What a night for parties after the terrific Critics Choice Awards. Les Moonves, if you’re listening: it’s time to take this legitimate, slickly produced, well written awards show and move it from VH-1 to CBS.
Just about everyone who could show up did. The only exceptions: director David Fincher, who’s gone back to shooting “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” James Franco, who had a class at Yale, and Mark Wahlberg, who also is shooting a film.
Otherwise, all the big stars came, along with legacy stars like Warren Beatty, with nominee wife Annette Bening. And Jane Fonda rocked the house with her Best Picture presentation, stunning in a white gown and funny with her cougar joke.
David Seidler, who won the Best Original Screenplay for “The King’s Speech,” was literally in tears even after winning, and during the commercial break. Christian Bale was grinning from ear to ear; he’s still got a bit of his character’s patois mixed in with his own British accent. I sat with the producers and writers of “The Fighter,” right near “The Social Network” and “Easy A” tables. There was lots of toasting. Eva Mendes and Emma Stone — drinking fizzy water–still had a ball!
The Critics Choices: Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, “The Social Network,” and David Fincher.
The awards started at the Hollywood Palladium at 6pm Pacific Time but the night wasn’t over even at 2am at veteran producer Mike Medavoy’s annual get together at Ron Burkle’s estate. Dancing to disco and dining on Chinese dim sum and desserts were Cameron Diaz with Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nia Vardalos, Darren Aronofsky, Tara Subkoff, Zachary Levi, among others.
The talk, of course, was of Barbra Streisand’s appearance at the party earlier in the evening with husband James Brolin. Vardalos was enthralled. “She knew who I was!” said the writer of Tom Hanks’s next movie, “Larry Crowne.”
Meanwhile, at least two other cool, private soirees were making the parking valets all over town very happy last night. While Creative Artists Agency held an early celebration at Soho House, W Magazine and writer Lynn Hirschberg held forth in the penthouse suites of Chateau Marmont.
The Chateau is where we found Warren and Annette, the night’s Best Actor winner Colin Firth, Quentin Tarantino, Jon Hamm, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hooper. the great Robert Forster with Oscar doyenne Dani Janssen, Troy Garity and Simone Bent, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (looking very Boris and Natasha), Diane Kruger, Armie Hammer, Paul Giamatti, Danny Huston, Marisa Tomei, and of course, Chateau owner Andre Balazs, who turned the once creepy hotel into Hollywood’s mecca. Did I mention that Dom Perignon sponsored the night? Classy.
PS Great job at the CCMAs from Maroon 5 and Adam Levine. When I saw Adam at the Chateau later, we talked about his solo on the late Gerry Rafferty’s “Stuck in the Middle with You.” His mom was in the audience, he told me, so he was a little nervous.
