The Academy Awards, or Oscars as they are so fondly dubbed, is one of the most anticipated and televised events of the year, sometimes only second to the Super Bowl Championship Game. For Tina Hernandez, it has been a yearly tradition to attend the red carpet alongside her Fan Club, the Oscar Chatter.
Now this Menifee woman and her movie-fan club, will no longer have access to their coveted sideline seats of the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Hernandez, who has been attending the red carpet spectacular for years, has had many ups and downs and a few very exciting incidents at the show, including an unfortunate battery death in 1992 when Barbara Streisand was walking down the isle.
But even after this discouraging event, she continued to go alongside members of the club she founded called the Oscar Chatter fan club, and together they were privy to many exciting events, such as the 2006 “Will Smith Encounter”. Smith approached the group and asked to use their camera to take one of the world’s very first selfies of himself with the Oscar Chatter group behind him in the stands.
The Academy, which has been providing the group with sideline bleacher seating for over 17 years, has made it clear that this is all a thing of the past as the Academy will no longer set aside an allotment of tickets for them. For the Menifee woman and her club, this came as a heartbreaking realization which brought them to think of other good times they've had meeting celebrities on the red carpet in the past.
In 2011 the group had a brief encounter with George Clooney, who accidentally stumbled upon a disabled woman in a wheelchair; as an apology, Clooney was a real gentleman in asking one of the Oscar Chatter members for a piece of paper to sign an autograph with.
These real-life encounters will no longer be a part of the groups activities, and this year the group spent the evening in their hotel room at the Hollywood Celebrity Hotel, which was not even a quarter of a mile away from the Dolby theater where celebrities were flocking to the red carpet.
