Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery

Pocket Books A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Joan Rivers and Larry A. Thompson
A Red Carpet Murder Mystery™ was created by and is a trademark of
Larry A. Thompson.

“Oscar” and “Academy Awards” are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This book is neither authorized nor endorsed by the Academy.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2367-6
ISBN-10: 1-4391-2367-5

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O
scar night. Hollywood. The blaze of klieg lights. The smell of perfume, jasmine, and fear in the air—I love it.

No evening in the year holds greater power. To those who soar or suffer by Hollywood’s whims, this annual honor, bestowed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is instant and indelible. Tonight, amid the glitter and pageantry, transformations would occur. A thousand well-dressed people would walk into Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, but in three hours’ time, only a few dozen of them would walk out holding golden statuettes, branded for the rest of their lives: THE BEST.

And before those worthy names could be called onstage inside the theater, another glittering pageant was well in progress
outside. We had a little ritual of our own that also glorified the evening’s finest talent but perhaps, in a moment of much-needed balance, punctured a few inflated egos as well—the red carpet preshow coverage. This was where I took my part on the star-spangled battlefield. I, Maxine Taylor, have the privilege of holding a mike and brushing elbows with the great ones—and the battle scars that come with it. While the talent of the stars is luminous, fascinating, unquestionable, their fashion choices may not be. Someone, after all, must play the role of jester at Hollywood’s royal court, and that would be me.

The crowd around me, Jack Nicholson bumping into Leonardo DiCaprio, was aswirl. In my earpiece, the voice of my young, hotshot director, Will Beckerman, boomed, “Max, grab Cameron!” And suddenly, as is the nature of the evening, a gorgeous young celebrity dressed in some unfortunate piece of satin was thrust at me by her phalanx of handlers. I let go of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, two solid-gold “gets,” allowing them to be pulled off into the onrush of lights and crowds, and I revved up, turning to face my new interviewee, pulling her closer beside me into a nice tight two-shot.

“Cameron Diaz is here,” I announced to my at-home audience above the noise of the throbbing crowd. I’d snagged another A-lister before any other red carpet reporter. Everyone kept a scorecard of gets, a list of celebrity interviews one was able to get, and our careers could be instantly over if our ratio of A-list to B-list should suddenly fall. Hundreds of my competitors, stretched down a long row beside me, were now quietly seething at my good fortune. I blocked all that out as my camera’s on-air light glowed red.

Cameron smiled and said, “Max Taylor! It’s good to see you.”
There was the requisite hugging and kissing. Then she added, “Be nice.”

We both laughed. Like that would happen.

Over broad whitened smiles, Cameron and I eyed each other closely. What she saw was a fairly well-kept faux-blond, thirty-three-year-old woman. (Okay, who was I kidding? Forty…
Okay, okay!
Forty…nine. But they could put bamboo under my nails, and I’d still deny it.) I was dripping in borrowed estate diamonds and draped in a stunning gold Michael Kors gown. Tasteful…yet wow. Cameron’s eyes narrowed, recognizing perhaps that I now wore the same borrowed diamond earrings she’d worn two years ago.

I, on the other hand, felt my own eyes grow wide as I gazed at the outfit she’d selected. “Who are you wearing?” I asked, my raspy voice perhaps just a tad raspier, gaping at the monstrous green gown that only a Trappist monk could love.

Cameron mentioned the name of a young designer, then turned 360 degrees so we could absorb the full effect of all those wasted yards of seaweed-hued satin. “Tell the truth, Max,” she said like a brave young thing who was ready to take her medicine, “what do you think?”

“It’s
something
!” I marveled. “Very few people could wear a dress like that…”

Cameron beamed. “You doll.”

Then, before I could add,…
but you’re not one of them,
she heard her name called from the stands of screaming fans and turned to wave. That’s the red carpet. Blink and your interview is O-V-E-R.

I quickly changed gears. As the dewy beauty was whisked away to yet another interview, trailing a long train of poison-green
tulle, I turned to my camera. “Cameron Diaz. Someone I love and adore and worship. But I have to tell you—even Winona Ryder wouldn’t
shoplift
that dress.”

Yes, I said that.

Oh, come on. I’m Max Taylor, and that’s my thing. I worked my way up from the cellar comedy clubs in Manhattan by telling the truth and saying what no one else would say. Look, I’ll make a promise: if you should discover the cure for cancer, I swear I will not make a joke about what you wear to pick up your Nobel Prize. You, Cancer Curer, are safe with me. Global-Warming Averter, too. But everyone else…watch out.

The mad swirl of pre–Academy Award excitement ratcheted up a notch, and I checked my borrowed diamond-encrusted Harry Winston watch: twenty-six minutes until Oscar showtime inside the Kodak Theatre, if one could trust a $140,000 timepiece to tell good time. Which meant in just twenty-six minutes, our red carpet coverage would end, and I still hadn’t nailed an interview to top last year’s show. And in the castle where I work, they serve last year’s jester as appetizers. Around me, the throng of glittering almost-stars, ministars, megastars, and over-the-hill dino-stars, along with all their nervous star tenders, began pressing forward as they realized it was time to get out of the hot afternoon sun and into their seats.

I, as always, kept right on talking—“Wasn’t Julia Roberts gorgeous this year? The government should pay her to stay home and have more babies, you know, like a natural resource”—filling the airtime until my next celebrity was delivered.

Just off-camera was my own crew, the guerrilla commandos who kept me powdered and prepped throughout two hours of red carpet combat: hair, makeup, personal assistant, darling pet, all
accounted for. Add to this behind-the-scenes cadre my celebrity-wrangler, Cindy Chow, the predatory huntress who even now stalked arriving VIPs, tracking down the most transcendent names for me to interview. Cindy, with her disgustingly thick black hair and tall, slender, pilates-toned body, looked like your typical, everyday fabulous L.A. chick. But don’t let the sweet demeanor and those double-C cups fool you. That woman has a vicious streak, which is an excellent trait in a wrangler. She was waving at me to get my attention.

“Ah,” I said, spying the man she had in her hot little hands, “here comes a repeat Academy Award nominee, the guy who
Walked the Line,
Joaquin Phoenix.” I jabbed my mike in the direction of the tousled, dark, brooding movie star coming up the red carpet. “Joaquin!” I shouted, trying not to spit. It’s a hard name to pronounce. Try it.

He slowed down but didn’t quite make eye contact.

“Amazing performance, Joaquin,” I yelled. Why hadn’t Cindy brought him closer? He was just outside mike range. Joaquin, what kind of mother names her son Joaquin? Clearly a mother who doesn’t give a damn who spits at her kid all his life.

He took another step toward me, but then, pulled along by his agent and still several feet from my particular square of red carpet, he came to a complete halt.

My earpiece buzzed alive. “Where the hell is your next interview?” screamed my frazzled director. I was now on the air, live, interviewing nobody. I momentarily envisioned Cindy losing her job in the bloody postmortem of this night’s show. It was war, and our side was suddenly at risk of losing.

In the great crush, Deborah Norville stepped off her mark and grabbed Joaquin’s arm, snatching him away for herself. I was
furious and tried to reach for him myself, but Little Miss Locust Valley Tea Party had a grip on him that could win her a World Wrestling title. Bitch! Of course I kept score. We all do.
“You lost him,”
cried my director into my ear. Like I didn’t know that. “We’re dying here. Go to Drew,” his voice ordered.

“Let’s see who Drew is talking to now,” I said to the camera, seamlessly moving our live show along, segueing to my daughter, who held an interview position with her own camera crew closer to the door of the Kodak. I checked the video monitor and saw my lovely daughter and cohost standing next to the extraordinarily tall and dreamy Vince Vaughn. Our director, Will, was still yelling something stupid in my ear, but I was at that moment suddenly propelled into mom mode. My daughter is twenty-five years old and single, so why wasn’t this naturally endowed girl wearing a “bait” dress with the neckline cut down to her waist? I despaired of her insistence on good taste. Opportunity missed.

“Say hi to Vince for me,” I said cheerfully, handing the show off. Drew laughed her sparkling professional laugh and took it from there, and my own camera light went dark.

It’s kindly been noted by the press that with my first red carpet coverage of the Oscars in 1985, I
invented
the red carpet arrival. But now, alas, dozens of entertainment news outlets have charged onto the scene:
Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood,
along with all the networks and hundreds of magazines, so we are in a glutted market. Drew and I are the featured hosts with cable television’s firecracker-style network, Glam-TV, and the suits at Glam expect us to outdo our competitors, star for bloody star. It’s cutthroat. With such jackals as Diane Sawyer, Lisa Rinna, and Charlie Gibson in hot pursuit (I kid, but you don’t want to get near an elbow when Charlie is running after Jennifer Lopez), the thing
that distinguishes our trademark red carpet coverage for Glam boils down to a steady stream of big names, their own unfathomable sense of style, and, frankly, what unrehearsed and exciting moments Drew and I can coax out of them. Clearly, we are at a disadvantage without some big stars, and standing out on the carpet without a gigantic celeb next to me for more than thirty seconds of wasted time, I was now starting to get cranky.

I looked over at my wrangler, Cindy, my inner temperature rising. Her job was to provide fresh meat. She’d bungled Phoenix, and amid this blinged-out courtyard maelstrom of yapping publicists and beefy hangers-on, Cindy appeared not to be giving up without a fight: she was hanging on to the tuxedoed arm of Jamie Foxx as if her career were passing before her eyes. With Phoenix gone, she had been on the lookout for an approaching nominee. She had spotted the superstar’s limo as it pulled up to the curb, expertly identifying Foxx through ultradarkened windows; made a beeline up to the rear door, outrunning the wrangler from
Extra,
elbowing aside the wrangler from E!, and tripping the wrangler from the BBC; caught Jamie by the sleeve of his midnight blue Armani jacket just as he stepped out onto the carpet; and herded him, between his stops to wave at the throngs of screaming fans in the bleachers, right down to my portion of the red carpet. On a good day, Cindy was like an Australian shepherd in a beaded Vera Wang. Looked like she was getting back to a good day. Thank God.

Billy Bush, standing down the row of entertainment reporters, called out, “Jamie! Over here!” and almost got his attention. Devon Jones from
Entertainment Tonight
screamed even louder, “Jamie, loverboy!” and at that, Jamie turned his head. But Cindy hung on tight and delivered him to me.

“Here’s Jamie Foxx,” I said just as my camera’s light glared red. Finally. As we chatted about his picks for the Oscars this year, I heard Drew in my earpiece, letting Will, back in the control booth, know she was ready to go with Naomi Watts.

Drew has been my cohostess on all our Glam-TV
Red Carpet Special
s. While at age fourteen she had shown signs of a mother allergy so severe she had caused me to reconsider with dismay the sixty-one hours of hard labor I’d endured to bring her into this world, Drew had, at age twenty-five, grown up into a friend and wonderful interview partner. We make a good team. All the stars who will no longer talk to me—the bastards—will stop for Drew, who is young and bright and, let’s face it, less lethal. Better for our show, she knows and likes all of young Hollywood—she went to school with many of them—and that history works in her favor every time. For our two-woman telecast coverage, I stand at the head of the line, and she always stands at the last position on the red carpet, ready to catch any celebrities who might manage to float past me on their way into the Kodak.

If I am like the strainer in the sink of Hollywood, Drew is the trap down at the bottom of the drain.

The pace of our preshow was picking up. Jamie Foxx left. Drew interviewed Naomi. I got a few quick words with Halle Berry, who looked amazing in Prada, and Sigourney Weaver, who didn’t. Only twenty minutes until the doors to the Kodak would be closed. A crush of jewel-encrusted attendees choked the courtyard.

As we broke from our nonstop coverage for a quick commercial break, I turned to look at all the splendor and spandex. Between Drew and me was an ever-moving ocean of celebrities: Daniel Day-Lewis, Keira Knightley, and Cate Blanchett, each
trailed by cameramen with handhelds grabbing full-length “beauty” shots; film producers checking their cells for text messages, eyed closely by the wives they were most likely cheating on; Denzel Washington escorting his beautiful daughter; young actors and the scantily clad teenagers with whom they were falling in or out of love; the accompanying fleet of agents, public relations mavens, managers, mothers, escorts, flacks, and handlers; closeted gays and their “girlfriends”; out lesbians and
their
girlfriends; and a string of dozens of fixed-camera units focused on entertainment reporters who were feasting on all the glamour like a gang of dolled-up vampires with their fangs in the neck of Hollywood. I shook my head. Poachers!

I looked up to see George Clooney approaching. Now, this was more like it. In my ear, I heard Will’s voice barking that we had thirty seconds to air, but with George on the way, I began to relax for just a second. In this business, that is one second too long.

George is always a doll, and the renewed, super-charged-up Cindy had nabbed him, but in the moments we were waiting to get back on the air,
ET
’s Devon Jones circled around Cindy and George, and then begged his publicist, Stan Rosenfield, “Stan, let me have five seconds.”