Oscar winners and losers party the night away
(CBS /AP) WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - On Oscar night, the fun begins after the cameras stop rolling.
The nominees - both winners and losers - and their families and friends finally get to kick back and relax after enduring a barrage of reporters and cameras on the red carpet and the televised ceremony. For the winners, there is yet one more set of interviews to give in the backstage press room.
Pictures: The Oscar Parties
Pictures: Oscars 2012 red carpet
Complete Coverage: Oscars 2012
Then, it's on to the parties, which this year celebrated Hollywood with explosions of color, conversation, pounding music and pure glee.
At Vanity Fair's always compact, A-list soiree at West Hollywood's Sunset Tower Hotel, one of several parties following the 84th annual Academy Awards at the Hollywood & Highland Center, starlets and Oscar nominees and winners chatted, ate, roared with laughter and giggled to each other.
Jonah Hill, nominated for a best supporting actor award for best picture nominee "Moneyball," smiled and shouted out a sassy expletive decrying his and the film's loss, surrounded by a pack of friends, including Seth Rogen.
Rogen, who hosted Saturday's Film Independent Spirit Awards, also laughed and drank with fellow funny guy Jason Segel, star of "The Muppets"' movie, and comic-musician Bret McKenzie, who pumped his Oscar for best original song, for "The Muppets," into the air.
The party, hosted by Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter, served up wine and champagne as well as comfort food, from fried macaroni and cheese balls to hamburgers from In-N-Out. A live stand-up bassist and drummer played jazz tunes.
In one corner booth tucked to the side of the party's outdoor patio, Gwyneth Paltrow held court with her Coldplay husband Chris Martin and silver screen vet Jane Fonda, while talking with Cameron Diaz.
Across the room, Jennifer Lopez lovingly fiddled with the collar of her boyfriend Casper Smart's shirt. Lopez, wearing a maroon-brown sequined Zuhair Murad gown with a plunging front and back, later gabbed with her ex Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
Just south of the bash, at the Elton John AIDS Foundation'sOscar viewing dinner and after-party, actors and musicians co-mingled for an especially vibrant, grand fete for the event's 20th anniversary.
Previously held at West Hollywood's Pacific Design Center, the party shiftedfor the first time to a larger space across the street, at West Hollywood Park, with 200 more dinner guests than usual, bringing the tally to 910.
More than 80 tables decorated with grey, blue and white cloths filled the massive blue-and-white tented dinner ballroom. Celebrities walked down a pristine white carpet into multiple tents serving cocktails, wine and upscale carbonated juice drinks. One outdoor tent was decorated with hanging blue mirrors.
"Tonight we've raised more money at this event than we ever have before," John told the crowd after a feisty post-dinner auction that netted $5.25 million for the foundation's fight against HIV and AIDS.
The Governors Ball, the Academy Awards' official after-party, at the Hollywood & Highland Center, was re-tooled this year from a formal sit-down affair to a cocktail bash, which served the guests just fine. Viola Davis sat with Octavia Spencer, and Spencer's best supporting actress Oscar, for nibbles and drinks while best actress nominee Michelle Williams and pal Busy Phillips roamed the venue hand in hand.
Honorary Oscar winner James Earl Jones presented the event's headlining performer, Tony Bennett, whom he referred to as "an American classic" and "Frank Sinatra's favorite singer."
The Weinstein Company celebrated the success of its movie "The Artist" at its annual Oscars bash at the Mondrian Los Angeles. Among the celebrated guests was Uggie, the dog from the Oscar-winning film. Uggie was banned from the red carpet but he did join his fellow stars on stage after the movie won the Best Picture Oscar.