Hollywood helped pay for Barack Obama's historic victory with money and talent -- and now it's looking forward to the party.
Washington is about to look like Sundance on the Potomac. If you don't have a hotel room already booked for inaugural week in January, you are behind the curve. It's too early to know if a movie mogul will get dibs on the Lincoln Bedroom, like back in the golden days of the Clinton administration.
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, most inaugural celebrations have followed a fairly familiar pattern (one not unlike Oscar night in L.A.). There's an official, ticketed inaugural ball (think Governors Ball following the Oscars) and a raft of parties with guest lists determined by juice. And, like Oscar, the main event is usually over in one night.
But landscape-changing elections, like Obama's, have a way of spinning beyond party planner's expectations.
Take Andrew Jackson's swearing in, for example. For the majority of us who snoozed through history class, here's the abbreviated version: Jackson was the tall, rugged manly man -- sort of like Clint Eastwood without the squint -- who captured America's imagination when he ran as the frontier hero in 1828. He made the mistake of throwing the White House doors open to throngs of his supporters, who traveled for days on horseback to attend the celebration.
Jackson had to move the punch bowl onto the front lawn to lure the rowdy crowd back outside. It seems the unwashed masses were breaking the White House furniture, which was not tastefully replaced until Jacqueline Kennedy moved in more than a century later, or so the story goes.
Don't expect Obama to make the same mistake, but the town will be rocking when he arrives. Entertainment industry favorites like the Creative Coalition and Rock the Vote already are making plans to celebrate not only Obama's victory but also their own in getting out the vote. And like the Democratic National Convention in Denver this year, private satellite celebrity parties are likely to spring up everywhere in the nation's capital. As happened in Denver, you'll always be wondering if there are more stars at somebody else's party.
Hollywood cast Obama in a leading role the minute they saw him (it was Norman Lear who introduced him to the entertainment industry bigwigs at his hilltop Los Angeles house nearly five years ago). Since then he's collected celebrity fans like paparazzi.
