Workers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have gotten used to the non-stop queries such as how long is the red carpet in front of the Shrine Auditorium (277 feet), how many limousines will be arriving for Monday night’s Oscar show (about 1,200) and how many portable toilets will be on hand (don’t know).
An assembly line of reporters over the weekend stood beneath the four 24-foot-tall Oscars at the entrance of the mosque-like auditorium to hear Oscar fashion coordinator Fred Hayman discuss how the stars’ outfits this year will be the best ever. Harry Winston also displayed the jewels to be worn, and television cameras turned out to cover the arrival of truckloads of uncut flowers waiting to be arranged.
Such minutiae must be immortalized because, the thinking is, people just can’t get enough of everything Oscar. The conventional wisdom might even be true.
The Oscars have become the exclamation point on a culture obsessed with movies, celebrity, fashion and competition. It’s fitting and perhaps not coincidental that the show is peaking in the same year “Titanic” is smashing worldwide box-office records while collecting a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations.
The telecast and the movie each exceed three hours. Both inspire viewers to fixate on a wealth of details, and in an increasingly splintered society, they represent rare shared experiences among families. Their elements have become part of our collective culture.
The Titanic disaster introduced “Women and children first!” into the popular lexicon. The Oscars contributed “You like me! You really like me!”
The Academy Awards, like “Titanic,” also recall an earlier era of gallantry, glamor and opulence without apology.
“It’s the night that Hollywood reinforces its hold on our imaginations, which is why it’s important for everybody to dress up and why it’s important that they all shine,” said film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. “It’s trying to reinforce that dream vision.”
More Americans are attending movies than at any time since the late 1950s, with the number of admissions rising each of the last several years. In 1997, 1.4 billion admissions produced a record $6.4 billion at the nation’s box offices.
The Oscar show, meanwhile, has established itself as the nation’s most-watched entertainment program. Only the Super Bowl regularly draws more viewers. ABC-TV senior publicist Dan Doran said 75 million Americans generally watch the telecast, but this year’s popular slate of nominated films is expected to raise the number, which is why the network can charge an all-time-high ad rate of $915,000 for a 30-second spot. (The Super Bowl drew about $1 million per ad, Doran said.)
Although claims of a worldwide viewership of a billion people have proven far-fetched, the number of countries carrying the show live this year has risen to 125 from last year’s 100, Doran said. “Among the countries that take it live are Iran, Iraq and Israel. This is the most ecumenical show there is.”
Best actor nominee Robert Duvall marveled at the growth of the Oscar phenomenon.
“It’s more of a spectacle,” he said at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., where he collected honors for best feature, direction and male lead for “The Apostle.” “You wonder what it’s really about. People talk about (Oscars) before a film is even shot.”
Duvall looked around the huge tent that was holding the star-studded awards ceremony for independent film, a far cry from the intimate restaurant gathering that launched the Independent Spirit Awards 13 years ago.
“Everybody else emulates (the Oscars) somewhat, like this,” he said. “Up and up and up and up.”
Although the Academy Awards presentation is often ridiculed for its length and goofy production numbers, it has spawned an entire industry of awards shows and related programming. The Golden Globes, the People’s Choice Awards and the Screen Actors Guild awards serve as a kind of an Oscar preseason, offering hints at what may get academy recognition.
The Academy Awards also has spun off Joan Rivers’ E! channel play-by-play of what the stars are wearing as they arrive; Barbara Walters’ annual celebrity blab fest preceding the Oscars; and blanket coverage by entertainment shows such as “Entertainment Tonight,” “Access: Hollywood,” and cable programs and magazines such as InStyle that feed an apparently insatiable appetite for celebrity tidbits.
When 50 Oscar statuettes recently were flown from Chicago, where they are made, to Los Angeles, they received a media greeting worthy of conquering heroes. “Twenty crews filming boxes on a conveyor belt,” academy publicist Diana Greenberg recounted incredulously.
Five years ago, “Nobody cared what Emma Thompson was wearing,” said Ziggy Kozlowski, a publicist for Block-Korenbrot, which represented Thompson when she won best actress for 1992’s “Howards End’ and this year represents such nominees as Peter Fonda and Julie Christie. “Now, the press is calling us beforehand asking what our clients are wearing. We certainly didn’t used to get asked what men are wearing, but now people are interested in the designers of the tuxes.”
Designers and jewelers routinely lend their wares to Oscar nominees and presenters for the evening in exchange for publicity. “An old friend of my family happens to be one of the celebrity dressers for Armani, so naturally that’s what I’m wearing,” said Ben Affleck, nominated with co-star Matt Damon for their screenplay of “Good Will Hunting.” “I don’t know one tuxedo from another, but you say `Armani’ to Joan Rivers, and the stock goes up, I guess.”
Public demand to get into the bleachers to watch the celebrity arrivals also has intensified.
On Tuesday, for the first time, the academy gave out 500 tickets to prevent anyone from camping out in front of the auditorium before the 70th annual Oscars.
People camped out the night before instead.
The ticket-holders were let into the bleachers at 8 a.m. Sunday. They’ll remain there until Monday night.
Another 500, who were allowed to start lining up at dawn, were admitted Sunday afternoon on a first-come, first-served basis.
Those who can’t attend the event can watch at Oscar parties, ranging from at-home get-togethers to a celebrity-packed, $500-per-ticket benefit for Martin Scorsese’s Film Preservation Foundation. One Los Angeles restaurant is even re-creating the last meal served on the “Titanic.”
Actress Julie Delpy sees the growing popularity of the Oscars and the movies as a mixed blessing. “The movie industry has become one of main industries of America. It’s making more money than weapons,” said Delpy (“White,” “An American Werewolf in Paris”) at the Independent Spirit Awards. “I’d rather see a world with movies everywhere than wars everywhere. But at the same time, what worries me is that people pay more attention to this than real issues in the world.”
20th Century Fox president of production Tom Rothman, whose studio backed “Titanic,” called the Oscars “a terribly, terribly glamorous high school popularity contest.”
Affleck said he sees nothing wrong with that. “Competition and winning, it’s a very American thing,” he said. “Who beat who. It brings an element of college football to the entertainment business. That’s one of the reasons they turned the box office (grosses) into this horse racing thing, where the top 10 is printed in every paper now. There are people at home going, `I hope Titanic wins.’ It matters.”
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