The powers that be tried their best to turn the hotel lobby and ballroom into a work of art, featuring pieces that would be auctioned off later. During the cocktail hour, DJ Mia Moretti spun admirably, and the dinner began with two songs from an up-and-coming musician named Mimi Webb, who did her best to warm up the room.
Then Waititi began his hosting duties, appearing frustrated that nobody seemed to listen to a word he was saying, with many guests loudly talking throughout. “If you would shut up for a second,” he said, going off script. Eventually, he seemed to shrug it off. “I don’t care anymore, I’m drunk now,” he quipped about halfway through the show. Many of the celebrity chairs of the event, including Joe Alwyn, Diane Krueger, Madelyn Cline, and Michelle Yeoh weren’t in attendance, but their names were plastered on a screen to show their involvement.
One chair who did show up was Orlando Bloom, in town for the Bucking Fastard premiere. He dutifully read off the teleprompter when presenting Abramović with her award. Other presenters, like the 75-year-old Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush, ran into technical difficulties. Rush was handed a faulty microphone and delivered his remarks before his Mr. Nelson Did You Kill People co-star Rodney Hicks handed him a new mic and told him to start over.
Despite these wobbles, the show went on. The real star of the evening was not Waititi but Simon de Pury, the longtime and legendary amfAR auctioneer who knows how to work a crowd and the room. He gave it his all, traipsing around the room convincing the wealthiest to open their pocket books for a good cause: funding medical research. Italian socialite and film producer Monika Bacardi took home two paintings: an Andy Warhol Flowers painting for 160,000 euros ($180,000) and a Banksy Marilyn Monroe piece for 80,000 euros ($92,000).
