The Near-Miss Kiss

In Hollywood, puckering up has a protocol all its own. Every year, when awards season rolls around, you see it happen: People who barely know each other pucker right and left, risking nose collisions and exposing awkward height differentials in pursuit of the celebrity smooch.

“The air kiss is like the Hollywood secret handshake,” says Janice Min, editor of the paparazzi-driven Us Weekly. When it comes to the derivation of this intimation of intimacy, scholars are puzzled. The air kiss might have taken flight centuries ago as a way to avoid the powder-caked faces of European aristocrats, or as a dodge against germs. Whatever, it has soared in Hollywood with good reason: It saves the $25 lipstick and, since the Oscars countdown coincides with flu season, maybe lives.

These days, even negligible celebs who exist only to orbit the George Clooneys and the Charlize Therons of the moment know the protocol: to kiss without converging. During the Golden Globes pre-show on E!, red-carpet analyst Ryan Seacrest demonstrated on his cohost, Debbie Matenopoulos, soberly explaining that sideswiping a cheek is a rookie mistake. He didn’t mention it to his audience, but Paris Hilton’s lips rarely strike within a teacup poodle of their intended target. Anything closer blocks eye contact with her contrail of photographers--just as proximity threatens to smudge Mariah Carey’s Tahitian-bronze body glaze.

Horizontal and vertical spacing is imperative. At this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards, Martin Sheen ran into Geena Davis outside the Shrine Auditorium. She smiled down at him and offered her hands. He drew his lips close to them. It was an elegant gesture befitting TV’s commanders in chief, perhaps, but a slap for stargazers eager to spot a misguided air kiss.

At the Globes they were treated to the opposite: a flawlessly executed air kiss during the presentation of the, take a deep breath here, best-performance-by-an-actress-in-a-television-series-drama category. With the skirt of her snug vermilion Escada gown billowing, ceremony savant Davis delicately balanced the trophy in her left hand, clasped presenter Nicollette Sheridan’s left wrist with her right hand, leaned a slender body width to the left and slightly forward and--peck.

To appreciate the grace of this maneuver under pressure--millions watching--consider the Globe fumbles of others: presenter Natalie Portman awkwardly planting both hands on winner Rachel Weisz’s shoulders before leaning in, Teri Hatcher grabbing Sandra Oh’s head on her final approach, as if to say, I’m hungry for brains. A few weeks later, at the Writers Guild of America awards, “Brokeback Mountain” cowriter Diana Ossana stunned Amy Adams with a no-hands fake to the left.

And what was Reese Witherspoon thinking when, upon accepting the Golden Globe for her performance in “Walk the Line,” she denied presenter Jamie Foxx the airspace around her lips? Perhaps the notoriously earnest actress was not icing him but merely rejecting Hollywood’s disingenuousness. Though phoniness is, actually, an art form in itself

“The air kiss is never sincere,” says Allan Pease, a writer and lecturer on deciphering body language. “It attempts to convey warmth or affection in circumstances where little or no affection actually exists.”

Like we care.