72nd Annual Golden Globes Pre-Parties

The starry scene in Hollywood as film and TV mix, mingle, and drink (a lot) in the run up to Sunday night’s televised party. If the ballroom of the Four Seasons were a ship, it would have capsized when Sandra Bullock walked in to the BAFTA Awards Tea around 3:45 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

She could barely get in, as a crowded space began to orbit around her as she approached the double doors. “Looks ominous,” she said. Less ominous, Leonardo DiCaprio balancing it out in the back corner of the annual event that brought Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern (in a baseball cap), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aaron Paul, Bradley Cooper, the real Philomena Lee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Greengrass, and David O. Russell amongst others to snack on eccles cakes and split scones with devonshire cream while congratulating each other on a great year.

A little over twenty-four hours before the Golden Globes begin at the Beverly Hilton (they air on NBC), “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes was thinking ahead to both appearing on the Globes telecast himself while going head-to-head with his Sunday night series’ return on PBS. “I’m splitting my audience,” he said. There was a four-wheeled party crasher at  BAFTA’s tea.

One black Escalade infiltrated the taxi rank at the Four Seasons. The angry taxi drivers from Beverly Hills Cab (the blue and white cars) were having none of it. After the Escalade driver refused to move, cabbies called parking enforcement, but attitudes changed when they found out who the car was waiting for Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio was inside in a far corner of the ballroom, sipping white wine at the Jose Curevo sponsored tea. His “Wolf of Wall Street” director Martin Scorsese chose another tame beverage water.

The exhibit comprises an army of Stepford mannequins on risers in DVF flowing throughout the hangar-sized space, with DVF’s trademark patterns crawling from the floor up on to the walls. It could have been disorienting and cause dizziness, especially with roaming bottle slingers topping up any half-empty champagne glass.