Backstage at the Oscars, on the superstar superhighway

Backstage at the Kodak Theatre, celebrities swarmed. It was thick with taffeta and silk and great wafts of hair product, and for a moment it seemed we were all famous back here.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Oscars photo credit: In Monday’s Oscars section, the last name of Times staff photographer Al Seib was misspelled as Seig in a photo credit with an article about the scene backstage at the Academy Awards. —

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Was that Steve Carell manning the backstage “thank you” camera? Of course not! He was walking through the crowd, leaving Julianne Moore laughing in his wake. Cameron Diaz stopped him. She’s tall, unlike so many of these bite-sized actors. She towered over Carell.

“Can you please just take the whole show over?” she asked her co-presenter, apropos of nothing really. “Are you OK with that?”

Naturally, he is.

Was that the Dude bellowing over the crowd? “Hello? Excuse me!” It sounded urgent. Oh, wait. False alarm. Jeff Bridges was just summoning his youthful academy escort. He couldn’t find the restroom.

Five minutes to showtime, and now it was Sandra Bullock shouting. “You! Are! Awesome!” she exclaimed to someone who was really too close for that decibel level. And then she was gone, headed onto the stage.

Back here, or as the locals call it, “stage right,” a long, red-carpeted corridor serves as a sort of superstar superhighway. Black-suited guards and show staff stand idly about as the stars swan in -- first to a blue velvet-draped “green” room and then to the stage.

It’s quiet. Yet the stars bred tiny moments of anxiety and adrenaline wherever they went. On TV and on the red carpet, it all seems so glamorous, so lovely -- but not necessarily if you’re putting on a show for millions. Penélope Cruz and Steve Martin shared one such moment as they passed each other. “I think you misunderstood that joke,” Martin said, touching her willowy arm. She smiled and offered some unconvincing reassurances. They parted, the misunderstanding still misunderstood.

Then, Martin collided with someone behind him, and then pulled himself together and marched off.

Of course, backstage isn’t all air-kissing and sweet white lies.

Little crises bloomed everywhere, evident primarily by the pained expressions on the faces of the people wearing headsets and carrying large plastic ring binders. There was a mysterious “crisis situation” with singer James Taylor. And Jennifer Lopez was somehow left without an escort to walk her to her seat.

“She’s ready to go back right now?” asked the breathless academy page of the publicist, dropping pages from her binder, fending off panic as the actress hovered behind her like an oncoming storm of pink chiffon.

There were a few moments of genuine emotion too. Show producer Adam Shankman welled up with tears as he hugged “The Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow after her stunning wins. Then the jokester Bullock, who was nearly smothered by a crowd of photographers, leaned out of the swarm and made her Oscar kiss one of Bigelow’s statuettes. “I wanted them to kiss!” Bullock exclaimed.

Earlier, though, it seemed the awkward moments dominated.

A scowling Javier Bardem passed lead actor nominee Colin Firth, who beamed at everyone as if he were running for office. The ubiquitous flashes of press photographers suddenly hit Bardem the wrong way.

“Enough already,” he blurted to one photographer with a look that would stop a charging rhino. The flashes stopped right on cue.

After the tribute to the late director John Hughes, the middle-aged actors immortalized as teenagers by the director filed off stage somberly. And then seemed eager to part ways.

Matthew Broderick couldn’t help noticing a little tension among the pack.

“A little awkward,” a chuckling Jon Cryer acknowledged to Broderick as they posed for pictures. “A little. But lovely!”

Bullock and Sarah Jessica Parker had their moment too. Parker stopped to congratulate the lead actress nominee. Bullock leaned over to silently thank her, nearly whispering her answer.

“Oh,” said a surprised Parker. “I thought you were hoarse!”

And Bullock, not one to miss a punch line, offered back, “You thought I was a horse?” Nervous giggles.

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