Creating a Party Atmosphere for HBO
The Emmys are about six weeks away, and that puts party designer Billy Butchkavitz just two clicks from full throttle. He’s spinning a fantasy for HBO’s Emmy after-party at Spago: an Art Nouveau dream in reds and golds, everything in homage to the turn-of-the-century Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. “We’re doing this whole party gold,” he says. It’s the most photogenic color for a night that will be dominated by photographs. “Right now, I’m in love with this whole gold thing.”
Last year, the Beverly Hills restaurant was awash in pink. But, alas, party-goers never made it to his rosy paradise because the Emmys were postponed. All the more reason for Butchkavitz to wow his fans this year with an elaborate affair modeled after Gaudi’s spectacularly tiled Park Guell in Barcelona, Spain, built in the early 20th century. Butchkavitz started drawing up plans in April. There are roses and fountains and shrubbery. The walls will be covered in gold velvet. Tables will be decorated with sheer embroidered fabrics that Butchkavitz bought during a spring trip to India, and guests will sit on serpentine couches covered in gold ultra-suede. Everything, Butchkavitz says, must reflect the “craziness of [Gaudi’s] mind” and that “bizarre madness of his.”
As the designer walks through his 2,000-square-foot workshop on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles, his hands fly around his head until his halo of ultra-gold curls seem to vibrate. He’s off-subject for a moment, distracted by the movie history of his building. He points to a bare room with windows, a space with concrete floors and unfinished ceilings. “So this was Demi Moore’s loft in ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ ” he says. “And upstairs, here, was in ‘Pacific Heights.’ It was Matthew Modine’s architecture office. The Backstreet Boys did their first video upstairs.”
Then it’s on to his party decoration stash, packed inside a huge closet. Here, he stores tassels from India, lace from Paris, hanging spheres made from grapevines and table linens stacked to the ceiling. Those Indonesian umbrellas he used for HBO’s Golden Globes party are somewhere too. “Now, they’re all the rage,” he notes. Butchkavitz rarely uses anything twice. “Most of the parties are one-of-a-kind,” he says. “Once it’s shown in a magazine, it’s documented--and that’s it. We don’t want to use it again.”
Osbourne Brawl
In the latest Osbourne news, an Internet entertainment company filed a lawsuit this week in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming it is owed a share of the profits from the successful MTV series “The Osbournes.” Meanwhile, Ozzy’s on the road, and wife Sharon has undergone chemotherapy for colon cancer.
The popular series, the complaint alleges, was derived from a Web site the company created for the Osbournes. According to the complaint filed by Threshold.tv, the deal between the Osbournes and MTV breaches an intellectual property rights agreement the company had made with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne’s company in December 2000.
The deal gave Threshold rights to exploit the family name and images in online and digital media, as well as rights to “additional exploitations” of the material in other media, the complaint says. In January, the suit alleges, the company had suggested putting cameras in the family’s home.
MTV declined to comment on the suit, which seeks unspecified damages and a court declaration that Threshold is owner of the series.
Threshold isn’t the first in line to claim a connection to the Osbourne hit series. Late last month, producer Gary Binkow filed suit against Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, claiming that they stole the idea for a “real-life docu-sitcom” from him. In the suit, Binkow claimed he met several times with the couple and representatives of Miramax TV between 1999 and 2000 to discuss the idea for the show.
Smith Zeros In
Even as he awarded Anna Nicole Smith $88 million in the fight over the estate of her late oil tycoon husband, J. Howard Marshall, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter had some less-than-flattering observations about the TV personality’s ability to actually write checks.
“Her illiteracy is striking. Examples are too numerous to chronicle but include writing ’25.00’ meaning $2,500 and ‘4500,00’ meaning $4,500--she testified she has trouble with zeros. In fact, she has only recently started learning to pay her own bills after years of managers and relatives managing her money,” Carter wrote in the decision, according to the Web site The Smoking Gun, www.thesmokinggun.com, this week.
Quote/Unquote:
“The only way you can fully embrace life is to embrace what it’s all about. This [life] isn’t like some religious sect--it’s bawdy, it’s flirty and weird.”--Dustin Hoffman in the September/October issue of My Generation magazine.
Sightings:
Director Rob Cohen, with his nephew and son, chatting with Stryker from KROQ at a Movieline magazine beach party this week at Gladstone’s in Malibu.
City of Angles runs Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: angles@latimes .com
