Oscar Unveils Security Precautions : Movies: Safety is the prime topic at academy press conference.

The nearly 6,000 formally-dressed people attending the March 25 Academy Awards Show at the Shrine Auditorium will pass through body-searching metal detectors, have their credentials and tickets checked by Pinkerton detectives, and enter a building that has been swept by teams of bomb-sniffing dogs.

“Security will be total and complete, it will go well beyond what we normally do,” said Gilbert Cates, producer of the 63rd annual Oscar show, at a press conference Wednesday in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Beverly Hills headquarters. “We started giving attention to it much earlier this year.”

Academy President Karl Malden added: “(Security) will be as thorough as for the Super Bowl if not more so.”

Although the academy called the press conference to show off its new Saul Bass poster, introduce its principals and announce its theme--”Celebrating 100 years of film”--security was the dominant topic. Since the Persian Gulf War broke out, events like the Super Bowl and Academy Awards have been considered high-risk venues for terrorist actions.

Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy, said security for the show, which this year shifts back from the Music Center to the cavernous Shrine, involves the L.A. police department, federal authorities and private agencies. Special parking arrangements are being made to avoid the possibility of car bombs, said Davis.

The Oscars are moving back to the Shrine this year because of contractual obligations, according to an academy spokesman. The Oscars were held there in 1988 and 1989, then moved back to the Music Center last year. The Shrine holds twice as many people as the 3,100-seat Music Center and its adjacent Exposition Hall allows the academy to host its Governor’s Ball on the same site.

Most historians date the beginning of motion pictures to the year 1891 when Thomas Edison asked his inventor-friend George Eastman to come up with a flexible strip for reproducing camera images. Until then, photographs were reproduced on glass plates.

Without providing specific details, Cates said the show will focus on such movie milestones as the advents of sound, color, 3-D and wide-screen images.

Cates and the others acknowledged that events in the Middle East will affect the tone and content of the show, as well as its security. “We have been very aware in our meetings that the show shouldn’t be frivolous,” Cates said. “We don’t want to do anything that would be inappropriate for the times.”

As for comments that might be made by host Billy Crystal, who told a crowd of theater owners this week that U.S. pilots have run out of bombs and are now dropping videotapes of “Bonfire of the Vanities” on Iraqi troops, Cates said the host “always enjoys a certain independence.”

“Billy is a tasteful guy,” Cates said, adding “The academy is apolitical. While the broadcast will be shown to troops overseas, there will be no specific attention directed at the war.”