Hollywood Returns to Golden Globes’ Party Circuit and In-N-Out Still Rules (for Winner Paul Giamatti)

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The Golden Globes are dubbed the “party of the year,” and with every great event in Tinseltown, there’s typically a long wind up and a ton of ancillary shindigs. But 2024 is a new year and Hollywood is not the same place it once was.

On Friday evening, however, the scene outside Chateau Marmont mirrored pre-pandemic days. A huge crowd of fans packed onto the slim sidewalk above Sunset Boulevard. Paparazzi scrambled to get pics of Margot Robbie, Greta Gerwig, Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone as they exited their respective SUVs and headed upstairs for cameos at W Magazine’s annual best performances party in the hotel’s disco ball-decorated penthouse. Chateau’s chic gatekeeper Anya Varda was overheard exhaling, “they hate me,” in reference to the paps or the fans, but either could be true.

Outside penthouse 64, party crashers worked the door, dropping names and attempting to get in the room where it was about to happen (to no avail). What they missed inside were black-tie-clad servers offering trays stacked with caviar blinis and mini burgers, and a bar with free-flowing margaritas by Casamigos. W’s Sara Moonves and Lynn Hirschberg exchanged hugs with nearly every A-lister, including Gerwig, who was spotted by The Hollywood Reporter pointing her iPhone at the ceiling, swiveling her arm in a crane-like motion, and eventually zooming in on Barbie herself, Robbie.

Alex Wolff whispered to German movie star Franz Rogowski that he should be nominated for his leading turn in Passages. Everyone’s favorite best friend, Derek Blasberg, worked the room in a red suede jacket; Addison Rae took a selfie on the terrace; and stars like Willem Dafoe, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys headed downstairs for a bite to eat in the hotel’s courtyard after the party. Even hotelier André Balazs was on the scene after a season of controversy, squeezing the arms of Kelly Lynch as they glided through W’s fete.

Maybe normalcy has returned to Hollywood’s social scene after all?

Could it be possible that after the devastating blows of back-to-back strikes followed by widespread cutbacks, layoffs, and general dogpiling on studio executives and streamers that everyone was not only ready to rub shoulders again but let loose and party? Not so fast. After one Chateau-set conversation with a high-ranking awards insider, it became clear that the industry is still tiptoeing out of what has universally been a terrible time. Yes, the champagne flowed, but there weren’t as many parties on Golden Globes weekend as there used to be. And the invites that do exist are more exclusive.

“The vibe is … we don’t know yet,” said the insider. “Everyone is definitely happy to be together, but we are still stepping back after the strike. There are a lot of questions. Should we have a party or not? Who should we invite? Where should we have the party? I know that there are more people who want to come to parties because they didn’t get a ticket to the Golden Globes, but you don’t want people showing up to the Hilton for a separate party like a loser with their nose pressed against the glass.”

Another source at the party offered a take: “Things were weird, and they still are weird.”

Things are also very busy. The most popular party conversation, by far, was how stressed and stretched-thin insiders are right now. (It’s worth noting here how successful the phrase, “I have to get to a Q&A,” was in ending party conversations politely and efficiently.) The strike upended the awards season schedule, and events are crammed in an already hectic corridor before March’s Oscars. Hot on the heels of the Golden Globes this week are the Academy’s Governors Awards, SAG Award nominations, the National Board of Review awards gala, AFI Awards, Critics Choice Awards and the Primetime Emmy Awards. That’s just this week. Unsurprisingly, there’s now a dress shortage due to empty showrooms.

Things are also complicated. “There has been some major issue every January for the past few years,” explained one veteran of the party scene in a nod to #MeToo, the pandemic and Donald Trump’s presidency, just to name a few. In 2024, the conflict between Israel and Hamas looms large, as does the ongoing war in Ukraine and the upcoming election. “The fact of the matter is that right now, there are two wars raging where civilians are being destroyed by total lunatics and mad men, and we’re here doing this [awards season],” Poor Things standout Mark Ruffalo explained to THR. “I just think it’s important that we hold that. We can’t ignore that it’s happening. There’s a lot of suffering in the world. This is nothing compared to what we’re facing, but [awards season] a nice respite for people.”

Veterans of the game have noticed how much it’s changed. “It’s been 25 years for me that I’ve been in the business,” Eva Longoria explained. “I started going when it was gift bags galore. Remember that? You could present to get the great gift bags. But I like it more now that it’s about the work and there’s a little bit more seriousness and gravitas to the process. Campaigning has been curved into substance as opposed to a popularity vote. I also like the more intimate gatherings because you can lean into substance and talk about filmmaking or the TV-making process.”

Another industry insider with decades in the game surveyed the Globes party landscape and said this: “It is a weird year. There are too many variables to consider that weren’t present in years past, like a recent strike, budget cuts, hiring freezes, the upcoming Emmys and all the regular awards season events happening at once. This was not a year to make a statement with a big party at the Globes, which is still working its way back. If you’re going to do a party, you want to maximize it for all voters.”

Or maximize the weekend. On Saturday night, Apple TV+ took over Sunset Tower, not for a Globes party but an AMPAS tastemaker celebration. It hosted Martin Scorsese and his Killers of the Flower Moon team, Guillermo del Toro, Reese Witherspoon with son Deacon Phillippe, Natasha Lyonne and Paul Walter Hauser, a winner at last year’s Globes. A few blocks to the east down Sunset Boulevard, Vanity Fair teamed with Amazon Studios for a starry bash at Bar Marmont that was attended by studio chief Jennifer Salke and VF editor-in-chief Radhika Jones. Witherspoon and Lyonne also popped by Bar Marmont where Rosamund Pike, Jared Leto, Trevor Noah, James Marsden, Chace Crawford, Bobby Berk, Quinta Brunson, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, David Oyelowo, Ronald Gladden, Zoe Lister-Jones, Colman Domingo, Jurnee Smollett, Boots Riley and Alex Borstein made rounds.

Sunday’s show bumped up against night two of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. That scenario also played a part in why there were fewer parties on-site at the Beverly Hilton, which in years past has hosted thousands of revelers at close to half a dozen post-show parties. Amazon, Netflix, NBC Universal, Disney, HBO, Fox, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., InStyle and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (now just the Golden Globes) have hosted Globes events at the Hilton in years past.

Many of those companies took a beating during a prolonged strike that shone a spotlight on studio finances, so now would not be the best time to throw a lavish party for well-heeled guests, according to multiple insiders who cited optics as a reason to keep things low-key. Fortunately, for those ticketed guests who did make it inside the Hilton, they had somewhere to go thanks to Billboard, which teamed with the Golden Globes for an official afterparty. This year, the partners took over a space previously occupied by HBO for a gathering where winners like Billie Eilish and Finneas, Lily Gladstone and the crew from The Bear huddled while having their trophies engraved.

The town’s top talent agencies were forced to reckon with the impact of dual strikes on their bottom lines, so CAA and UTA kept their bashes “small, very intimate,” per a source. CAA hosted a private get-together at Chateau Marmont while UTA took over La Dolce Vita.  

UTA leaders Jeremy Zimmer and David Kramer hosted winners Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers), Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) and Justine Treit (Anatomy of a Fall), and nominees like newlyweds Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Sandra Hüller, Will Ferrell, Tony McNamara, Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Andrew Wyatt (Barbie), and guests like Harrison Ford, Jack and Dennis Quaid, fellow newlyweds Chris Evans and Alba Baptista, Mads Mikkelsen and Holdovers guru Alexander Payne.

The Golden Globes aired on CBS and Paramount+, and if this were a typical year and everyone was flush with cash, it would not have been a surprise to see Paramount mount its own post-show bash — but that did not happen, so bosses like Brian Robbins ducked into La Dolce Vita. Other executives making the rounds there were North Road’s David Nevins, Amazon Studios’ Jen Salke, Warner Bros. execs Pam Abdy and Josh Goldstine, DC Studios’s Peter Safran, Paramount+ chief George Cheeks and Spotify’s Jeremy Erlich.

Getting in on the post-show action were Netflix and Universal, the latter with a lot to celebrate thanks to Christopher Nolan’s wins for Oppenheimer. The filmmaker and his partner in producing and life, Emma Thomas, toasted their team’s wins at Uni’s private party at Tommy’s in Beverly Hills alongside other winners like Cillian Murphy, Ludwig Göransson and Da’Vine Joy Randolph from The Holdovers.

Across the street from UTA, Netflix had a hot party, too. About 24 hours after Taylor Swift dined on pricey Wagyu beef at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant, Ted Sarandos and the streamer’s team hosted collaborators like Bradley Cooper and his Maestro team including Carey Mulligan; Dave Chappelle; Lenny Kravitz; Jon Batiste; Beef winners Ali Wong and Steven Yeun; Eilish; Andrew Scott; Colman Domingo; Gerwig; May December’s Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman and Charles Melton; Jon Hamm; winner Elizabeth Debicki; Jason Sudeikis; Creative Arts Emmy winner Sam Richardson and even deflated host Jo Koy.

Still, on a night that showcased how much Hollywood has changed over the past few years, some things remain the same. After finishing up a press room appearance to chat up his Holdovers victory in the best actor category (and before hitting the party circuit), Giamatti high-tailed it from the Hilton to Westwood, where he joined girlfriend Clara Wong, and reps including UTA’s Billy Lazarus and manager Perri Kipperman for burgers, fries and soda at the L.A. institution In-N-Out.

Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.