OSCAR BLINKS
Along with security precautions modeled on presidential visits, the Oscar organizers have made a more-publicized change: no red carpet arrivals. The official line is that the usual festive atmosphere would be tacky for a nation at war: "The academy is mindful that its celebrity guests would feel uncomfortable arriving at this year's awards at the beginning of a major war to face a business-as-usual phalanx of interviewers and photographers," Gil Cates, who is producing the broadcast, told the Los Angeles Times.
The red carpet survived World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, not to mention September 11, but it can't survive Iraq? I suspect a different motive: the commercial powers that be have wisely concluded that interview after interview with antiwar stars would turn off the American viewing public.
Either that, or it's a vast Conde Nast conspiracy. As a Harry Winston executive told the LAT, "I think the people who will benefit the most will be the Vanity Fair party-givers. If Vanity Fair has its party, that will be the red carpet." [Posted 3/20.]