Oscar still plans for a big night
Nominees will be announced Tuesday, but will they have a ceremony to attend if the writers strike persists?
The tentative settlement reached this week between the Directors Guild and producers bolstered hopes that talks would resume in the writers strike, but it wasn't enough to relieve the queasy reality settling on Hollywood that the Academy Awards may go the way of the celebrity-free ratings downer that was Sunday's Golden Globes.
However, Gilbert Cates, producer of the award telecast, remains adamant that on Feb. 24 there will be a red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and an Oscar telecast on ABC despite the Writers Guild of America strike and the threat of a boycott by George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and the rest of the Screen Actors Guild. He hinted that he might not need actors onstage.
"There are enough clips in 80 years of Oscar history to make up a very entertaining show," Cates said in an interview Friday with The Times. "We'd have a lot of people on stage." He declined to give further details but added, "I just hope that the actors are there. I pray that the actors are there. I'm planning that the actors are there."
Still, the joy is already being drained from Tuesday's scheduled Oscar nomination announcement. A group of 30 award-winning writers, actors, producers, directors and authors will be protesting at Gramercy Park in Manhattan, sending this message: "Awards are nice, but we'd rather the writers get a fair contract." Later that day, in Los Angeles, the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be holding an emergency meeting to discuss the 80th annual Oscar ceremony.
The stakes are incredibly high. Last year's four-hour Oscar telecast drew nearly 40 million viewers and generated an estimated $80 million in ad revenue. In Los Angeles, tourism officials say award season marks the city's highest hotel occupancy of the year, representing 5% of Los Angeles County's annual room revenue. And the city's fashion designers, hairdressers, limo drivers, florists, caterers and celebrity wranglers will be hit especially hard -- unable to benefit from the economic boon award season usually brings -- unless the labor dispute is settled between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers or unless the guild grants the academy a waiver to use union writers.
"The Rose Parade and the Academy Awards are the two biggest events of the year for Los Angeles," said Carol Martinez, spokeswoman for LA Inc., the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Millions of people around the world watch it on television and say, 'It's Hollywood! It's celebrities!' and that makes a lot of them decide to come here on vacation."
