Charo at the Oscars

There are red carpets and there are red carpets.

Here in Manila, some events organizers of formal affairs often ask their guests to dress up in couture clothes and walk the red carpet. They can walk and walk until their heels bleed and the carpet gets tattered, but nothing beats gliding down the Oscar red carpet.

ABS-CBN president and Maalaala Mo Kaya? host Charo Santos-Concio had that marvelous experience in the last Academy Awards held at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. The invitation to attend the Oscars and walk down its famous red carpet came from ABC Disney, which supplies foreign shows to ABS-CBN, Studio 23, in particular: Desperate Housewives, Lost, etc. — plus the most recent Oscar telecast, which ABS-CBN is again airing here in the Philippines next year (they have a three-contract with ABC Disney that started in 2008).

Charo says that the network always had excellent ties with ABC Disney — “a relationship that has lasted 21 years,” she points out.

Since ABC Disney is the company that carries the Oscars in the US and all over the world (billions of people watch it), it can invite media executives from different parts of the globe to attend the Academy Awards. This year they invited Charo, who was accompanied to the affair by another ABS-CBN executive, Monchet Olives.

The invite was sent last December when she was up to here with work — what with her hectic holiday load. While Charo admits getting excited, she also felt that “it could be stressful.” Would she have time to fly out — given her killer of a schedule? And then there was the dress she had to wear.

Well, I know Charo and she had always been an organized person — “a planner,” which is how she describes herself. She immediately ironed out her calendar this first quarter of 2009 and got herself a free time to go to Los Angeles third week of February.

For the dress, she commissioned Cary Santiago, a talented Cebu-based designer, to make her a Filipino terno. Oh, that dress — it elicited a lot of compliments on the night of the Oscar. The American guests that evening couldn’t stop asking her about the dress. “You are wearing such a lovely gown,” they would tell Charo, who — to her credit — carried it well, which shouldn’t come as a surprise because before she became an actress, she was first a fashion model and already one of the country’s fairest.

The most flattering comment, however, came from Sam George, who designs the evening dresses for the Oscar trophy girls (mostly children of movie celebrities). “I have to tell you this,” he remarked to Charo, “but you are wearing the most beautiful gown of the evening.” How proud she felt to be a Filipino wearing the national costume that night of the Oscars.

The ABC Disney people must also have beamed with pride that she was part of their delegation. From Charo’s end, she could never thank her hosts enough for such hospitality and graciousness. They put her and other media executives at the posh Beverly Hilton and even tendered a dinner reception for them on the eve of the Oscars. Over supper — at the restaurant of famed chef Gordon Ramsey (“the food was so good!” she gushes) — some of the Disney people gave them tips on how to walk the red carpet to get maximum exposure: Two steps forward and three steps backward.

Thanks for the advice, but Charo didn’t feel like lingering — “especially since I was wearing five-inch heels.” All she wanted was get to the cocktails and then to her seat inside the auditorium to get settled and enjoy the show.

While some of the guests congregated around the spot where TV cameras were positioned, Charo decided to walk ahead and chose a path that wasn’t crowded. Good decision because, call it perfect timing, but she was caught for a few seconds on E-Live camera while Best Supporting Actress nominee Amy Adams was being interviewed. That clip she saw herself when it was played on the video wall of the auditorium before the ceremonies started. 

Inside the Kodak Theater, she and the other media executives from other parts of the world were seated at the mezzanine, which is like the lodge section of our cinemas. She was in Row 4 — in a good seat where she saw everything going on inside the theater.

During the show, she was amazed at the professionalism of everyone involved in the show — from the performers to the assistant directors. “Everything was precise,” she relates. “If there was a 30-second break, there would even be a countdown.”

There were also stand-ins for the celebrity guests. When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, for instance, had to go to the bathroom, their seats were taken over by stand-ins wearing formal clothes so that the theater would still look full if the director called for a reverse shot. The stand-ins promptly got up when Brad and Angelina returned.

Aside from observing how the American production worked, Charo, of course, did a lot of stargazing. “Meryl Streep looked very regal, elegant, but humble and kind — very Gloria Romero,” relates Charo. “Si Penelope Cruz magandang-maganda, Angelina Jolie is very classy and Hugh Jackman is truly the sexiest man alive.” She, however, found Nicole Kidman “too white.”

Charo actually swooned over the old gentlemen: Anthony Hopkins, Michael Douglas and Robert de Niro. She also admired how the Hollywood people gave so much respect to the elderly stars like Mickey Rooney, who is now old and weak, but still attends the Oscars every year and sits through the four-hour show.  

Yes, the Oscars ran for four hours — “but you don’t feel it,” clarifies Charo. Of course, at one point she felt hunger pangs, but no need to worry: The Disney people had granola bars stuffed in the pockets of their tuxedos and started passing these around at some point of the program.

After the show, she and the other VIP guests had a proper meal at the Governor’s Ball held within the Kodak Theater complex. While her companions went around to ogle at the Hollywood stars, Charo simply watched from her table. “Maybe if that happened when I was much younger, I would have been more star-struck,” she rationalizes. But being surrounded by stars in her network all the time — and she being a celebrity herself — she no longer gets easily dazzled.

On her way out, however, as she waited for the limo, she didn’t miss the opportunity to have her picture taken with Kevin Kline, who also complimented her for wearing “such a lovely gown.” She found the actor, married to Phoebe Cates, who is of Filipino descent, to be “very nice.”

Charo says that she spent a perfect evening at the Oscars: “The show was great — very organized. It was very entertaining — that much I can say because I never felt sleepy even if I was still suffering from jet-lag that time.”

Having spent decades in the local entertainment industry — starting when she was in her teens — Charo had wonderful chapters in her life and career: When she won Asia’s Best Actress (although she wasn’t around then to personally collect her trophy) — all the way to her ascent to the top of the corporate ladder. But if she were to choose some of her most memorable experiences, that evening at the Oscars and walking the red carpet surely would be among them.