Red Carpet 101

I thought today, tonight really, being the evening of the Golden Globes, 09', it might be time to put down a few thoughts on the Red Carpet.
I've owned the Red Carpet in some cases, and other times, its owned me. But either way there is a mystique, an aura around the Red Carpet...until you've walked down or worked one, then, like anything else that becomes ordinary and pedestrian, it becomes merely work. But, not to be cynical or 'all that' about it, and with the hope that everyone gets to, at least once in their lifetimes, walk a red carpet, there are a few tricks that you should be aware of.
There are all kinds of Red Carpets, and in some cases, depending on the branding, blue carpets, green carpets and Bullseye carpets. The really big ones, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, Emmy's, and the Academy Awards. Then the smaller ones, the Night before the Academy Awards, Tribeca Film Festival, Rent's 10Year Anniversary, Tony Bennett's 80th Birthday, some designer opening in some small boutique in New York...the list goes on and on.
Big or small there is just one objective for the red carpet, get the celebrity's name and picture in front of as many people as possible. Then there's the trickle down effect: hawk a sponsorship endorsement and get the company's name in front of as many people as possible, where success is measured in media impressions and the person in charge (me) is officially a media whore.
The biggest Red Carpet I've done from just about any angle is the Golden Globes. The first time, a colleague and I were invited by one of the television studio's. The Golden Globes are always done at the Beverly Hills Hotel, an old dinosaur of a hotel owned for many years by Merv 'What Do You Mean I'm Gay' Griffin. Cars drop celebs and guests off at a back driveway really, where you go through security and metal detectors (the Red Carpet really starts there), where you then follow your own red brick road, turn a corner, and you are suddenly in the middle of chaos personified.
This can be a good thing. You can get easily lost in chaos and if you turn invisible you can spend a good amount of time shadowing the likes of Nicole Kidman or velcroing yourself to George Clooney, or stepping on the train of Halle Berry's dress.
But the first time you turn that corner, it hits you, all those times you sat in your living room, watching t.v. and seeing smaller patches of what you're now witnessing in grand panoramic vision, through the lense of this camera or that, but here it is live, wide-screen and about as high definition as you can get. My God the make-up. The horror. The horror.
To the left are the press, hundreds of press, both broadcast and print, with little signs that tell the stars and their publicists who's shouting at them; T.V. Guide, People, Entertainment Weekly, E, Access Hollywood, some podunk Westfield shopping guide, it seems like they're all there. Oh yeah, including the Hollywood Foreign Press. Keep in mind, the Golden Globes are put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press. The stars win their awards through the voting of the Hollywood Foreign Press. Korea, China, BBC, Outer and Inner Mongolia, they're all there.
To the right are occasional pods of cameras with steps leading up to the likes of Billy Bush, Ryan Seacrest, Joan Rivers (can I take a moment to tell you how conflicted I am about Joan Rivers? In person, she's a fright, as big as a garden gnome, so pulled and stitched that there is nothing real about her in the flesh, there is no flesh anymore, just collagened flubber for a face. YET! She's hysterical. Have you seen you stand up? Outrageous. She makes jokes about everything from her husband's suicide to 9/11. Just proves my point, everyone has their story, their 'acts'. It's just whenever I've seen her in person I have to stop myself from poking her to see if she's alive or just stuffed..o.k. back to entertainment t.v.), or Mary Hart...these are the major t.v. entertainment shows and they are up on the pecking order and they're the ones you see when you are watching television where some dip shit or other is asking 'who are you wearing', 'who are you fucking' or 'who are you?'.
And a large section to the right is the peanut gallery...the fans! All the little people, screaming the stars names, and reaching out their hands to be touched like some small Biafran child you see in those UN ads, reaching out for some food. They share the same facial expressions, a desperate need to fill something. I get the kid in Biafra, not so much the lady with her pink hair, fake nails and autograph book.
The other thing that hits you, the noise. Everyone is screaming someone's name. The press are screaming: Halle! George! Mel! Nicole! Tom! Brad! Jennifer! Doris (yes, even Doris Roberts gets her name yelled, bless her heart). And the publicists are crazed, angry, petulant people who drag these celebs from one camera to another and then up the stairs to the special press so they can publicize their designer or their nominated movie or t.v. role.
So the first time I turned that corner, I was scared shitless. Keep in mind, the Golden Globe's Red Carpet is about a football field length, one very long stretch that goes in front of the peanut gallery, a sharp left turn that goes about half as far again, and then a right turn, about the same distance, that ends up in the hotel lobby. I believe I got to that first left turn in about two minutes. Luckily, I had a great coach in the network executive, who grabbed me, and dragged me back to the beginning of the carpet. "You don't know if you'll ever be back for something like this.." (Did he know something I didn't?) " Just hang back, take your time, and make it last as long as you can."
I ended up at the Golden Globes five or six times, and ended up being that same coach for friends and co-workers who joined me in future years. Once I actually worked the GG's Red Carpet the year Target sponsored an after party, so that year doesn't count. I had to be on the carpet for the entire time, but I have to say I probably hold the record for lasting the Red Carpet the longest; one year an entire hour.
Keep in mind, you have security trying to push you along (that's when you become visible...'damn! I made eye contact') but we would just amble back towards the beginning and start over with a different group of stars. We became friends with publicists, even celebs who we had worked with in the past knew us, and we'd hang with them for awhile.
The trick though is to act like you belong there, hang in the background, hang behind very hot stars of the moment (they'll be in the most pictures and if you're behind them, so will you) and hang where the print media is shooting, not the broadcast media. Broadcast media you might end up in a shot for a fleeting moment and then once it's aired, you're done. Print publishes those photo's over and over again. So you if you end up in the background shot of Katherine Heigel in People magazine, that will play for a year and not always in People. Print is the money shot.
Just like Joan Rivers, I'm conflicted about the Red Carpet. The ones that I owned, felt more in control of, ended up being the best. I was the one being interviewed, I was the one getting out the sound bites and important (?) messages of the day.
The bigger Red Carpets, as an observer, as an outsider, not so much. That just ended up being boring and embarrassing.
I've said it before, as trite as it is, celebrities are people too. Except for the few filled with their own hubris and self-love, most don't want to be there either. It's a necessary evil. And when the time came to accept or send regrets to some award show or other, and I sent regrets with no regrets, I knew my Red Carpet days were pretty much over.
But everyone should walk the carpet at least once. And for God's sakes, if and when you do, and you see Joan Rivers...please poke her for me and see if she bitch-slaps you or if she just topples over and shatters into a million little pieces of silicone and plastic.
Over and out. The media whore.