‘This is the best bit,” says Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer, DJ and tastemaker behind Summer of Soul, one of the films up for best documentary at the 2022 Oscars. He’s surveying the ground floor of the Dolby theatre like a laser-focused shaman, waiting coolly until his category is announced. Sure, there’s a ceremony going on inside the area, where slaps are being served quicker than the canapés, but outside in the beige-carpeted lobby of the world’s most prestigious film event is where the other action happens. There’s Jake Gyllenhaal and brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard in cahoots at the bar. Best supporting actor nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee, in a sky-blue suit and studded creepers, hugging The Power of the Dog director Jane Campion. Benedict Cumberbatch taking a breather, aware, perhaps, that most of the auditorium has by now seen his penis.
Thompson, the musical director of last year’s Oscars, who DJed in an empty Union station during the 2021 ceremony, must be the only person to have thought it was any good despite the ratings disaster. “I liked it!” he says. But now it’s an Oscars reboot: smaller categories controversially nipped and tucked, a fully mask-less event (though with 800 fewer seats) and a new master of ceremonies packing a punch – that’s telecast producer Will Packer – hoping to draw in a younger audience with musical numbers from Encanto. Thompson returns for 2022 as a film director and his producer, Joseph Patel, is quietly confident that they will take home a trophy. “I’ve got a good feeling,” he says.
That’s the general vibe in the air tonight: convivial, conspiratorial and relief at being back to normal, albeit in a bubble very far away from other more pressing realities. Not that you can really call the Academy Awards normal. Allow me to rewind and walk you up the red carpet. First, you arrive at the fenced off Oscars compound and, if you look famous enough, get a golf buggy that whizzes you past the back of the paparazzi gauntlet to the entrance. There, the plebs and the beautiful people are briefly thrust together, shuffling along like lemmings in their gowns and stilettos with the air of an awkward high school prom.
It turns out that the Covid clearance queue is a great place for a celeb encounter, which is where I meet Daniel Durant, one of the actors from tonight’s best picture winner Coda, and the first of the film’s cast to arrive. It’s also his first major movie and, like mine, his first Oscars, and we’re both early and waiting around, unsure what to do. “We’re popping our cherry!” he says through a sign language interpreter, as the sun beats down unfavourably on everyone in a tux. “I was told it would be cold,” he adds.
Further on, the red carpet cleaves in two. One one side, Jessica Chastain, sequined fairy princess, can be seen wafting past the flashbulbs. On the other, everyone else is ushered through by 10 airports’ worth of security guards as we try to squint through the gaps. Luckily, there is a DJ to unite us all. The same can’t be said inside the venue, however. The civilians are banished to the fifth floor where they can’t bother the A-listers, and the lower floors are split by rank, with hors d’oeuvres and the toast of Hollywood at the bottom. “It’s like a class system!” says Melanie Annan, one of the editors on documentary short nominee Three Songs for Benazir. The one place where everyone is equal is the ladies’ loos. “I can’t get the knickers off,” someone bleats from a stall, which a woman in a fishtail dress is also secretly thinking.
With security guard-dodging stealth, however, I traipse up and down the staircase. Two floors down it’s a family affair, where all the mums and makeup artists are hanging out. I help zip one back into her outfit, and meet Cruella makeup artist Julia Vernon’s mother, a Brit who is thrilled to have been brought to something so glitzy. Her daughter appears in a cloud of grey netting, having just been pipped to the trophy by The Eyes of Tammy Faye. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last,” she says, patting the bosom of her floofy dress. But she’s not a sore loser. “It’s the first film that’s been nominated for crowd makeup, so I’m chuffed with that. It’s just nice to be here.”
It’s nice, for sure, but then there are murmurs. Something about a Chris Rock joke. Something about a Will Smith wallop. “It’s a madhouse,” says one of the many identical looking men around me, probably a producer. Word comes from inside the ceremony that Smith walked on stage and hit Rock live on air; nobody on the floor can tell if it’s staged or sincere. If people’s faces weren’t frozen with Botox already, now they’re frozen with disbelief. “I’m more than a little freaked out by what happened,” says one woman huddled around the phone-charging station. “That was real,” insists another. Later, we attentively watch Smith’s best actor acceptance speech for King Richard on the screens; Alfred Molina yells “turn it up” and the bar area goes quiet. Then it’s over and no one knows quite what to say.
All this is more dramatic than a thousand Jarvis Cocker moons, but it’s a shame that it will detract from some of the positive aspects of the awards this year. Patel and Thompson come through the doors triumphant, having won their category for Summer of Soul. “People talk shit about the Oscars, but I didn’t see anyone like me – brown and from an immigrant background – doing this when I was growing up,” Patel had told me earlier. “If someone sees this and it gives them permission, then that’s what it’s about.”
On the screen behind us, Troy Kotsur had been accepting his award for best actor in a supporting role for Coda, the first deaf man to do so. “Millions of kids around the world are going to watch that and feel like they can do that, too,” Patel says.
Ultimately, the Oscars isn’t just about seeing famous people air-kiss and thank their mums or misbehave, it’s about everyone else feeling seen themselves. One person I talk to says they witnessed a queer Latinx server filming the screen and crying when Ariana DeBose, who is openly queer and of Latin descent, won best supporting actress. (In a neat swish of Oscars circularity, the only other actor of Latin descent to have won the award was Rita Moreno, when she played the same part in West Side Story.)
Outside the ladies’ loos, I have my own flash of feeling seen, thanks to none other than Olivia Colman. In a moment that cruelly wasn’t televised and which I shall dine out on for years to come, the actor, resplendent in silver pleated lamé, told me that she loved my dress. Just to show you how divided the Oscars really are, however, newly minted Oscar winner Jane Campion, also in the loos and never one to mince her words, said that it looked “nice and comfy”. I guess you really can’t win ’em all.
