Gold Standard: Oscar Watch: Hollywood affairs run rampant this time of year

Oscar Watch, charting the smiles, the frowns, the ups and downs of the awards season, comes to you every Monday from now through the end of February. This week, we break from the usual format to take a bleary-eyed look at the glad-handing going on around town right now ...

Surveying the early evening scene in the backyard of his Benedict Canyon home, rock star Adam Levine didn’t exactly look comfortable. About 40 complete strangers are milling around the hexagon-shaped pool outside his Mid-century Modern house, drinking wine, coming back for seconds at the taco bar and checking out the views of the ravine and the home’s interior. (New idiom: People in glass houses probably shouldn’t leave their beds unmade.)

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“If I didn’t love him, I wouldn’t be doing this,� Levine, frontman for Maroon 5, said, “because it’s totally crazy and weird.�

Levine’s talking about actor and longtime friend Jason Segel, the man who helped revive “The Muppets� and who plays writer David Foster Wallace in the well-received A24 indie film “The End of the Tour.�

Like a lot of filmmakers and actors who are part of awards-season contenders, Segel has been busy the last few weeks, shaking hands at parties and events, answering questions at post-screening Q&As and reminding guild and academy members about his work.

Before arriving behind the gates of Levine’s secluded home in Wallingford Estates, Segel had participated in an indie-film panel at AFI Fest alongside Saoirse Ronan, Blythe Danner, Lily Tomlin, Sarah Silverman and “99 Homes� writer-director Ramin Bahrani.

“I really love it, honestly,� Segel said. “You hear people tell you it’s going to be awkward. But it’s really fun. People like the movie. It usually leads to interesting discussions.�

For those who hadn’t seen Segel’s movie, Levine opened his home’s small screening room (which, we’re told, had been recently engaged in a two-day “Call of Duty� gaming marathon) just before the reception. About a dozen people caught “The End of the Tour� that way, including character actor Larry Hankin, who made a point of congratulating Segel immediately after it finished.

The month of November brings about a deluge of events like this -- probably a dozen every evening around Los Angeles -- with the affairs timed so participants can zip from one appearance to the next.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, for instance, talked Sunday with “Beasts of No Nation� director Carey Fukunaga after a screening of Moore’s latest documentary, “Where to Invade Next,� at William Morris Endeavor’s screening room. He then hurried off to an ACLU dinner. (Moore would be late as the interesting, Fukunaga-led Q&A, which included several questions from actress Patricia Arquette, ran quite long.)

If you have a long resume and award voters are packing screening rooms for your movie, events such as these aren’t as important. “Birdman,� last year’s Oscar best-picture winner, had very few events as writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu was busy shooting his upcoming movie “The Revenant� in Canada and lead actor Michael Keaton was making “Spotlight� in Toronto.

But smaller movies such as “The End of the Tour� and “Where to Invade Next� rely on cocktails and carousing to drum up support.

“Voters are people, and they vote with emotion,� observed a veteran awards consultant. “So you need to humanize the film. Events like these, where you screen the movie and then let people meet the talent behind it, forms a connection with voters. It makes the movie personal to them. And if it’s personal, then maybe they’ll remember it when they vote.�

Which is why Levine opened the doors to his house, even if he spent most of the night around the darkened fringes of his backyard, deeply engaged in a conversation with a man and woman on the subject of tattoos. And why Segel graciously spoke to every person at the event, citing the 2012 documentary about painter Wayne White, “Beauty Is Embarrassing,� as an inspiration.

“He talks a little about how there is a thing he had to go through when he went into fine art, not feeling embarrassed to talk about art,� Segel, a newly minted academy member, said. “And there is some amount of that for me, being up on a panel and talking about the fulfillment and the craft, but it’s a nice feeling to grow into, to stand up straight and say, ‘I do that and I’m proud of it.’�

Twitter: @glennwhipp