The life & death of the red carpet
The life & death of the red carpet
Beware of a crimson path (even if Brad Pitt stands upon it).
As you may know, this year marks 25th anniversary of when I launched my long-running pop-culture blog, Pop Candy. Today’s essay, “The Red Carpet,” is part of a larger project I’ve been working on. Thanks to the wonderfully talented Ken Niimura for creating this week’s beautiful illustration.
THE RED CARPET
Awards shows and red-carpet fashion are terrible sentence-starters – at least for me, because I find them so fake and dull and artless that, whenever I come across those words somewhere else, I groan and go eat a taco.
But most of these feelings come from my Older Self, the one that knows, and has participated in, the costly and time-consuming machinery behind these celebrity carnivals. The truth is, Younger Me had some fun in this world, and I’m lucky it ever let me inside.
Hollywood’s red-carpet tradition dates back to the first-ever film premiere in 1922. When Robin Hood opened at the newly built Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford walked a red carpet as fans gasped and cameras flashed. The movie cost a million bucks to make, and for only five, regular folks could snag a ticket to the whole shebang.
Fast-forward about 80 years, when the Academy Awards rolls out 16,500 square feet of red carpet, and I’m instructed to stand next to the square occupied by Joan Rivers. While this is bad news for a reporter – she’s quite a cockblocker – it’s terrific for an anthropologist, and I’m fascinated by how Joan effortlessly squeezes interesting and funny anecdotes from nominees in thirty seconds or less. She says four words to me that entire day, but they stick for life: “I like your sunglasses.”
On another red carpet, Brad Pitt is happy to chat with me about the new Modest Mouse record while his then-wife poses for photos. (I spend lots of time on red carpets talking to spouses. Editors do not encourage this, unless they happen to be Brad Pitt.)
I meet artists and writers I admire. I mingle at awards show parties thrown by Elton John, where everyone is in a far better mood than they are at the ceremony. I linger in the women’s restroom at the Golden Globes, where I wash my hands next to Natalie Portman and sit on the same toilet as Catherine Deneuve.
I repeatedly fail to get information about fashion and sexy hookups, which is perhaps why one year I’m sent to report on an Oscars party attended by the likes of Shirley Jones and Dick Van Patten. I’m finally in my zone, and it is glorious. As I leave, I spot a star from one of my favorite ‘80s sitcoms lugging a free vacuum cleaner across the parking lot.
Maybe I’m partly sent to these events because I offer a fresh perspective, but let’s not fool ourselves: The main reason is because I understand the internet, and I can work very, very fast. Live updates change everything at awards shows (and everywhere else); now, not only do reporters have to get information quickly and accurately, they need to transmit it fast enough so their publication can beat all the others.
Because of this, eventually, I spend more time on red carpets frantically typing on a Blackberry than actually talking to people. Once social media takes off, it gets even nuttier, becoming a strange celebrity ranking competition: Do I type up this so-so quote from Adrien Brody, or do I wait and ask Kiefer Sutherland about his pets? THINK FAST! KIEFER IS APPROACHING! THE FRONT PAGE DEPENDS ON THIS!
Despite all the perks, awards shows aren’t without their downsides, like the L.A. snobs who obnoxiously critique my discount outfits. Others offer drugs and/or themselves, hoping to carry me home like a trophy. (Trust me, they’re never the ones you wish will do these things.) More than once someone mistakes me for another dark-haired, more famous lady … and doesn’t hide their disappointment when they realize I’m not.
At some point, it became clear that awards shows and red carpets weren’t my thing, so I moved on. Today I don’t think about them much, although sometimes I find myself harnessing the same kind of small talk and fake enthusiasm I learned in that world: Oh my god, it’s so great seeing you at the PTA meeting tonight! Who did you bring with you? What are you working on? And wow, who made that gorgeous cardigan?
More than 2,500 years ago, the Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote Agamemnon, in which the titular hero returns from war to a luxurious “crimson path” of tapestries that have been laid out for him by his wife, Clytemnestra.
Agamemnon resists walking on the red carpet. He says he isn’t worthy of special treatment; he might be a king, but he’s not a god. His wife disagrees, so he does it anyway … and later, she murders him in the bathtub.
Though I’ve been in his shoes, I can’t say I blame her.
Previously:
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"I like your sunglasses" 🌅🌟🌅
Even this many years later, I still want to linger in that conversation with Brad Pitt. Or I want to hear more about Adrien's amazing nose. If you were to take a pass at writing fanfic on these moments, Whitney, I'M ALL IN.