THE NIGHT I CRASHED THE OSCARS

 

The 95th Academy Award ceremony will take place tonight in Hollywood. I have no intention of watching it.

A once dignified and meaningful event has turned into a tacky, inane ego circus.  The essence of Hollywood has changed so drastically from what it used to be that it's completely intolerable.

Rather than being an exclusive celebration of the film industry, the Academy Awards has turned into a lengthy and tedious political forum - - tainted with an unbearable in-your-face WOKE agenda.

The Tinseltown Bolsheviks - who make a zillion dollars a day and live in walled fortresses - arrogantly lecture us about how rotten our country is. And now the entire award ceremony is infiltrated with race and gender.
I'm black! I'm Latino! I'm a lesbian! I'm a womanwomanwoman! No white men allowed!

I don't give a royal rat's ass what race or gender you are.

Violence was the highlight last year's ceremony - when actor Will Smith punched comedian Chris Rock for telling a joke about Will's bald wife.

Am I the only one who thinks this incident was completely staged? It rings hollow to me, and - after all - everything in Hollywood is fake.
Besides, Will Smith was seen on camera laughing at the joke.

 
  The creative quality of the industry has waned. Every year we seem to be plied with more and more movies that fewer and fewer people have seen. Not to mention flash-in-the-pan actors and actresses that nobody has heard of. They grab their Oscar and then quickly vanish into the overcrowded netherworld of Hollywood has-beens, never to be heard of again.

Does anybody remember who won the Awards last year?
Or what film won for Best Picture?
Probably not.

Do I sound bitter?

I am. Perhaps I'm pining for the past, when Hollywood seemed to have more substance and class. And talent. 

I miss the Hollywood that I knew when I lived there. Sure - it was always a tawdry, sleazy, corrupt, ruthless, fake, potentially lethal Dreamworld. But it  provided me with a wealth of delicious memories - - and the Academy Awards always managed to ignite them. Back then, Hollywood still maintained a smidgen of glamour and gold.

I've written about all this many times before. Despite what it might seem, I'm not rehashing it to brag. I'm simply remembering my adventurous past, and astonishing myself with memories of my now-faded audacity.

Way back when, during my Hollywood years

I crashed the Oscars when I was eighteen years old. I didn't yet live in Hollywood at that time, but I was smitten with the glitz and glamor. That was back when the Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center in downtown L.A. 

I knew the Music Center very well and it was surprisingly easy to sneak in on Oscar night. Security wasn't as tight as it is nowadays. I simply slipped in a side door - the musician's entrance. I went upstairs via the restaurant, then found an empty seat in the back of the auditorium and watched about twenty minutes of the live show. I could have stayed longer but was afraid I'd be caught.

I can't think of anyone else in Hollywood history who ever crashed the Oscars. I could be wrong, of course, but I like to think I hold the solo honor. Heck, that adventurous feat deserves some sort of award.

After venturing back outside, I hung around where the limos were parked (they were circled entirely around the Music Center) and struck up a conversation with the chauffeur of  actress Helen Hayes (Hayes was one of the presenters at the Awards that night). We watched the rest of the Award show on a small TV in the limo. Afterwards I got to meet a few celebrities -  including Shelly Winters,  Sammy Davis jr. , and actor George Hamilton and his then-wife Alana.
Sammy Davis was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. Shelley Winters was down-to-earth and humorous. George Hamilton was slightly "stuck up".

Sammy Davis jr. at the Oscars that night,

and Helen Hayes

Fast Forward. 

A few years later. In my early twenties, now living in Hollywood. I was no longer an innocent star-struck gawker. I was a hardcore drinker, occasional druggie,  hell-bent on excitement and danger.

I remember attending an after-Oscar party at a Beverly Hills mansion - -  directly next door to Burt Reynold's house (I happened to know a few influential people back then).
I was pretty near wasted, and wound up having sex - oops, I mean a romantic encounter - with someone under a grand piano in the library.

I won't elaborate. It's not exactly a proud Oscar moment.

There were other, more intriguing, Academy Award nights in Hollywood that I remember: 
an intimate after-award dinner with a well-known set designer in a house atop the Hollywood Hills. The dining room was lighted with some fantastic candles that were given to us for the occasion by actress Sally Struthers (remember her? back then she was a famous TV star on All in the Family).

.....later, we spent the night in the bedroom loft which had a huge picture window overlooking the sparkling lights of Hollywood. To me, it seemed just like a movie set.....

Overlooking Hollywood

That was long ago when I was young, reckless ..... and very very far removed from any thoughts about ever living in the Tennessee wilderness with 'possums and coyotes.

Often, the bitter ironies in life know how to bite. 
Sometimes they bite hard,

 

 End of Reel

Jon