The Morning After Oscar’s Night Out

What they never tell you about the Academy Awards is that almost everything you see on the stage--well . . . not the presenters, the winners, the accountants--ends up being junked.

Plastics in this pile.

Metals in that one.

Everything--even recyclables like ex-trees--goes gently into that good night.

So much for the “Pure Joy of Movies,” that seemingly idyllic theme of this year’s Academy Awards on Monday night. About the only joyful things on stage saved and put secretly into storage for some future Oscar evening are such treasured Hollywood memorabilia as the stairs. Stairs. Steps. Risers. Plus those always-slick stands the presenters present from. Or the screens that hide the off-camera areas and the platforms that you never see but that hold everything together.

What was nailed down, soldered, sawed or welded shares a final, equal-opportunity moment--destruction. The sets, the most imaginative part of the evening, become scrap. Glitz gone the way of all flesh.

Where is a Hollywood Green when you need one?

Here we have an authentic Hollywood moment, an industry that encourages stardom and fan clubs, collectibles and souvenirs, autographs and memories, but rubs itself out each year, saving only drawings of the monument it had built for itself. No Museum of Modern Artifice. Even the Berlin Wall found a commercial post-existence.

Clearly these acts of destruction would bother someone like Roy Christopher, the production designer for this year’s Academy Award exercises. This will be the seventh time Christopher will witness the rise and fall of his Oscar sets since his first in 1979.

He is an imaginative, creative person. He takes great pride in what he does. He doesn’t just design sets; he designs, by his own description, 18 “shrines” for the stars, those special Academy Awards settings just for big-time, big-name entrances at the ceremonies. He is a longtime fan of the movies. He is a multiple winner of Emmy Awards for his Oscar-show designs. He enthuses over the imaginative and mourns anything lost.

What really happens post-Oscar is more about Hollywood economics and ego than anything aesthetic:

* In an era of controlled costs, who would pay the rent to store the gee-whiz main set, plus the five sets for each musical nomination along with the 18 “shrines”?

* Who would dare use last year’s draperies for this year’s shining moment?

* How would last year’s sets fit this year’s theme, even though Academy Awards themes all seem to sound alike?

* Who would use someone else’s hand-me-down sets? (One answer to that comes from Long Beach where the Habitat for Humanity organization reportedly has been using donated lumber from sets of a “Batman” movie to build low-cost housing.)

So each year, a different theme, a different assortment of sets, but the same fate after only three hours in the spotlight and three months of dreaming, drawing, drafting and looking over shoulders of small armies of carpenters, painters and drapers.

For Christopher, it started with a call from producer Gilbert Cates in December. They knew each other’s work, had done several television specials together. They met again Dec. 15 to share ideas and some fiscal reality--the budget would be a third smaller than what Christopher had to work with two years ago for his sixth Academy Awards sets. The real challenge, however, once he figured out what his shell, the all-purpose main setting, and the various “shrines” would look like, was what to do for the five sets for the musical nominations.

What Christopher did was to tackle the big problem first, knowing the Feb. 19 nominations would come soon enough. He thought for hours of a theme that would convey the “pure joy” theme of the evening. His first thought: old movie palaces. He researched and studied, he said, the constant sketch pad close by.

“After hours of that,” Christopher said, “I realized I had designed museum pieces. They lacked design energy. It was depressing for me. I put those drawings aside, turned on the television set and sat down with the sketch pad again. Finally it came. The idea of the basic shell, a glamorous sound stage with shimmering glass and trusses and mirrored walls.

“It would say only one thing and that was glamour. It was an elaborate idea which in the end took half of the $300,000 set-building budget.” The total cost of the academy evening, once you add in security, rental, salaries, will run close to $1 million this year.

For Christopher and his Burbank-based group of five artists and art directors, the next step was to make models for the shell and shrines and walk them into various set shops for bids. By early February contracts were let, most going to ABC Television with CBS receiving some work.

Once the five best song nominations were announced, Christopher met with producer Cates, director Jeff Margolis and choreographer Debbie Allen to discuss possible concepts.

Then back to the scenic shops, augmented now by three and four times the usual number of carpenters, painters, drapers and special-effects workers.

“This time of the year, with some sets being shipped to the Chandler (Pavilion) and others going to 1313 Vine for dance rehearsals, I go into a Zen stage,” Christopher says. But by Monday all the sets were either in place or suspended from the top backstage area of the Pavilion. Today, camera rehearsal begins with the sets. On Saturday, the music numbers will be rehearsed. On Sunday the celebrity presenters will test their shrines. And then one pre-show event remains. Late Sunday night, after the final dress rehearsal, after the final celebrity presenter, Christopher and about 200 others will hit the stage and sweep, oil, rebuild, patch, dust and touch up sets in an intense hour.

“Television sets are reality-based,” Christopher says within ear-grinding distance of a cranked-up power saw at the ABC scenic studio in east Hollywood. “The Academy Awards sets are illusions of glamour. All fantasy, but healthy fantasy.”

Beyond his current dose of fantasy, Christopher has a couple of other projects that challenge his Zen powers. One, the sets he’s designed for the night Murphy Brown has her child on network television. Another is the new series “Love Is Hell,” from Diane English, which starts filming next month. Then there’s Pia Zadora’s concert engagement in Florida that will need sets.

Plenty of live work. No looking back.

Somebody else will turn out the lights and strike the sets, leaving what remains of memories to videotape.