THE ARTS

Good News: The California Arts Council fared relatively well under the state budget signed Wednesday night by Gov. Pete Wilson with all of its programs, including grants and artists fellowships, intact. However, the council was dealt a 15% cut in its administration budget--a loss of $308,000 from last year’s $12.6 million. That marks a 50% cut in the council’s administrative budget over the last three years. No layoffs are expected, with savings largely coming from reduced rent by consolidating CAC staff to smaller headquarters. “It’s a serious blow . . . but overall it’s good news,” said Susan Hoffman, executive director of the California Confederation for the Arts, an advocacy group that lobbies for CAC funding.

*

Musical Memorial: The Pacific Symphony has commissioned a large-scale symphonic-choral work designed “to musically memorialize the human suffering of the Vietnam War.” The work will premiere at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in April, 1995, just days before the 20-year anniversary of South Vietnam’s surrender to North Vietnam. “This is the kind of project that could wind up offending everyone,” Pacific Symphony Executive Director Louis G. Spisto said of the hourlong piece by New York-based composer Elliot Goldenthal. “It’s very risky. However, we believe that the perspective it’s being written from is one of healing, not tearing people apart but bringing people together.”

*

‘Sayonara,’ ‘Mame’ and ‘Fame’: Three musicals will make up the initial season at the restored Alex Theatre in Glendale. “Sayonara,” an adaptation of the James Michener novel about the romance between an American pilot and a Japanese stage star, will open the series on Jan. 29, to be followed by Juliet Prowse in “Mame” on March 19 and the stage version of “Fame”--about the students at a performing arts school--on May 21. Theatre Corp. of America, which also runs the Pasadena Playhouse, will produce the series.

WORLD NEWS

Dietrich Play Folds: The critically panned musical on Marlene Dietrich’s life, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” folded in Berlin Thursday after only a three-month run in the late Hollywood legend’s hometown. Producer Friedrich Kurz, who had hoped to put the show on until the year 2000 and eventually take it to Broadway, said costs were too high and audiences too small to continue. The musical took its title from the Pete Seeger song Dietrich used in her stage act well into her 70s. Critics panned the show for its confusing story line.

*

A Parliamentary Mission: Indonesian parliament members in Jakarta on Thursday urged a ban of the popular American television program “Mission: Impossible” as a protest to last week’s U.S. missile attack on Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. “Such a TV serial could deliberately influence our people that it is only the United States which respects human rights and democracy,” the chairwoman of the parliament’s commission for political and foreign affairs said.

TELEVISION

Moving to KCBS: “Entertainment Tonight” and “Hard Copy,” which Los Angeles’ KNBC-TV said last week will be dropped next year to make room for the new Time/Warner Bros. program “Entertainment News Television,” already have a new home lined up. Under a multiyear deal, the syndicated programs will move to KCBS in Los Angeles, starting in the fall of 1994.

POP/ROCK

No Rose Bowl Show: The Grateful Dead will not be playing at the Rose Bowl on Aug. 14 as originally planned, deciding instead to take time off between already booked summer and fall tours. The date had been announced by Rose Bowl management after the Pasadena City Council approved it in May, but a spokesman for the band’s tour producers said that the show “was always tentative.” . . . In addition, the Pacific Amphitheatre says that its only confirmed Van Halen dates are Aug. 27 and 28. The reported Aug. 29 date has yet to be confirmed.

QUICK TAKES

A Los Angeles judge has declared rapper Eazy-E (whose real name is Eric Wright) to be the father of a 2-year-old Nebraska girl, and has ordered the rapper to pay about $58,000 a year in child support. The judgment is the largest child support order ever handled by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Ruth Roth. . . . The hot all-female punk band L7 has made its first film, “Serial Mom,” a John Waters film scheduled for release in January. In the movie, the four-member group is called “Camel Lips.” . . . Director Dominic Sena has toned down enough sex and violence from Gramercy Pictures’ “Kalifornia” to receive an R rating. The Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis film earlier had been given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Assn. of America. . . . Actress Mary Steenburgen joined the First Family--Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton--at the Washington opening Wednesday night of “Phantom of the Opera” at the Kennedy Center.