Monday, March 11, 2024

‘All These Normal People, Packed Into a Human Lasagne’: My Glamour-Free Night at the Oscars

What is it like to go to the Oscars? No, not the celebrity Oscars, the “normal people Oscars.” Stuart Heritage reports from up in the gods—the mezzanine high above the more famous audience, reserved for journalists, film crews, and the family of nominees. In this fun piece, Heritage discovers that the people here can be even more invested than those below.

But perhaps we are missing something by watching it on a screen. Maybe the definitive way to experience the Oscars is to go to Los Angeles and soak up the atmosphere. If you spend time around the winners, the Oscars might start to make some sense. Maybe, I thought, if I experienced the Oscars in the same way as a celebrity, everything would click into place. I might even end up a born-again Academy Awards convert.

At least, that was my intention. Unfortunately, as someone who ranks extremely low on the entertainment industry’s totem pole, I don’t possess the status to experience the Oscars in the same way as a celebrity. They get to sit close to the stage. Jimmy Kimmel makes jokes about them. People are desperate to be around them. None of that happened to me.

In a sense, that didn’t matter, because it meant I got to experience another side of the ceremony that simply isn’t available to TV viewers. That’s right, on Sunday night, I got to participate in the normal people Oscars.



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