The Real Show Begins After the Oscars Have Been Won

Two lanes of Canon Drive will be closed and a mammoth tent erected over the street for the arriving limousines at Spago Beverly Hills. The exterior wall of Morton’s, illuminated by a light show created by Rolling Stone tour lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, will beam up the names of arriving celebrities. Chasen’s, the famous old Hollywood eatery and watering hole on Beverly Boulevard will rise again, if just for the night. And 8-foot statuettes of Oscar inlaid with gold mosaic tiles--using real gold--will adorn the Governor’s Ball.

Pomp and ceremony, briefly mothballed after the Reagan years, is back. More than $1 million is being poured into this year’s post-Oscar galas, which are becoming annual coronation rituals to rival British royal ceremonies or Washington’s inaugural balls. The Los Angeles spin is a backward nod to golden-era Hollywood’s silken glamour and a hard-nosed corporate approach to the bottom-line function of parties.

In Hollywood, like Washington, fun is incidental alongside the real party favors: access, connections, power and position. The day of Oscar, as the cliche goes, the industry shuts down. It’s not true: Business just shifts to the parties. Star power makes the parties. So the parties must be ever more catnip to the fat cats. And for the rest of the industry, jockeying for the guest slots at the six Power Parties is a fierce preoccupation.

The official Governor’s Ball--the obligatory first stop after the ceremony--is in resurgence. Once the only game in town, it became a dated barn of an event, as younger Hollywood escaped to the hipper, more intimate Swifty Lazar do at Spago in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But lightning can strike twice, and the ball’s current upward trajectory continues, due in no small part to event planner Cheryl Cecchetto--who is also the party planner for canny Broadway impresario Garth Drabinsky.

This year’s ever-more-hip event at the Shrine Auditorium features a pure Cecchetto touch--custom-made tables with inlaid Italian glass mosaic tiles. The main course is roasted chicken breast with wild mushroom risotto and French black truffle, and the dessert is a “dramatic tower” of a concoction, promises the designer. Two bands--Terry Gibbs Dream Band featuring Mark Copland during dinner and L.A. Heat for dancing--are designed to keep the energy cooking.

Says Cecchetto, who is working 16-hour days leading up to Oscar night on March 23: “Last year, I had to keep the band on for a half-hour overtime. People wouldn’t leave.”

In the Oscar party goody bag--treats for those who need them least--the Governor’s Ball will also hand out a notable bauble this year, says Cecchetto. “I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s a fabulous parting gift.” One clue: “Tell them they’re taking home a piece of the party. We’re featuring mosaic art. People can put two and two together.”

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The legendary event hosted by the late Lazar has been replaced by the Morton’s-based Vanity Fair party, the current epicenter of power. It’s where Madonna, Tom Cruise--whoever is mega-mega in any given year--point their limos. The joint attractions of a powerful magazine, a power restaurant--plus a heady entryway lined with 45 video camera crews on one side, 100 photographers on the other--make for an almost narcotic thrill.

“It’s got an old Hollywood feel,” says Vanity Fair director of public relations Beth Kseniak, who coordinates the press for the event from her office in New York. “You feel the excitement of Oscar night before you even go into the party.”

Dinner attendees this year span young and old Hollywood, from Billy Wilder and Kirk Douglas to Ewan McGregor and Jerry Seinfeld, and nonfilm luminaries like artist David Hockney. One of this year’s Vanity Fair flourishes is hand-stenciled cookies reproducing famous VF covers--Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mel Gibson, Madonna--as well as the current Hollywood issue cover.

The party to watch this year is the Elton John AIDS Foundation charity affair at its new home in the ultra-chic Spago Beverly Hills.

The John event became an immediate staple on the circuit when it began seven years ago at Maple Drive, by virtue of its charity function--the only charity-minded party that night--and the popularity of the singer.

Designer Barbara Lazaroff and chef Wolfgang Puck, Spago’s founders, are as close to royalty as Los Angeles gets, apart from movie stars. The union of the magic couple with a newly minted knight, Sir Elton, in the famous new restaurant this year, gooses the party’s cachet.

Event stylist Colin Cowie, who is also associate editor of InStyle magazine, co-host of the party, is slightly tweaking Lazaroff’s interior alchemy of woods, colored glass and stone. A $25,000 Harry Winston watch will be given to the guest who picks the most winners on the Oscar ballots. John, in the midst of a European tour, will fly for 13 hours straight to be at the event, then fly right out.

Guests will take home Oliver Peoples sunglasses valued at $250 plus, a Dooney & Bourke key chain, a silver business card case, silver pen, Aveda candle, Bobbie Brown fragrance, Elizabeth Arden lipstick, Neutrogena rain bath, an Elton CD and more. InStyle advertisers are offered the opportunity to donate products to the goody bag and many sign on. Charity, stars, glamour and media make good bedfellows.

The move to Spago has reduced the party’s size from 600 people to 450. “The party became so big that Elton couldn’t do what he does best. He likes to greet everybody. He gets there at 4, and doesn’t leave until 2,” says Sarah McMullen, director of fund-raising and special events for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. “He wants to keep his energy going and a room that he can handle.” The event is expected to raise $350,000 for John’s AIDS charity.

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The other blowout affair is the joint party by 20th Century Fox and Paramount--who co-financed “Titanic.” They will tent a parking lot on Canon, up the street from Spago. Access to the other power gatherings was a primary factor in choice of location, along with space for the estimated 600 to 800 guests expected. The post-Oscar party, treading carefully to include all nominated films from both studios, will inevitably be dominated by colossus “Titanic.”

“Just think elegance,” promises Blaise Noto, Paramount’s executive vice president of worldwide publicity. Catering is by the ubiquitous Along Came Mary.

The old Chasen’s, home to the Columbia-TriStar party for 500 guests, will offer up echoes of old Hollywood, and a chance to see the famous interior where The Coop, Gable and Crawford hung out, downing martinis and the famous chili. “Rumor has it that they’re tearing it down to build a mini-mall, so it might be one of the last big parties in there,” says Kim Carey, executive director of special events for the studio.

The Miramax blowout of 1997--the year of the independent film--is still famous for the 1,200 revelers who took over the Mondrian Hotel restaurant, lobby, pool area and Sky Bar and were ultimately ejected by the fire marshal.

This year, the company has drastically scaled back to what it calls a “small dinner party”--a demure 300 to 400 who will dine and drink at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge, Ago’s (where Miramax brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein are partners) and other unidentified locations.

Mayhem, chicanery and begging may be employed more than usual to cadge this year’s premium slots, which are fewer than last year’s. The Governor’s Ball accommodates 1,700, cutting out half the crowd seated in the Shrine Auditorium for the awards. John’s shift from Maple Drive to Spago Beverly Hills has reduced the number of invited guests by 150 and the Miramax reduction lops another 800 people from the roster of spots on the party circuit.