Almost Ready for Its Close-Up

It’s close-toed shoes and hard hats instead of high heels and tiaras at the site of the 2002 Oscars, but both the motion picture academy and the developers, TrizecHahn, insist it will be open by November.

The 3,300-seat Kodak Theater, on the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, will finally give the Oscars a permanent home after 73 years. Designed with the ceremony in mind, the site will include a dramatic entrance for equally dramatic arrivals, cable tunnels to hide TV camera wires, seating that gives the 3,300 VIPs uninterrupted sight lines, and a red terrazzo floor underneath the red carpet so that tourists can hold reenactments year-round. Atop it all will be a Governors Ballroom evoking Hollywood’s golden years, an era that the theater, as part of a $650-million tourist development, hopes not merely to recall but also to reinstate.

Busy with the Oscars’ final scheduled ceremony at the Shrine, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Robert Rehme says his frequent visits to the site and plans for an inaugural event have been put on hold. Here are some questions and answers on the new theater as it stands--with the help of scaffolding--so far.

Question: What is the history of that location?

Answer: It was once the district’s first tourist stop, the Hollywood Hotel. Built in 1903, the hotel was where Rudolph Valentino spent his honeymoon and Louella Parsons broadcast her infamous gossip. In 1956, it was demolished to make way for a savings and loan.

Across the street--still--is the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Academy Awards were presented in 1929 in front of an audience of 250.

Most recently, the corner was occupied by a parking lot, a 1970s add-on to the Mann Chinese, and part of a street, according to Beth Harris, director of marketing for Hollywood and Highland, the name of the TrizecHahn project.

Q: What were some of the Academy’s requirements and what were the architects’ solutions?

A: “It’s important how it will look on camera, both on stage and back toward the audience,” says David Rockwell, of New York-based Rockwell Group. “It has to look iconic.”

Drawing from his experience renovating the Radio City Music Hall, “where the room is also part of the show,” Rockwell used rich fabrics of deep blues and wine and a glass material on the front of the balconies that he says will “glow.”

It is also vital for everyone in the audience to feel connected to the stage, Rockwell says.

“We took cues from European opera houses, where you can see other theatergoers and the balconies are quite vertical and close to the stage.”

Q: What else makes this theater “Oscar-ready”?

A: Aside from the cable tunnels, seating configuration gives nominees quick access to the stage, the ceiling allows for flexible lighting and camera positions, and a built-in “media cockpit” can be raised or lowered depending on the amount of equipment being used.

There are also 28 opera boxes--very “coveted locations,” says Harris--where the V-VIPs will enjoy views of the stage and the nominees below.

Q: Are the armrests reinforced in case Roberto Benigni wins again?

A: That wasn’t one of the requirements, but they are made of a cherry wood that should be perfectly stable.

Winners who choose more traditional routes to and from the stage will proceed through a hallway called the Winners Walk, a direct path from the podium to the press room.

Q: I’m a nominee. Describe my walk into the theater.

A: Dropped off by your limo on Hollywood Boulevard, you will step onto the red carpet with bleachers of fans on your left and rows of journalists on your right. Ahead of you will be a limestone portal framed by a 40-foot glass drape. From there you will walk into a hallway lined with glass panels etched with the titles of best pictures. At the end of the hallway is the lobby, dominated by a grand spiral staircase and walls covered in tiny glass beads that will create a continuously shimmering surface. There will be a VIP lounge off this room.

Q: When was the last time the Oscars were in Hollywood?

A: In 1960, when they were held at the Pantages and “Ben-Hur” was the winner.

Q: Did the Academy consider other locations?

A: “What interested us was a theater being built where you could do live television and which we could be involved in designing. What also interested us, of course, was being back in the middle of Hollywood, where there is a connection to what the Academy’s mission is,” Rehme says.

Q: Will the real estate in that section of the Walk of Fame go up after years of minimal foot traffic?

A: The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce says they never rearrange stars, which means that Buster Crabbe and Joel McCrea will come back into our vocabulary by being in front of the theater. But the chamber hopes to fill any blank stars in the area with Oscar winners and nominees.

Q: Where will the Governors Ball be held?

A: The ball will receive a permanent home on top of the entranceway, a 25,090-square-foot ballroom with views of the boulevard and the hills. The room will evoke the Art Deco look of Bullocks Wilshire.

“I wanted to go back to a period of architecture in the late ‘20s when the last great stand-alone ballrooms were designed. So I thought of the ocean liners and I thought of the perfume salon in Bullocks Wilshire,” which opened in 1929, the year the Oscars were born, says architect Dianna Wong.

Like the theater, the ballroom is being designed with its Oscar-night function in mind.

“Usually, event planners come in and tent the whole room or tear it apart and put holes in the ceiling. With this project, I had the event planners’ consultants write the program. And to the extent the budget allowed it, we built the flexibility into the architecture itself,” Wong says.

Q: What will be at the Kodak Theater when the Oscars are not?

A: Aside from the month the Academy will have the space, there will be 135 nights of concerts and live theater, says Michael Roth, director of communications for Anschutz Entertainment Group, which also books Staples Center and Great Western Forum.

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