Styles & Scenes

All the post-Oscar party poop

Ah, the Oscars post parties. More like ugh.

It's been a veeeery long awards season and you'd think everyone would just go straight home after the Academy Awards, right? I mean, aren't these people a little sick of each other after all these months of award shows?

Apparently not.

Immediately after the ceremony, everyone who held — or had hoped to hold — a little gold naked man headed straight for the Governors Ball, an elegant Art Deco decorated affair in the Kodak Ballroom.

Ever-gracious George Clooney was still acting like he was campaigning, talking to every single press person about his final win, followed around by his still-intrepid pub Stan Rosenfield and CAA head dude Bryan Lourd. Clooney even posed with rival hunk Matt Dillon, whom he beat out for the best supporting actor honors. Wow, guys. Talk about playing well with others.

You’d think he might relax, take a week off, get away from it all at his Lake Como retreat. But he had no time to chill. Clooney was getting on a plane Monday to go back to the New York set of “Michael Clayton,” the dramatic thriller in which he plays a slick attorney whose defense of high profile creeps comes back to haunt him big time.

“Brokeback” couple Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams sat at one high-level table together, looking like they couldn’t wait to get out of their formal duds and get home to Matilda. Williams was even on the cell phone, perhaps talking with the baby sitter? Then she disappeared for a few minutes, leaving an exhausted Heath to sit back and chill by himself.

When Reese Witherspoon finally walked into the ball, dozens of cameras started madly flashing, as her hubby Ryan Phillippe walked behind her, carrying her train. Talk about a supportive husband. She ended up at the “Walk the Line” table, along with her parents, Joaquin Phoenixand his mom, and was happily dancing in her seat to the piped-in big band tunes and bopping her glass of bubbly up and down.

Lauren Bacall was having as much trouble finding her table as she did with the TelePrompTer lines on the show.

“Tsotsi” Oscar winner Gavin Hood was chatting with his boyhood idol Steven Spielberg about having won an early filmmaking award or kudo that was apparently partly sponsored by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. Hood said that honor inspired him to take his film director career path. “And now you’ve got an Oscar,” Spielberg said, congratulating the South African winner of the best foreign language film.

After an hour, some great Wolfgang Puck food and celebratory bubbly, everyone started asking where everyone else was going next. “Are you going to Prince’s party?” “No, I’m going with the 'Crash' folks,” said Ludacris who actually ended up at the crowded Elton John AIDS fundraiser and the exclusive Vanity Fair bash in West Hollywood, Calif.

Don't these people ever sleep?

Photo (top): Reese Witherspoon celebrates with her mom at the Governors Ball.
(Jeff Vespa/WireImage)

Photo (bottom): Heath Ledger doesn't seem to notice that Michelle has left the table at the Governors Ball.
(Jeff Vespa / WireImage)

Affleck shows up for Miramax's Tsotsi

“It's time to act like we know each other,” Ben Affleck whispered to South African writer-director Gavin Hood and “Desperate Housewives” star Alfre Woodard as the trio posed for photos at the “Tsotsi” premiere Wednesday night.

Affleck’s name had been on-then-off the media tip sheet for the low-key Pacific Design Center event for the Oscar-nominated foreign language film. So folks were surprised when the suited-up stud strode in, refused to talk to reporters, posed quickly for photos, exchanged brief words with Woodard, Hood and reps from Amnesty International and Artists for a New South Africa, and quickly left. All in max 10 minutes. Hey, the guy’s good.

Why the rush? Seems Affleck stopped by as a favor to "Tsotsi" distributor Miramax. He's really busy now that he’s a big-time director making his first major feature — “Gone, Baby, Gone” — for (surprise) Miramax.

Affleck's film is based on “Mystic River” author Dennis Lehane’s novel about two Boston detectives trying to solve a young girl’s kidnapping. Word is Affleck will adapt the screenplay himself but he won’t star in it. Let’s breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The last major screenplay writing Affleck did was pretty successful. It earned him and Matt Damon the "screenplay written directly for the screen" Oscar for “Good Will Hunting."

But apparently Affleck directed a previous film, listed on IMDB.com as “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney,” made in ’93. Now that I’d actually pay to see.

But the Academy feels that Oscar-nominated “Tsotsi” — a terrifying and touching look at how an infant helps a young gang leader find his lost childhood and his humanity — is definitely worth seeing.

Hood is particularly thrilled that his film, now playing in 23 screens in South Africa, is literally selling out. He says that means many levels of South African society are watching a homegrown story and that's important to the filmmaker. He recalls an early "Tsotsi” screening for kids in a South African shanty: “In the scene when Tsotsi goes back to the Pipes, where he grew up, one young boy stood up and shouted, 'That’s me, that’s me!'”

Metaphorically speaking, it was him. And Hood knew just how the boy felt.

Photo: Ben Affleck, Alfre Woodard and "Tsotsi" writer-director Gavin Hood pretend to know each other at the film's premiere at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Calif.
(Jean-Paul Aussenard / WireImage)