I’m standing at the bar talking to Jon Hamm about Anora sweeping the Oscars (“The right film clearly won,” the Mad Men star is telling me) when we’re both distracted by a vision in white. Lauren Sanchez literally pirouettes into our eyeline, wearing a strapless bridal dress with a mermaid skirt and a train trimmed with feathers. She has an emerald necklace around her neck, while her hair cascades in waves. She looks, to put it bluntly, like a quintessential Bond girl.
As an accessory, Sanchez is accompanied merely by the world’s third richest man, Jeff Bezos, who stands watching her spin in a black satin jacket paired with a white bow tie. At a guess, I’d say his outfit cost several times my monthly rent. Still, I spy a rare opportunity to lean over and ask the question a good proportion of the planet has wanted to put to him for the last week and a half. “Jeff,” I say, “What are you planning to do with James Bond?” Bezos scans the vicinity, as if checking for clandestine listening devices, before delivering a succinct answer. “We’re going to make great movies,” he says.
This is the Vanity Fair post-Oscars party, in full swing at a purpose-built venue next to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Hollywood’s biggest awards show wrapped up a little over two hours ago and now the A-list are here, rubbing shoulders with the whatever-comes-before-the-A-list. Chris Rock is on the dance floor, chatting to Olivia Wilde and slapping palms with Diplo. Sofía Vergara is ordering tequilas with Michelle Rodriguez. Sacha Baron Cohen is hanging out with Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom. On the other side of the room, Timothée Chalamet has just arrived with Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian in tow. Their presence has created a sort of celebrity vortex, a huge traffic jam that forms as the free-flowing party gets sucked inexorably into their orbit.
I do the only civilised thing and slip outside to the Funke pizza bar where they’re serving up wood-fired spicy margherita slices. There I bump into Jeff Goldblum and his wife Emilie Livingston, who are keen to hear about my run-in with Bezos. “That’s easier said than done,” says Goldblum when I tell him about the multibillionaire’s claim that he wants to make “great movies” about Bond. “But good to hear he’s focused on that, rather than theme parks and Miss Moneypenny spin-offs.” Goldblum tells me has super-spy skin in the game: he’s currently showing his kids, 7 and 9, the Bond series from the beginning.
Also intrigued to hear about Bezos is LaKeith Stanfield, who’s grabbing a slice with his wife Kasmere Trice. “I need to talk to him,” says Stanfield of the Amazon boss. “I’ve given him so much money, I need to get some back.” When the conversation returns to the night’s Oscars, the couple share their disappointment that Demi Moore missed out on the Best Actress prize. Stanfield has just finished filming the upcoming sci-fi comedy I Love Boosters with Moore. “She’s the villain – she’s great,” he tells me. “It’s by Boots Riley, and it’s even crazier than the last one!” Crazier than Sorry To Bother You, I ask incredulously? “Yeah, it’s funny from the first frame to the last, and it has a message,” Stanfield assures me. “You know how Boots is, he’s very: ‘Down with the Man!’” I tell him I wish Riley had been here to give Bezos a piece of his mind. He laughs. “Yeah, exactly!”
The Vanity Fair Oscars party has been exerting its gravitational pull to collapse disparate groups of stars since it started in 1994 at Morton’s, a steakhouse not far from here on the corner of Robertson and Melrose that closed down in 2007. For the first few years, only a few dozen of the most famous and well-connected people in Hollywood got the invite. This year, when I turn up at 9.50pm, there are more like 300 inside, many of them superstars, with plenty more on the guest list still to arrive. It’s the sort of party where even the very famous are likely to end the night starstruck. The vibe is highbrow meets low: the free bar serves old fashioneds, white negronis and margaritas, while In-N-Out servers in paper hats do the rounds with trays of burgers.
It’s unquestionably the place to be for Oscar winners and for the host, too. Conan O’Brien, already changed out of his tux, is posted up in a corner with fellow comedians Nate Bargatze and Ray Romano. I watch a couple of people congratulate him on his set before I approach with my gripe: before the show started, I’d planned to include a gag about Anora in my Oscars round-up: “Maybe Trump could learn something from this cautionary tale about falling into bed with powerful Russians.” O’Brien, however, beat me to the punch, joking midway through the ceremony that the film had: “Two wins already. I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.” I tell the comedian I was annoyed he stole my thunder, but perhaps I should take it as a compliment. Maybe great minds think alike. O’Brien just laughs. “That’s right,” he says, shaking my hand. “Even bad minds think alike.”
I blink, and somehow, it’s already 12.50am. Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell” is drawing people towards the dance floor, but I’m on my way out. As I head to the door, I pass Georgina Chapman, ex-wife of Harvey Weinstein and current girlfriend of Adrien Brody. She’s ended up the subject of headlines around the world after Brody tossed his chewing gum at her as he went up to accept the award for Best Actor. I ask if she minded. “No! I jumped up to get it,” she says, smiling. “I don’t think he thought he was going to get it, that’s why he had gum in his mouth.”
This is truly a party where it’s impossible to tell who you’re going to run into every time you turn a corner. Before I manage to leave, I have to pass by some combination of Mikey Madison, Ben Stiller, Mindy Kaling, Margaret Qualley, Jack Antonoff, James Marsden, Sophie Thatcher, Bill Maher, John McEnroe, Andy Samberg, Joanna Newson, Macaulay Culkin, Natasha Lyonne and Demi Moore chatting to one another. Of all the starry configurations here, though, it’s a mild-mannered guy named Rhys Salcombe who’s in the most eye-catching company. The visual effects artist who worked on Dune: Part Two isaccompaniedby his 13.5-inch, 24-carat gold-plated companion Oscar. Even Jeff Bezos, for all his billions, can’t compete with the kudos that comes with that.
