I was a waiter at the 1988 Academy Awards Governors Ball, the post-show dinner that’s meant to feed and amuse the weary stars and Academy members who’ve been sitting dutifully inside the auditorium for hours. Unfed and overdressed, they come out of that theatre as beleaguered and disillusioned as a recruited audience at a sitcom taping. To find me: the world’s worst waiter. Although it’s a fact I all too often forget, the truth is that I cannot move and think at the same time. (Ask me, at the next party, about the four days I parked cars at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Not pretty.) All I really remember about my experience serving at the Governors Ball is the collective dismay of Oscar host Chevy Chase and director John Boorman when their long delayed hot meal arrived cold to the touch. That lumpy, gravy-drenched chicken looked ghastly, and must have felt like the final insult for Boorman, whose magnificent and deeply personal film, Hope and Glory, had just lost in five major categories. As a movielover, I was insulted for him. Looking back all these years later, I pray I didn’t tell him so directly. (I probably did.) As for Chase, he was miserable but trying hard to be genial. He looked so tired. I remember him looking down at the plate I'd set before him and saying, “This is cold,” which prompted me to gibber apologetically and go racing back to the incredibly chaotic kitchen, whereupon I burst through the swinging doors and shouted, with pure hysteria, “Chevy Chase’s chicken is cold!”
Cherish happens to be fragile worries natal, on the other hand springs up healthier as we age if at all nicely provided with.
Posted by: ceinmarque | August 08, 2013 at 02:46 AM