Scott Weiss could barely suppress his panic. Perspiration glued his tuxedo shirt to his back. The forged all-access badge and tiny digital camera hung like weights around his neck as he approached the loading dock entrance.
The theater at Hollywood and Highland crawled with local cops, high-priced security guards and federal agents: FBI, sheriff's deputies, LAPD bomb squad specialists and SWAT team snipers, all on high alert.
Weiss knew he could be charged with criminal trespassing -- if he got caught.
But there in broad daylight, at last year's Oscars, while the eyes of the world were fixated on a massing constellation of stars on the red carpet, Weiss headed straight for the only entry point to the Academy Awards that did not have a computerized badge-checking device. A team of co-conspirators filmed Weiss' every move from the balcony of a nearby apartment building.
Approaching the entrance, he pretended to be engrossed in a cellphone conversation. He carried two notebooks containing fake call sheets. In his head, the bearded, slightly portly party crasher ran through the spiel he had concocted to explain his presence. He was sure a guard would question him at some point.
In the summer of 2007, Weiss, a former actor who had a small part in "Robocop," was regaling his longtime friend Ron Magid with stories from his glory days as a party crasher. He even had photos.
Weiss had paid $1,000 in the early 1990s to take a seminar in gate-crashing from a man who produced a public-access show called "The Party Crasher." There, Weiss had mastered the art of sneaking into glitzy events to hobnob with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Courteney Cox and even Prince Charles.
"There were times I said to myself, 'On the entire planet, this is the place to be,' " said Weiss, a 48-year-old West Los Angeles real estate appraiser. "Great food, exciting people. There is an exhilaration you get from doing this."
But after four months, he decided to retire. "I moved on with my life," Weiss said.
It was Magid, a freelance journalist who sells and trades rare movie memorabilia, who came up with the idea of filming Weiss in what they imagined would be a cinema verite comedy of an inept party crasher.
It would be "breaking into Hollywood so we could break into Hollywood," said Magid, 48.
