Oscar Show Script Still Up in the Air

The likely fate of the 60th Oscars show, hit by the Writers Guild of America’s refusal to grant a strike waiver for the program, appears to depend on who’s talking.

--Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the show’s producer, said “an excellent script” for ABC’s April 11 Academy Awards broadcast is already finished. “The show must go on, and it will,” Goldwyn said in a statement Wednesday.

--”(The material) is over half-written,” contended Mel Shavelson, a former WGA president who was one of at least three guild members working on the program when writers began a strike against movie and TV producers on Monday. According to Shavelson, writing for the awards program generally goes on until show time, as writers tune up presentations, speeches and skits.

He said that Oscar emcee Chevy Chase and others on the show could write their own material if they’re not guild members.

--According to the guild’s 1985-86 directory, Chase is a member, as is Billy Crystal, who is also set to help host the event. A Chase spokeswoman said the comedian didn’t know if he was a guild member or how he would handle the show. A guild spokeswoman wouldn’t say whether Chase and Crystal were current members, or whether they would be barred from writing their material.

The guild on Tuesday denied an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences request for a waiver to let Shavelson and Jack Rose keep working despite the strike. Ernest Lehman, another former guild president, is a creative consultant on the show.

Shavelson said reports of the waiver request provoked angry calls to the guild from members who opposed any exceptions. During a 1985 writers strike, Larry Gelbart quit as the Oscar show’s writer and co-producer, although the guild had granted a waiver.

Shavelson, a member of the academy’s board of governors, said he found it “sad” that the guild and academy were at odds on the issue.