Diary – 3 March 2007

For years, one of the highlights of the Oscar season was the star-crammed party that über-agent Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar threw first at the Bistro in Beverly Hills and later at Spago in Hollywood. Invitations to this party were the most coveted of Oscar night, and Lazar trimmed his guest list with the ruthlessness that Genghis Khan applied to his victims’ heads. Several years ago, as I walked into the Spago party, I watched as an overly buxom starlet posed and preened for snappers outside the restaurant, having been refused entry. She was Anna Nicole Smith, whose life even then seemed like a bit of a train wreck, and now in death seems even more luridly bizarre.

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Oscar Time, or the Awards Season as it’s now called, starts five months before the actual evening. By December, when dozens of DVDs of the current crop which the producers deem Oscar-worthy are received by the approximately 5,000 Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences members, the race is in full heat.