Party Crashing Tips

From Radar Magazine:

The Thin Red Line
Oscar invite get lost in the mail? Expert party crashers on how to slip past the ultimate velvet rope
By Shana Ting Lipton

In 1974, 33-year-old sex shop proprietor Robert Opal made history. After counterfeiting a press pass and deftly navigating security, this industry outsider and total nobody gained backstage access to the most exclusive event in Hollywood, the Academy Awards. Not content to just soak up the star-studded atmosphere, when the debonair David Niven came on to introduce Elizabeth Taylor at the live taping, the mustachioed intruder ran across the stage naked, flashing a peace sign. After being apprehended by security, Opal was ushered backstage to meet the press corps, resulting in a brief brush with fame when he subsequently hit the talk show circuit. The nude gate-crasher's renown ultimately earned him a paid gig as a professional streaker at one of dancer Rudolf Nureyev's parties, but to a handful of hardcore, veteran party crashers, the incident has earned him something more; it's earned him the status of legend.

Opal's experience is a dream scenario for many top-tier party crashers—yes, there are tiers—who've turned this social sport into something of an art form. And though getting into the ceremony itself is something of a Mission: Impossible in a post-9/11 world, sneaking into exclusive Oscar after-parties can prove just as challenging. Would-be interlopers wear costumes, bring props, fabricate scenarios, hide behind overweight people or clusters of celebrities, and make scenes, all in the name of hobnobbing with the A-List—or rather, for the thrill of outsmarting some of the most well-regarded bouncers in the business. Shunned by the ice queen at the clipboard and relegated to bottom-feeder status in the social hierarchy, gate-crashers may be publicly mocked as party pariahs, but on another level they may well be the everyman heroes of the Bling Epoque.

SUPER STREAK Opal at the Oscars

According to Rex Reginald, the self-styled "King of the Party Crashers"—who claims that his story outline and party-crashing handbook were co-opted by New Line Cinema when they made the film Wedding Crashers—gate-crashers in Los Angeles make up an exclusive society that boasts perhaps 50 "really elite" members. "It's almost like the mafia," he says. "You have to be brought in and become a 'made' crasher."

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