Yeah, this is as close to the Academy Awards Red Carpet that I’ll ever get!
The local Chick-Fil-A at Northlake Mall had a Red Carpet event complete with red carpet, red velvet rope and a “paparazzi” with flashing strobe! Dunc and I went to grab dinner for the family and I snapped a picture of the set-up. How fun!
Little known fact: I have actually held an Oscar. Yup! Back in the day when I lived in New York, I worked on a Russian film called Burnt by the Sun. It was nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category and won! The director, Nikita Mikhalkov, flew back to NYC and did a press tour.
I got to pick him up at his hotel and take him through the day of interviews. He wanted to take the Oscar to the Sony Pictures Classics offices—only we didn’t have any “secure” way to transport it. So I emptied out my burgundy bookbag (the same one I’d used in college a few months before!) and stashed Oscar in the back section. And then we walked all the way from the hotel to the Sony building!
I couldn’t believe that I was walking around secretly transporting an Oscar! I just wanted to run up to someone—anyone—and say, “Holy Crap! Look at what I’ve got in here!” Wow—and that sucker started to get heavy after a couple of blocks. It really is heavier than it looks!
p.s. I also worked on a Spanish film called Belle Epoque which also won the Best Foreign Language Oscar the previous year—but that director hightailed it back to Spain and didn’t come back to NYC.