Security to Be Tight at Tonight’s Academy Awards : Oscars: The Persian Gulf War casts a shadow on the annual celebration. The precautions being taken are ‘similar to those used at any international airport.’

Going to the Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium tonight will be something like going to LAX for an international flight during the Persian Gulf War.

In other words, get there early--especially if it rains--expect delays, and don’t carry or wear anything metallic.

War hostilities may be over, but Oscar officials are taking no chances with the staging of the 63rd annual Oscar ceremonies that have become an international spectacle. The show is expected to attract a television audience estimated at one billion viewers in 80 countries, and at least 700 members of the news media will be on hand to photograph and chronicle the story about Hollywood’s biggest night of the year.

“Not everyone is pleased with the way the war came out, “ said Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which conducts the Oscar awards show. “Any time you have this size of a gathering and this much attention, there is a need for security.” But Davis emphasized, the Academy and Los Angeles Police Dept. “haven’t had any threats.”

“There does exist a calm at the moment,” acknowledged Oscar chief of security Jerry Moon, from his command office at the Shrine. “But it could heat up . . . we don’t know.”

Moon described the precautions being taken as “similar to those used at any international airport.” Everyone entering the immediate area of the auditorium--star and spectator alike--will have to go through metal detectors.

Moon described this year’s security as “more intense” than for any previous show in his 21 years of heading Oscar security preparations. He estimated that between the LAPD, California Highway Patrol, private Pinkerton security guards and the Shrine’s own security staff, more than 500 persons are involved with making sure the ceremonies go off securely.

If you’re going to the Oscars, all these precautions mean that there are some dos and don’ts before the show begins at 6 p.m.

Do get your ‘dos done early, so you can hop into that limo around 3-ish for the ride to the Shrine. Do have your driver flash the chartreuse-colored “official parking pass” to get you through the police security lines that begin blocks away from the Shrine.

Don’t carry any metallic items like cameras, binoculars, or opera glasses--even though your seats may be in the heights of the second balcony of the 6,000-plus seat auditorium.

Upon arrival, all guests will go through a closed, canopied area where security officials will check tickets and then pass through the metal detectors, unseen by the public or cameras.

Once through, the show begins. It’s down the red carpeted walkway, past the bleachers of screaming fans, the glaring lights, camera crews, pool photographers, “Entertainment Tonight’s” own camera perch, and finally on to the theater doors--unless, of course, you’re a really major name and you stop to be interviewed for television by Hollywood columnist Army Archerd.

Life will be complicated for the fans, too, who gather annually trying to catch a glimpse of the nominees as they walk by.

In previous years, anyone who wanted to could show up early to the Oscar site--some have been known to camp out on the bleachers the night before, to be assured of a good vantage point.

Not so this year. According to Moon, no one will be permitted into the viewing area until 8 a.m. today, and all persons will have to go through metal detectors, too.

Even the vehicles and trucks making deliveries are being checked, Moon said. “We’re checking delivery trucks, using mirrors to look underneath. . . . We’re opening all cameras, so we’re instructing photographers to come with empty cameras.”