What you didn't see on TV during the Oscars

The Associated Press, Sunday, February 26, 2012, 4:48pm (PST)

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Even the hundreds of photographers, TV cameras and webcams around the Hollywood & Highland Center can't capture every starry moment of Sunday's 84th annual Academy Awards.

Celebrities reunite on the red carpet, mingle during commercial breaks and experience impromptu star-crossings in the wings — and we've got our eyes and ears trained on those moments.

From arrivals to after-parties, here's a running account of what you didn't see on TV:

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3:22 — "Is the house open?", a casually dressed Billy Crystal asks a backstage security crew a little more than two hours before the Oscar show is to begin. Wearing jeans, a sweater, sneakers and his Oscar credential, Crystal gazes out at an empty theater as he hits his marks and silently rehearses his monologue. A few minutes later, he's gone.

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3:26 p.m. — Outside the theater, things are beginning to heat up, thanks in no small part to the arrival of perennial Oscar heartthrob George Clooney. The fan bleaches erupt in a chorus of cheers and whoops as Clooney arrives on the red carpet, bobbing his head in time to chants of "George, George, George." With him is his date, Stacy Keibler. Decked out in a stunning gold gown, she could almost pass as the gold-plated Oscar's sister.

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3:27 p.m. — Matthew Lillard of "The Descendants" plays air guitar on the red carpet before taking off his jacket and breaking into a faux strip tease amid a shout from the bleachers of "Shaggy," a tribute to his role in the "Scooby-Doo" movies.

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3:40 p.m. — Morgan Freeman quietly slides in through a back door to the theater and heads straight for the green room.

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4:01 p.m. — Viola Davis asks the bleacher crowd what it thinks of her new cropped copper `do. The crowed responds with an enthusiastic cheer.

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4:03 p.m. — Clooney, who a few minutes earlier had promised the bleacher crowd he would return, keeps his word. He walks right up to a throng of fans to shake hands and sign autographs.

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4:27 p.m. — Tina Fey, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith speed through the red carpet, using the center lane that separates the famous from the not really so much so.

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Associated Press Writer Cristina Silva contributed to this report.