the Minnesota AIDS project, most of what I saw was of little interest to me, except the autographed picture of Jim Carrey. But I let that pass. Easily a highlight of the evening was the massive dessert bar. Eighteen local restaurants donated desserts and were competing for a best dessert title. I ingested confections from almost all of the donating restaurants and needed a few insulin shots, but boy was it worth it! My favorite item was probably the pastry with a cheesecake filling and a tiramisu.

Of course, the main event of the evening was the broadcasting of the Academy Awards. I will say the drag queen character, Miss Richfield, that hosted the Hollywood 2004 event, was much less annoying than Billy Crystal. The fact that people still find him funny makes about as much sense as Kevin Costner still getting work. Between commercial breaks, there was a great array of entertainers on the State Theater stage. The best of the entertainment was a song from the cast of Beehive and a performance by the cast of Hairspray, including Bruce Vilanch. Both were about as campy as it gets, but that’s a good thing.

Now, of course, with all of the additional entertainment, one could have easily not watched the Oscars at all and had a great time. For me, however, that was not the case. Every year I watch the Oscars from start to finish, and this year would be no exception. Besides, I just generally have a distaste for talking to complete strangers at parties, and at this one, I definitely had little common ground with most of the other in attendance.

Well, by now I am sure you all know that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won all eleven awards it was nominated for. I will state that it quite definitively deserved each Oscar it won, from Sound Mixing to Best Picture. I believe a strong argument could be made that Sean Astin (who portrayed Samwise Gamgee) should have been a nominee for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. I was not only excited that Return of the King won, because it was an amazingly well done movie based around one of the best stories ever told, but that it was a victory for the director of one of my favorite B-movies. Peter Jackson’s first film happens to be Bad Taste, and he even mentioned it in the Best Picture acceptance speech, “A special thanks to Peter Nelson and Ken Kamins, who were with me right from the days of Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, which were wisely overlooked by the Academy at that time.” The crowd at the State Theater seemed to be generally pleased with Return of the King’s unprecedented sweep. The only true marring of the evening was one gentleman sitting two rows ahead of me who rotated between obnoxiously loud, overlong applause, and noisy exclamations that proved he fancies himself a film critic, albeit one as annoying as Jay Sherman in “The Critic,” but not nearly as funny.

Overall, Hollywood 2004 was certainly a tremendous social event, especially for the desserts and campy entertainment. But when I look back on the night, the thing I will remember most will be the actual Oscars.