Larry Hackett, the managing editor of People magazine, looks like a man who wants to look like Anderson Cooper. It’s just a few days before the Academy Awards, and normally Hackett would be in Los Angeles among the celebrities his publication so devotedly covers. But instead he’s here in Shreveport, Louisiana, to give the keynote speech at the 2012 Bassmaster Classic opening gala.

“I can’t tell you the looks on the faces of my staff members when I said that I was leaving,” he tells the audience. “They said, ‘You’re going to the Oscars?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m…