Oscar’s Final Take of the Night

If the hottest ticket in town Sunday night is the Academy Awards show at the Shrine Auditorium, the second hottest may be the post-Oscar Governors Ball.

This is the official celebration following the telecast and usually the first party stop of the night. It’s where some 1,650 people--winners, nominees, presenters, industry movers and shakers and other VIPs-- show up to eat, dance, schmooze and revel in the glow of Oscar gold.

After three-plus hours of white knuckling it at the awards (not to mention weeks spent dieting to squeeze into those clothes), guests can’t wait to relax and chow down. They’ll do so in the Shrine’s huge Exposition Hall, converted from a cavernous space into a spectacular gala.

This is a mega-production, months in planning with endless details like:

* 40 pounds of caviar;

* 25 pounds of black truffles (at $1,000 a pound);

* 5,400 plates, 6,000 wine glasses;

* 960 bottles of wine;

* 100 pounds of coffee;

* 3,500 yards of gray fleece for the chair covers;

* About 7,000 orange-red Mercedes roses;

* 225 anthuriums;

* 120 gallons of custom-dyed petroleum oil and 56 pounds of safety glass used in creating tabletop flower arrangements.

It’s a daunting task for one night of revelry. The ball will be staffed by some 1,000 workers doing everything from pointing guests to the bathrooms to operating video projectors and patrolling for party crashers.

“It’s a little like making a movie,” says ball producer Cheryl Cecchetto, “but you only have one take.”

“If you have a team [of people who] trust each other,” adds ball chairman and academy Vice President Sid Ganis, “then that creates a forum for getting it right.”

The Production

Guests this year will wine, dine and dance in a contemporary-style setting designed to usher in the new millennium. Although academy officials won’t release figures, the cost of the event has been estimated to be as high as $800,000.

One day before setting up camp at the Shrine to oversee daily party preparations, Cecchetto sits in the Culver City office of her company, Sequoia Productions. Her staff bustles about answering phones, faxing, and huddling in meetings.

She’s responsible for hiring vendors, from beverage providers to caterers to security to providers of table, dish and kitchen rentals for the ball and pre-show reception. The logistics of the ball also include providing photo ID badges and parking for 1,000 people working different shifts.

Cecchetto also books the entertainment (chosen by ball Vice Chairman Alan Bergman); this year it includes Lon Norman and the Pat Longo Orchestra, and the Chuck Wansley Band.

Cecchetto, a veteran producer of 11 post-Oscar bashes, started thinking about the 2000 ball while the dinner plates were being cleared from tables at last year’s ball at the Music Center. The post-Oscar party this year would have to be different from the classically romantic theme of 1999, represent the new millennium and be within budget.

Her formal timeline began in October with a meeting with the Governors Ball committee, which favored decor that would read modern but not futuristic--no robots, no spaceship theme. She then met with event designer Douglas Johnson in November.

“Ultimately it’s his design,” said Cecchetto, “but I gave him some direction so he knew where I was coming from. We’d go back and forth on certain things, then he came up with his design. That’s when I jumped in and said, ‘OK, how is this really going to work?’ ”

The Design

Douglas Johnson took inspiration for this year’s Governors Ball from an unlikely place: a construction site in Spain.

“It was the way they draped the netting to keep the dust and everything from falling down on people,” he explains. “The way they draped it, it was scalloped around the building, and I thought it was such a cool idea.”

How that translates to the Shrine Auditorium is in rows of enormous angular arches suspended from the ceiling of the hall. Made of metal and wrapped in stretchy white fabric, they will change hues via colored lights.

Johnson’s decor also includes a scrim across the ceiling onto which will be projected scenes of clouds, water and fire. Square and boat-shaped tables feature table coverings of stretched orange netting and silver organza runners. Some of the 1,800 chairs will be covered in charcoal gray fleece. Place settings include white china, modern Calvin Klein stemware and sleek flatware.

The dance floor, smack in the middle of the room, will have lounge areas on either side, where guests can relax on leather-like and faux-fur-covered sofas. Musicians will perform from a balcony overhead. A huge acrylic “Oscar bar,” with an Oscar statue rendered in enormous mosaic blocks, will be at one end.

“I wanted to do something contemporary, linear but at the same time bringing in the elements, like fire and water,” said Johnson of Design by Douglas, who did last year’s Governors Ball and the wedding of “Frasier” star Peri Gilpin. Johnson is known for his range of styles, from opulent Tuscan tableaux to cutting-edge touches, such as naked men and women posing as lamps.

In his L.A. design studio and warehouse, he talks about his vision for this event: “I didn’t want it to be ‘futuristic’ and do a laser light show. I wanted to use something that is more on the edge, but not too edgy.

“This has to be something that’s going to rock their world. At the same time, they’re there to have dinner and be with the best of Hollywood. It’s not so much slamming drinks and partying, it’s basically a nice, elegant dinner.”

After hammering out the final details last fall, Johnson, whose blondish hair is tipped in peach, started work in December. He and his staff set about ordering fabric and sewing it into tablecloths and wall coverings. The arches were welded; round tables were given square tops; and the boat-shaped tables were constructed. All the custom work--the metal arches, tablecloths, scrims--are done in Johnson’s studio, and will be reused or recycled for other events.

The scrims went through a test run at the Shrine to make sure there were no surprises; Johnson decided they weren’t absorbing enough color, so new ones were sewn.

“It’s got to be perfect,” he said. “We just have to keep going, whatever it takes. That’s my love, my passion.”

The Flowers

Chris Thompson secures three green cymbidium orchids into the bottom of a round glass bowl, carefully sprinkles in a handful of broken safety glass, submerges the orchids in water and pours in a 2-inch layer of red oil, which floats on top.

“To me these are more art pieces than flower arrangements,” he says. “The whole thing is kind of a work of art.”

Thompson, head designer for Mark’s Garden, a premier florist in Sherman Oaks, has executed Johnson’s vision for the flowers that will decorate the tables. It’s the shop’s 10th year doing the ball, but the look this year is 180 degrees from its signature style of lush, romantic bouquets and centerpieces. Yet it’s an opportunity Thompson welcomes, even though he’s been met by quizzical looks when trying to explain the arrangements.

Tables will have one of three floral arrangements whose simple, chic look defies the complex trial-and-error process of putting them together. The first arrangement consists of three tall trumpet-shaped glass vases, each with a green anthurium sitting atop a curled metal faux stem submerged in water that is topped with oil. At the foot of the trumpet vases are two rounded mounds of red-orange roses.

The second arrangement is a tall rectangular glass vase with skeleton leaves, green calla lilies and a huge dark green monstera deliciosa leaf. Completing the arrangement is a rectangular metal platform holding four rose mounds.

The third arrangement has four orchid bowls resting on a rectangular metal platform.

It took six weeks of tweaking to come up with arrangements that fit Johnson’s specifications and were viable for 139 tables. Tulips were first tried instead of orchids, but once submerged in water the color from the petals leached out. The right kind of oil had to be found--Thompson ultimately used a petroleum-based oil made for home barometers that was custom dyed in shades of orange and red. When real anthurium stems wouldn’t curl, metal stems were painted green.

The roses (called Mercedes) will be flown in from Holland, monstera leaves from South America, orchids from Hawaii. Shipments began arriving Wednesday.

Some parts of the arrangements will be preassembled at the shop, including the rose clusters and the orchids. The rest will be done by about 14 people at the Shrine, starting about 2 a.m. Sunday.

“We can get much more done then because we’re not in anyone’s way,” Thompson explains. “The simple logistics of carrying those things, we have to be very careful, it takes a lot of time. We hope to be out of there by midmorning. The day of the awards, it gets a little bit crazy.”

The Food

The task of feeding 1,650 hungry people falls to Uber-chef Wolfgang Puck, who knows a thing or two about dishing up meals to celebrities.

This is Puck’s sixth year with the Governors Ball, establishing him as the unofficial official caterer.

Puck and his crew shift into Oscar mode around September when the staff is booked, including chefs flown in from various Puck restaurants. Some 500 people in all will be hired for the night, including chefs and sous-chefs, kitchen managers, captains and the wait staff (most are employees, but some are hired through an agency).

The menu begins to take shape in January, says Carl Schuster, president of Wolfgang Puck Catering. Puck examines previous ball menus to see what he’ll keep (pizzas) and what he’ll change (the entree).

This year’s menu includes an appetizer platter featuring marinated lobster salad, artichokes with white truffle vinaigrette and smoked salmon on Oscar-shaped matzos. The entree is a roasted chicken breast with wild mushroom risotto and black truffles, plus baby carrots and sweet peas, and the dessert platter includes rhubarb rugalach, gingerbread macaroons, hand-dipped espresso chocolates and a signature miniature chocolate Oscar sprinkled with gold dust. (Leftover food is donated to the charity pantry Angel Harvest.)

The kitchens also supply food for the pre-show reception and are responsible for feeding the backstage press, the police and security staff.

The crew, says Schuster, began to set up camp several days ago in the Shrine’s kitchen for prep work. A refrigerated tractor-trailer truck parked outside holds the food. The produce arrives today. Friday there’s more prep and then Saturday the major work begins. “Wolfgang doesn’t like doing anything too far ahead,” Schuster says.

Two field kitchens will be set up in separate locations near the Shrine, equipped with convection ovens, pizza ovens and stoves. Each is overseen by a kitchen manager.

Inside the party, the wait staff stands ready to serve. The floor is divided into four quadrants, each of which has a division manager. Within that division are four to five captains, each overseeing 16 to 20 waiters and waitresses handling eight tables. There are also waiters to pass hors d’oeuvres and take drink orders.

Problems the waiters can’t solve are handled by VIP “floaters” provided by the academy, who are there if someone brings unexpected guests (if they’re big stars they’ll likely be accommodated) or if a guest forgets his ticket. Each floater has a security guard alongside to take care of situations such as crashers or unauthorized photography.

The captains rehearse their parts on Saturday, and waiters are briefed on particulars such as the menu and locations of the kitchens and the bar.

The Governors Ball is unlike most other banquets where each course is served at the same time. With guests table-hopping, saying hello to friends or chatting with the press backstage, one person could be devouring dessert while another is still nibbling on appetizers. That’s why entrees are cooked to order so food isn’t left to stand around.

But celebrities do not live by chicken alone. The kitchen is equipped to handle special requests, which account for about 10% of all meals served: kosher and vegetarian plates, steamed fish, steak. “A lot of people there are our regular clients,” Schuster explains. “Wolfgang has been taking care of some of them for 20 years, and we’ve seen it all.”

The staff tries to accommodate requests for items the kitchen doesn’t have on hand. Says Schuster, “If it’s at all possible and we have enough time, we’ll send somebody out to get it, like to a neighboring restaurant. We’ll do whatever it takes to accommodate people, within reason.”

Then there are demands from the bigwigs backstage: “Someone likes popcorn without kernels, and we have to pick them out.”

Jeannine Stein can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.