By LIAM MCEWAN Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — For most people across the globe, Oscar night ends with the bestowing of that final golden statuette.
Not for Oscar winners and guests, of course. Their night is just beginning.
After the first stop — the Governors Ball — many headed to the more exclusive Vanity Fair party at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where guests were greeted by a 20-foot high arrangement of 10,000 yellow orchids, according to organizers, with a menu that ranged from Mediterranean sea bass and grilled ribeye to Domino’s pizza served in “custom slice boxes” and In-N-Out burgers. The invite list was culled this year to make the gathering more exclusive. Some guests stopped to talk on their way in.
Keeping the comedy fresh, not worrying about Leo
To hear Conan O’Brien tell it, Oscar-night jokes are like food. They go stale fast.
Sometimes before you even get to use them.
“Things move quickly and it’s like you’re a chef in a kitchen — you just have to decide what’s fresh, what works,” O’Brien told The Associated Press on the way into the Vanity Fair party.
He said some jokes written a month ago were ditched, because after two weeks, they’d already expired.
How do you know when something is stale? “You just have to constantly, constantly check with people and check with yourself,” he said.
But the two-time Oscar host said he doesn’t get scared about those famous faces in the audience or worry what they’ll think.
“At this point, after this many years, you don’t even see the individual people,” O’Brien said. “It’s another audience. … I don’t get thinking about, ‘Hey, I hope Leo likes this joke.'”
A Shakespearean fashion dilemma
To change, or not to change — as Hamnet, er, Hamlet might ask. That is the question.
Some stars make quick Superman-like wardrobe changes before hitting Oscar night parties. Others decide they’re just fine in the elaborate duds they began the evening with.
Amy Madigan, fresh off her supporting actress win for “Weapons,” stuck with her Dior silk feathered jacket over wool and silk trousers when she made her way into the Vanity Fair party.
But Jessie Buckley, best actress winner for “Hamnet,” slipped from her flowing Chanel red-and-pink concoction to a black sequined gown. And Rose Byrne, a nominee in the category for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” shed her embroidered floral gown for a two-piece black fringe number, also by Dior, to dance the night away (or at least party it away).
Odessa A’zion seemed ready to soar — literally. The breakout “Marty Supreme” actor, who earlier wore a bohemian-style Valentino number, donned a multi-colored ensemble by Harris Reed that culminated in a set of black fringed wings reaching toward the sky.
Fonda’s latest fight
Jane Fonda had the First Amendment on her mind.
“That’s why I am here,” said the two-time Oscar winner, 88, who recently relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment to fight incursions on free speech. Her father, Henry Fonda, was among the Hollywood figures who started the group in the 1940s.
“I’m getting people to sign up,” Fonda said. “Strength in numbers.” The media industry, the actor added, is especially important. “They go after the press and the arts, too, authoritarians do. So we have to fight back.”
Fonda added: “It’s bipartisan. Republicans as well as Democrats have to fight for the First Amendment.”
No art without risk
For David Borenstein, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” making art goes hand in hand with risk.
“I think there’s no art without risk,” Borenstein said. “There’s no real politics without risk. If you’re not taking a risk, then I’m not sure what you’re doing.”
‘This was a very risky project,” he added. “What was so important for this was people coming to us early and supporting us, even though they knew it was risky.”
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” explores the Russian leader’s propaganda and patriotism program for the nation’s youth after the invasion of Ukraine. The film’s protagonist and co-director, Pavel Talankin, was a teacher in a small-town school in Russia who captured on video his students’ lessons, chants and songs promoting the war in Ukraine.
Focusing on hope
Audrey Nuna was feeling hopeful.
“I’m so freaking good, so proud. I’m just overjoyed,” said Nuna, one of the three voices behind the fictional girl group HUNTR/X, who had performed “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters ” at the show. The song won the Oscar for best original song, a first for K-pop. And the movie won for best animated feature.
Nuna said she felt that host O’Brien’s speech was inspirational in its reference to hope in chaotic times.
“It doesn’t feel like we have the space for it,” she said, “but it really is important to show that there’s hope, and I think with this song being so hopeful and this message of ‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ being so hopeful, it just feels like a celebration, of diversity, representation, just all the good (stuff).”
And while Nuna regretted that the show had cut off one of the songwriters during the acceptance speech, she said it hadn’t ruined the night.
“I think that our team has such good camaraderie that we understand it’s bigger than those small moments,” she said.
An especially important victory
For Oscar-winning sound editor Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, the night’s victory meant a lot more than the golden statuette she was holding.
Whittle shared on the red carpet that she’d been ill with cancer while working on “F1.”
“I had cancer while I was working on this film, and so a year ago I had no hair,” Whittle said, “and so the fact that I’m standing here with hair, holding this, makes the whole thing even more mind-blowingly special and amazing.”
Whittle said the job “really helped keep me focused and made me not think about what I was going through.” Her colleagues, she said, “were so supportive of everything that I needed to do, and, the whole crew was behind me the whole way, and they really made me feel like I was still necessary, and I still needed to be there to do the job.
It was really great.”
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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Noveck contributed to this report.