Going to the Oscars Alone

Thursday, March 7

Your mother texts you: “You’re going to the Oscars!”

You are in shock. You are sitting at your desk at your job at the talent agency. Your boss, a young agent in motion pictures who is only a year older than you, has been planning the William Morris Oscars party for four months. He is not attending the ceremony.

You tell your surrounding coworkers about the invitation. You are shy, but proud. You are incredulous, and yet it seems natural.

In a way, this is why you moved to Los Angeles.

Friday, March 8

You think about what you will wear. You of course don’t own anything suitable. For years you have fantasized about how you’d subvert the dress code if you ever went to the Oscars, but of course now that you’re invited you completely fall in line. You realize that subversion can only be earned from a period of conformity. You are also aware that you are not going to the Oscars because you have made or contributed anything. You are a guest, and ought to behave like one.

Saturday, March 9

10 am

You clear the few weekend plans you have. To find a gown, you enlist your cousin’s girlfriend. She works in costumes. Her last gig was head of the “aging and dying” department on Killers of the Flower Moon.

1 pm

The two of you walk downtown to borrow a dress and stilettos from her friend, a French chick also in costumes, who completely understands your needs.

But one gown is not enough.

3 pm

You spend the afternoon trying on dresses at a vintage store in Burbank. The owner is a Scottish woman who tells you what she really thinks. The gown with the slit that goes up to the underwear line is a little too sexy. The $600 gold Cleopatra/Cher number would make a famous person fall in love with you.

You send pictures to your mother. She likes the one that is purple and prom-ish with sparkles, possibly because it makes you look innocent. You tell her it’s not your style. You’re glad she’s 3,000 miles away and unable to sway you. You think that this is part of what it means to grow up: to choose the dress she didn’t favor.

You go for black with a little splash: puffy white frills above the shoulders; tight on both tit and ass. You don’t usually get to show these things off and still look elegant. For good measure, you also buy a strapless black piece with a poofy bow in the back.

6 pm

You have an early dinner, thinking you’ll go home to bed. To do something like read a book or even watch a movie would be ridiculous. You are completely focused on the Event.

9 pm

You realize you don’t have comfortable shoes, so you drive to the only Zara that’s still open, the one in the creepy outdoor mall across town. You wander around alone, weaving through tourists and couples, finding nothing. You decide to suck it up and wear the uncomfortable stilettos. As your roommate said, this is the Oscars.

Sunday, March 10

9 am

You wake up fairly early, focus still intact but with no real plan for hair and makeup.

12:15 pm

Showered, you arrive at your cousin’s house. Your cousin’s girlfriend informs you she’s slotted you in for a very last-minute appointment at a salon in the neighborhood that seems to specialize in men’s hair.

12:27 pm

You enter the empty salon and introduce yourself to the owners, a couple. The salon has a strange and appealing theme. It looks like a grotto. The walls are blue and encrusted with fake rocks that remind you of chocolate.

12:30 pm

As Rosa does your hair, your entourage brings you Starbucks and then your gowns, because you are almost out of time. The director of the movie you are vaguely affiliated with is expected on the red carpet at 2, so you will have to get ready here.

1:15 pm

Hair done, you parade your two outfits for the small group gathered in the salon. There is a vote. You go with the white puff black dress, and do your own makeup with $5 worth of drugstore products as the Uber makes its way.

1:30 pm

You think about who you might run into at the event. You have been told that the heads of A24 will be there. When you were a waitress at Balthazar, you served them breakfast every morning.

You wonder if they’ll recognize you when you inevitably run into them at the bar, in between award announcements. You imagine that they will be delighted by your Cinderella transformation, and will start to recognize you as a peer, ask about the rom-com you are writing, and agree then and there to fund the project.

3 pm

You are still in traffic. You were supposed to be in your seat by now, but Highland Avenue is still three lanes deep in Escalades, because of a protest for Palestine. People climb on top of bus shelters as police look on from a slight distance. The screams of the protestors are worthy, but you are annoyed by the diversion. You are anxious to get there, anxious to catch a glimpse of Jonathan Glazer, the man behind so much art and feeling, behind so much of what makes life worth living. You have spent some money on pro-Palestine causes, but much more on your dress and hair. Still, the protestors make you feel like somebody—the glamorous enemy.

3:30 pm

Your Uber driver wants you out. People in gowns and tuxedos have taken to the streets, thumbing their way through fighters and batons. It is time that you join them.

One suited man tells you the police aren’t letting anyone through. You say that if they aren’t allowed to touch the protestors, then they can’t touch you either. You see a gap and you walk through it. You are now walking alone in the middle of Highland Avenue. A golf cart carrying a withered celebrity speeds by you but doesn’t stop. Eventually you flag one down. When you get to the carpet, there is no one there besides a fleet of staff.

You hurry down the carpet for the un-nominated, cram into an elevator, and find your seat high up in the rafters, just in time.

4:45 pm

Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer announce Best Screenplay. Melissa looks very thin. You think she looks good either way, and wonder whether, after the popularization of Ozempic, there will be any (rich) fat people left.

The Oscar goes to Anatomy of a Fall. You haven’t seen it, so you don’t know how to feel. May December will now win nothing, which is too bad.

4:50 pm

Best Adapted Screenplay. Your father’s name flashes on the screen for 0.4 seconds. Glazer, the man who adapted the book your father wrote, doesn’t win.

4:55 pm

Billie Eilish performs. People in the crowd appear moved. You are still waiting, waiting to feel something, waiting to be excited. You’re thinking about the rush of protest and the jumble of guests and cops, and then being whisked away.

5 pm

At the bar you eat Hershey’s kisses from a bowl and wish you saw people you know, not actors, but friends. You try to make eyes at someone, but no bites. People look familiar. Some are debating. Others eye their drinks quietly.

You get the sense that people are slightly rude. You are ashamed to admit to yourself that you are more suspicious of the women—especially those in discernible makeup.

Despite looking the best you’ve ever looked, no one strikes up a conversation or even steals a glance. When you reach the front of the bar line, you do meet a handsome man who works at Letterboxd. Your luck has changed, perhaps, but you don’t have much time; you exchange a few words before knocking back your glass and returning to your seat.

You get back in time for a drum circle chant announcing Best International Feature Film.

We win. “We.” Glazer’s film: ten years to make and the award has come and gone. In the instant that it happens, you miss the substance of the speech. Whether it was pro-Israel or Palestine, you’re not quite sure, but you clap anyway.

5:25 pm

Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling announce an Award, possibly for Best Stunts. They make obvious jokes about their respective films (Oppenheimer and Barbie), and suddenly it feels so casual to be here. They are, in a sense, our cultural leaders, and you wonder whether they are forced to make jokes about their movies’ rivalry, as if in an advertisement.

5:50 pm

A random guy takes the stage to play a song on a mega piano. You find it hard to discern musical talent, but you’re quite sure he has none.

You find a cold pretzel in a snack box under your seat. Though pretzels are the only food you don’t like, you eat it out of boredom.

6:07 pm

A hot Ukrainian accepts his country’s first Oscar. The young man three seats down from you cries.

6:13 pm

You’ve been here over two hours, and you’re getting comfortable. You like being here. You don’t want to go back to the world. Even though you’re in the nosebleeds, you feel as if you have arrived—or at least progressed. You cannot return to the office after this.

6:17 pm

A woman you don’t recognize gives a seizure-inducing performance with sickeningly bright lights and small children for backing vocals. Her lyrics are cliché, and you don’t appreciate the performance’s urgent message of togetherness.

7:15 pm

As Emma Stone claims her Best Actress Award, you can’t understand how anyone here, how any nominee, could see this as a big deal. Though they are actors, and they did not promise you anything, you can’t believe that the speeches aren’t more articulate, more original, more ... unusual. You are surprised by the emotion. Then again, you are a spectator, an anthropologist; you have no skin in the game.

7:21 pm

You can’t understand why Christopher Nolan wins everything. His movies don’t “speak” to you.

Though you haven’t even seen Oppenheimer, you feel that his popularity and general taste is some small act of misogyny.

8:15 pm

It’s all over and you're out on the street, because you have not been invited to any after parties. The executive producer’s attempt to get you into the Governor’s Ball has been thwarted.

You walk to escape the chain-link pen. You see a hoard of people across the street. A guy sitting on top of some scaffolding yells at an Oscar’s guest: Girl in silver, you are a NAZI!

8:20 pm

You stand smoking a cigarette at the gas station down the block, watching Bradley Cooper guide his mother into the biggest car you’ve ever seen. Your mother says that Bradley going to the Oscars with his mom is a pretty good signal that he is available.

The police yell at you to step away from the gas while smoking. You nod and walk towards a bus bench. The most handsome man you’ve ever seen is leaning against it. He is wearing a tie, but it is clear he was not at the Event. His shirt is unbuttoned, revealing a monster tattoo. You get to talking. You immediately understand that he’s foreign, because American strangers don’t really notice each other in this way. This man, or is he a boy, is looking better than anyone at the Oscars. He is in town for a month, following his feelings, hoping his dreams will come alive. He says that in Italy his heart was oppressed.

You walk with him, in your gown and stilettos, down Hollywood Boulevard. You talk about industry and soul and loneliness. He believes that everything happens for a reason. You believe that every action is an act of optimism.

9:30 pm

You get back to your cousin’s house, eat leftover lasagna, and talk about the night. In a way, you feel that it was the most natural thing, that the Oscars are for everybody.