Cinematic turkeys: The motion picture awards show...

Cinematic turkeys: The motion picture awards show that has become a Hollywood institution--we mean the Razzies, of course--is facing a serious cutback.

“We need a sponsor,” said J.B. Wilson, the founder of the 12-year-old Golden Raspberry Foundation, which recognizes lack of achievement in films.

“I just bought a house and I can’t finance it (the Razzies) myself anymore,” added Wilson, an advertising copy writer and movie buff.

Wilson already had to cut the Razzies back from a full-blown ceremony, including bad film clips, to a press conference three years ago. Of course, no award-winners have ever appeared in person, though Bill Cosby did agree good-naturedly to accept a Golden Raspberry for “Ghost Dad” during an engagement in Lake Tahoe.

Now, Wilson’s ceremonial Bronx cheer, scheduled for March 28, may devolve into a simple press release, a downgrading unlikely to draw tears from such Razzie immortals as Sylvester Stallone.

“We plan to give him (Stallone) a lifetime award after his work in “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot,’ ” Wilson disclosed, giving Only in L.A. its biggest scoop in years. “And we’d like to have a nice ceremony.”

Actually, a Hollywood-type happy ending may be in store for the Razzies. Wilson is hopeful that he can work out a deal with a sponsor that seems appropriate for the event:

Bandini Fertilizer.

On to feathered gobblers: With Thanksgiving coming up, archivists at the Los Angeles Public Library dug into their collection of historic photos and came up with this Chamber of Commerce shot from the 1930s. Obviously the cops were zealous about handing out jaywalking tickets, even then.

List of the Day: Some names that don’t signify what they formerly did:

* Dollar Rent A Car opened in L.A. in 1956 and offered a Volkswagen bug for $1 a day. The cheapest rate now is $35.99 for a subcompact.

* Motel 6 chain, founded in Santa Barbara in 1962, derived its name from its $6-per-night charge for a room. The rate is now more than $40 per night for two in Southern California.

* Starving Students movers, founded in L.A. in 1972, became embroiled several years later in a lawsuit against a moving company called Starving College Students. A federal magistrate pointed out at the time that the two companies’ personnel were neither starving nor solely students.

* Two Cents Plain Cafe in West Los Angeles uses as its name a term that referred to the old restaurant custom--mainly in the East--of serving small cups of soda or seltzer water for a couple of cents. Two Cents Plain offers no such product.

* Los Angeles Rams: Gone south.

Art that moves: Kinetic sculptor Dave Quick has a new show at Neil Ovsey’s gallery on La Brea, spotlighting one of the most nefarious crimes in American history. It’s a re-enactment of “the theft of Ava Gardner’s pantaloons from Frederick’s of Hollywood’s Lingerie Museum during the L.A. riots, and their subsequent return to the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Hollywood” by the guilty thief. (This really happened.)

Quick describes the motorized sculpture thusly: “The viewer pulls a cord, and winged pink pantaloons, exhibited between Madonna’s stolen bra and Nefertiti’s missing G-string, ascend into the heavens where the underpants join a second Madonna--this one with Child.”

Obviously, a touching work.

miscelLAny:

Alumni clubs at the two schools estimate that 20,000 grads of USC live in Orange County, compared to about 13,000 UCLA grads.