A Masterclass on Awards Show Fashion, Plus a Dispatch from Sundance

0:04Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV and awards lovers. I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. John, how you doing this morning? I'm doing good. We are here at the last Sundance at Park City. And it's the Monday after the first weekend, so you survived the very, very busiest of times at the festival. Yes, yeah. It slows down starting now. Yeah. I think this is probably a good moment to welcome in Little Goldman's best friend, Hilary Bustis, who's also at Sundance. Hi, Hilary. Hello, Rebecca. Hello, John. Right now, Rebecca, John and I are hanging out without you.

0:39I'm sorry. Yeah. Hillary and I went to the HBO Docs party last night, which is the only party that serves food and is maybe kind of the only real food we've eaten the entire weekend. And you would have thought— John and I walked through the door and beelined. Yeah. We were like crazy people. We were like, there's the Caesar salad! Like, you know how Cookie Monster goes like— And like the crumbs are everywhere. That is how I felt. But then we like, we're like, oh, we can't be too obvious. Like it can't be too embarrassing. And then we looked around and everyone was like that. Like people were like ravenous beasts running for the steak.

1:20Like unhinging their jaws and just swallowing ahi tuna. Yeah, like that was the party of Sundance in my opinion. Well, we have a lot to catch up with on the festival. I feel like even from afar, I can tell there was a lot happening. So today on the show, we're going to talk all about John and Hillary's weekend at Sundance and what movies we might be talking about this time next year. And later in the show, Rebecca and I are talking all about award show fashion with Vanity Fair style correspondent Jose Criales Unzueta. But first, let's get into Sundance. This was the last Sundance in Park City, Utah, where the festival has been held since the early 80s.

1:58It was also the first Sundance without founder Robert Redford, which you mentioned last week, John. So tell me about the vibe on the ground. I can imagine it was sort of a mix of swirling emotions at any time. So Hillary wrote a piece today about the sort of like dissonance between what is happening in America this past weekend and what's happening at Sundance. and Sundance is a political festival because it's indie and also because it has so many documentary, you know, filmmakers in attendance. Yeah, as John mentioned, I have a story that's up on VF.com about how strange it felt to be celebrating movies and just, you know, watching them, knowing everything that's happening in Minnesota, but it does help that the movies are good.

2:44Yeah, it does help. There is, you know, Olivia Wilde, Natalie Portman, Zoe Deutsch, All War, Ice Out, Pins, Edward Norton talked about the incidents this weekend in his interviews. And, you know, people are acknowledging it while also celebrating their films and independent cinema. On top of which, you know, there's a lot of celebration about what Robert Redford has done for independent cinema. Obviously, he passed away last year. He, you know, is the founder of the festival. There's a lot of nostalgia for him as well. So let's get into the movies. I'm curious what you feel like are sort of the biggest hits of the festival so far.

3:27I think that the documentaries maybe have been stronger for me than the narrative films. I don't know, John, if you feel the same way. You've seen more docs than I have. But the doc programming at Sundance is unmatched. I mean, there's nothing like it. I mean, just something to note that all five of the docs that were nominated for Oscars this year premiered at Sundance last year. So like you go to Sundance with a doc and that is the highest, almost, I mean, that's the highest accolade you can kind of get as a documentary filmmaker is to premiere your movie in Sundance. Hillary, we saw a doc together, American Doctors.

4:06We did, which we saw kind of by accident because we had been trying to go to press an industry screening of a different movie, but wound up getting there too late for it. But I'm happy that it worked out that way because I don't know if I would have sought this movie out otherwise because it's a very difficult subject matter. It's about three American doctors who go to Gaza to work in a hospital there. Well, one of them keeps trying to go there but keeps getting turned down because he's Palestinian-American and it seems like it's a lot harder for him to get permission than the other two. But yeah, it's really moving.

4:38It's really well shot. I think it's pretty clear-eyed about the conflict. That was a nice surprise for me. Yeah, and a real right turn from what we were supposed to see, which was a movie called Shitheads, about two people who are taking some drug-addled kid on a road trip or something with Dave Franco. But we didn't get into that, and instead we saw this harrowing documentary that was really beautifully made. I also did see the AI doc, which is being released by Focus Features in March. And that's the title of the movie, right? Well, it's called the AI doc or how I became an apocalloptimist, which is a made up word that they use in the film.

5:22It's fascinating. It's not about how AI is being used in entertainment. It's like a broader scope about how AI is going to be used like in everything. and then he got a ton of people to speak. I interviewed them yesterday and he has a lot to say about a lot of the big figures in AI. Interesting. And my other favorite doc that I've seen so far was Alex Gibney's documentary about Salman Rushdie, which is based on Salman Rushdie's memoir about his recovery after the 2022 knife attack that almost killed him. He was attacked on stage in Chautauqua, New York by this 24-year-old guy who hadn't even read the Satanic Verses, which was the novel that Salman Rushdie wrote in the 80s that caused the government of Iran to issue a fatwa on him.

6:14But this kid had just been radicalized by watching YouTube and went out to attack Salman Rushdie. And it's a really incredible movie because Salman Rushdie's wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who's also a novelist, filmed him during his recovering, like, throughout, like, from the, like, first day in the hospital, as soon as they knew that he would live, she was filming him. So she has all of this very intimate hospital footage of him, you know, and all of his wounds and how he is recovering or not recovering from them. He lost his right eye in the attack. It's surprisingly funny, which is not something that I would think I would say about a movie that shows, you know, a great novelist recovering from him being stabbed 10 times.

6:57But he has this amazing sense of humor that really shines through. And there's a lot of footage interpolated from different films and TV shows because Salman Rushdie is kind of like a very pop culture literate person. You might not expect from his level of erudition. But yeah, I was really surprised by that too. And I think that it's going to have a long life. So should we talk about how sex is back? In the narrative films. Yes. Yeah. Well, I've seen three raunchy sex comedies here. John, have you seen all of them too? So I saw I Want Your Sex, which is the Greg Araki film with Olivia Wilde. There's also sex is back and so is Olivia Wilde.

7:33Yes, in a big way. This is her best performance she's ever giving in I Want Your Sex. She's really funny. Wow, rude to forget about the OC like that. Sorry. She's really, really funny in it. She just hits every single joke perfectly. and I Want Your Sex is also sort of like, it's this post-woke era, post, I guess, quote unquote, Me Too comedy about this guy who's played by Cooper Hoffman who becomes this famous artist played by Olivia Wilde's assistant and then she indoctrinates him into a sexual exploration and then things get wilder and wilder and wilder and it's very tongue-in-cheek about anything that was considered sort of taboo.

8:27I mean, that is what Greg Araki loves, but I had a really good time watching it. The ending, you know, doesn't totally work for some people, but I actually even like the ending. And Olivia Wilde, again, I can't stress enough, laugh out loud funny. Well, I was a bigger fan of Olivia Wilde's other movie at the festival, The Invite, which she also directed, and which is also raunchy. Yes. Which, I don't know, I guess it would be a spoiler to get into why that is. But she's really great in this movie. It's like a millennial update on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. She plays one half of a couple with Seth Rogen.

9:05They're these, like, 40-somethings who hate each other, and they invite over their neighbors, played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton for a dinner party, and things really devolve from there. And yeah, it's really funny. There's a lot of great, I think, improvised lines from Rogan, but the script itself is good. I think it's well-directed. I think that this is going to be a movie that goes beyond Sundance, too. I agree. Does that one have a distributor? That movie, I believe, will definitely get sold. Potentially by the time you're hearing this podcast, there's already reports that focus features in A24 are circling it, and there was a bigger round of buyers even earlier in the week.

9:47But there's a bunch that are still up for sale. I mean, very few this year have distributors. A24 has a horror film, End The Moment, which is the Charlie XCX mockumentary, which is very smart, very funny, very Charlie. She sort of finds a way to end the whole brat summer movement in a very meta, alternative universe way. The other movie I saw that I think has legs beyond the festival is Hatch and Shake Your Booty, which is a dramedy and is all over the place. Also touches down on some sex scenes. And it stars Rinko Kikuchi, who you may remember from Babel. She plays a woman who is a ballroom dancer.

10:41Her husband passes away. and she becomes a recluse and then sort of re-enters the world of dance. She becomes obsessed with her dance teacher. It's very well-directed. I think that will sell. And I could see that movie mounting a Best Actress campaign even for her because she's really good. Interesting. Anything else that has popped that feels like it could be an awards contender? You know, obviously Train Dreams and If I Had Legs both played there last year. It's hard to say beyond the documentary category. Maybe Josephine could break through into the awards conversation. I think it's really hard to predict Sundance to awards.

11:24Because if you told me last year that Train Dreams was going to get a Best Picture nomination from Netflix, I'd be like, you're insane. I mean, not because I didn't like it. It's just, in January, we were looking at Netflix's lineup of Frankenstein, Jay Kelly, the Catherine Bigelow movie, House of Dynamite. I mean, all these things. It's just hard to tell. Also, you're in a Sundance bubble, too, right? You know, the festival bubble is real. I mean, I do think if the invite is picked up, there is performance nominations potentially in there for, I mean, kind of all the cast. But I think you just have to look at the movies for what they are.

12:08And then like you can't evaluate their awards chances until you see who buys them and when they release them and how they're being released. And then you can start to put the puzzle pieces together. I guess my other question is anything like really disappointing? Like was there anything that had a lot of hype that just you felt like wasn't playing? Maybe not for you personally, but, you know, that you're hearing from other people didn't work? The Gallerist has had a tough reception on the ground. I know you did a first look at that movie as well. So you've seen it. But yeah, I think that there are a lot of comedies here, which is great because I feel like, you know, feature film comedy, especially theatrical movie comedies, we have fewer and fewer of them every year.

12:55But comedy is hard. And I think that The Gallerist is just kind of broad and maybe a little too implausible. And I think that the performances are fine, but it just didn't hit the way that it wanted to. I've heard anecdotally a lot of people say that they were not fans. It's hard when a film has such an impressive cast because the hype going in, especially at Sundance, can be really harmful to a movie. It's also because this year's lineup is pretty good and there's kind of a wide range in the narrative between, you know, a movie like Josephine and then, what is it, Gail Dautry and the celebrity sex pass.

13:34Yes, Gail Dautry and the celebrity sex pass, which Hilary and I saw yesterday, which is just like a flat-out, laugh-out-loud, ten-jokes-a-minute comedy. You know, it's directed by David Wayne, who directed Wet Hot American Summer, which premiered at Sundance and was having a 25th anniversary. and it's, you know, very much in that vein. But like you see a movie like that and I like stood up and I was standing next to Netflix people and I was like, buy that. I was like, duh. Like everyone will watch this on a Friday night. It's so much fun. Yeah, I really enjoyed it too. I am in the tank for the Wet Hot American Summer crew and I admired the way that they were pandering to people like me in this movie by having cameos from almost everybody that was in Wet Hot American Summer.

14:23But yeah, the movie itself is very funny. I think that Zoe Deutsch is good in the lead role as Gail Dogtry, who is searching for Jon Hamm so that she can have sex with him. That is the plot of the movie. It's like a Wizard of Oz riff, but that is what she's searching for rather than to go home. Well, before we wrap up, why don't you guys try to give me some real FOMO? Were there any fun parties? I heard there were a lot of incredible performances. There were some events. What did you go? Jon saw Benson Boone do a flip. That's a big one. I did. I did my annual pilgrimage to Tao to remind myself that I still can do it at my age.

14:59Overall, you know, I don't know if Sundance is totally like necessarily a party thing. If you're there to see movies, the festival is very crowded. It's much more crowded than last year. So I think festival goers are kind of like into the idea of the move to Boulder. I think the Park City residents very much split. It seems like a lot of them, and especially the volunteers, are really sad to see the festival leave Utah. I have very strong memories of falling down an icy hill or icy street in the snow at Sundance. I think that was my last year that I ever went because I was like, this isn't for me.

15:41Yeah, I think there's like an element of romance to that where it's like, oh, like we're getting through something difficult. We're walking through the snow because we care so much about independent cinema, but at the same time, I would like to be inside. You don't have to do that. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't have to be like this. And it's not like Boulder, Colorado is Puerto Rico, but like... No. Well, it's going to feel like Puerto Rico compared to this, but there is that feeling, Hillary, that you're describing, which is like you're on the shuttle, everybody's talking to each other. Everyone's like, God damn it, these shuttles, you know, we're so crowded, blah, blah, blah.

16:15But what did you see? What did you like? Like, do you want to see this picture that I took of a real housewife on the main street? Yes. What other real housewives have you seen? Like, it is fun in that element. And that community, I really hope they can replicate in Boulder because there is that sort of, like, we're fighting for independent film here in Park City. And we're acting like it's so hard. I mean, it's not so hard. But for us, us weaklings, it is. Well, I'm glad you guys are having a great time. And Hilary, thanks again for joining us and giving us all the scoop on Sundance. Literally any time.

16:54All right, we're going to take a break. And when we get back, how Oscars fashion has evolved over the years. Stick with us.

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18:36Welcome back to Little Gold Men. So John and I do a lot of talking about what's going to happen at the Oscars, but we do less talking about what's happening on the red carpet and about the politics and trends of awards fashion. And I'm personally so interested in all of this, but I don't know a lot. So thank goodness we have someone here to help demystify that world. We have Vanity Fair style correspondent, Jose Crealis Unzueta. Jose, welcome to Little Gold Men. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I've been a longtime listener. Jose, I'm such a fan of your writing and you've done some great pieces for us at VF.

19:13Thank you. But I thought you could start by kind of telling us how Oscar fashion has evolved over the decades. Absolutely. I think the easiest way to contextualize this or to describe this is that it's gotten really corporate. You know, it's become really transactional. But what's really interesting is that when you think of, like, say, the best Oscars or corporate moments of all time, you think of someone like, you know, like Cher and Bob McKee, you think of like Sharon Stone and like wearing like a gap white button down with like a beautiful Vera Wangssel skirt, like stuff like that, right? Or like even when you think outside of the Oscars, when you think of the Golden Globes, like Julia Roberts and her famous Armani suit, right?

19:54Like she bought that suit herself. It's a men's suit that she bought at the store, right? All of these moments pre-2000s, pre-Google Images, pre-J-Lo, at the Grammys and the famous, infamous, whatever you want to call it, Versace dress, Those were kind of like just fashion moments. Not even fashion moments, I would call them style moments, right? And the difference is industry. It's like someone with good taste who wears something they like and it works out and it becomes memorable for that very reason. But over the years, celebrities started to become more straightforward muses of designers, so less so friends like Halston and Liza Minnelli and more so like a contracted muse, right?

20:32That relationship changed quite a bit. And now you have a stylist and you have a brand ambassador or you have a deal and you have sort of all of these sort of moving pieces that have made these relationships a lot more corporate, a lot more transactional, right? Like now there's contracts, now there's lawyers, there's agents, there's publicists, there's all too many people that are involved in getting one dress to the right carpet. When did the role of a stylist emerge? Like when did that become a job? I will say the stylist as we know it today is a fairly recent thing in terms of the past decade.

21:06And when I say the stylist as we know it today, I think the best example is Laura Roach, right? Someone who is known for the job of the stylist, but who has also become a power broker in their own right, right? Like a person who exists in the culture with this job. But stylists have existed for quite a long time. I mean, if you think of, again, like JLo's Pivotal Versace dress. And the reason why I go back to that is because, you know, the lore of that dress is that it was a trigger that helped invent Google Images, right? she had a stylist at the time and JLo I think the story is that she wanted to wear that dress from the store the stylist was like no someone else just wore it I believe it's Ginger Spice you know and Amor Valetta had worn it on the runway like it had been it had existed in culture already and JLo was like no that's the dress but those were the moments where stylists started to become more popular right but it's also in the context of something like a press tour right like if before you had the red carpet as that pivotal moment now you have talk shows and you have junkets and you have doing a TikTok or a YouTube video with a magazine or a brand.

22:11And now you need to get dressed for all those things. And in the end of the day, a stylist is a job for a person with a lot of taste, with a point of view, but a well-connected person. But it's also a facilitator, right? This is a person who's like securing things for you to wear that are not duplicative to other people, that help you craft your own personal style. Like it's why we're seeing Hudson Williams and Conor Story from Heter Rivalry now have stylists, right? they need them because now they're too visible and there's too much at stake. They're also, I think, they're sort of a storyteller.

22:41When you look at what Margot Robbie did with her Barbie campaign or Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo with Wicked, they have to think about the full picture, right, of months of promotion. And that didn't exist, you know, maybe 20, 30 years ago. That's a really good point that you make, Rebecca, because that's something that's happened in the past five years, right? Like, you know, I actually interviewed Law for a new series that we launched called Stylist Sessions, where we're trying to sort of get to the bottom of the look in a way, right? Like the Easter eggs, the strategy around dressing someone.

23:10And he really, I will give him a lot of credit for this. He helped invent what we call method dressing, right? The sort of idea of dressing the person for the movie or the role that they're promoting, right? And like, of course, Andrew McClellan and Margot Robbie did this really well with Barbie to the point that there's a book now of all of her looks, right? Like every look referenced to Barbie. But Law was doing this with Zendaya when she was like in The Greatest Showman. You know what I mean? Which is like pre-Zendaya movie star, right? Like this is some of her breakout roles. And then he did it again for Spider-Man and he did it again for Challengers and then he did it again for Dune.

23:45So like this is something that he's been popularizing and then really the peak of it at first was Barbie and then became Wicked, right? The green, the pink, the bubbles, the recreation of the dress, like all of these sort of moments. But that's also how you go viral. Like people on Instagram, especially fashion people or like fashion adjacent people love the side by side. You know, they love to see the reference. They love to see the recreation. They love the little detail. And that's how you get some fashion clout. And that is attractive for brands. It's attractive for studios. It's attractive for a lot of people with a lot of money.

24:19So obviously Ariana Grande's Wicked tour is over now that she didn't get an Oscar nomination. But I still think what Lott did with her during the promo of the movie is an interesting example. So can you talk about how he styled Ariana differently for Wicked for Good compared to the first press tour? It seems like he really went into the archives of a lot of these fashion houses for Ariana and found really unique looks. What's really interesting is that Law used to work with Ariana way back when. Like this is pre-pandemic, dangerous woman, world tour era, right? Like this is like another version of Ariana than the one we're seeing right now.

24:56Pop star Ariana. Exactly. Pop star Ari at her peak. And then Ari switched to another stylist, Mimi Cottrell. And Mimi did the first Wicked Tour and then Law is doing now the second, right? So like already you sort of see a different side of Ariana in terms of fashion. But you know, what Law was telling me is that like, that it was really important to him to make sure that he's sort of growing Ariana's presence on the red carpet as Ariana grows into a proper movie star, but also to reflect the character arc, right? But the vintage component is really interesting because Ariana is very much a fashion girl.

25:30She follows designers on Instagram. She, you know, she has relationships with designers like Jonathan Anderson, who was at Luebe and now is at Dior, right? But she buys these pieces. Like similarly to Zendaya and Law, like Law started his career dealing vintage and selling vintage. So like that's kind of where it comes from. It's always been in his toolkit. But with Ariana, I think it started to make more sense as they were fashioning her into the movie star, right? Like the separation between a pop star, pop stars are about the moment, right? So like she needs to be in fashion that's like trending right now.

26:01If you think of someone like Dua Lipa, for example, like Dua is always in like what just walked off the runway, what just happened. She's always in the middle of that fashion conversation. But Ariana has to create a different image for herself now. And I think vintage has been a really good way of doing that. And by going the vintage route, like you make sure that, you know, there's more to talk about. Like if she's wearing a vintage Dior piece by John Galliano, for instance, you're already giving Vogue a headline. You're sort of pre-writing the story for a fashion magazine and that's really smart because you make sure you're getting attention at every single stop in the tour.