Low-Profile Luxury Is Theme as 1,500 Limos Head for the Oscars

Bivouacked in a Van Nuys jet hangar, the son of Menachem Begin’s personal security agent is carefully choreographing the arrival of 50 actors, producers and executives to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards.

Zeke Unger’s World Transportation Group will send ballistic-resistant limousines door-to-door to Oscars guests around the world. He’ll charter their jets, track their flights, assign bodyguards and scrutinize security conditions in countries that may have been snubbed for membership in the Evil Axis--but they’re still on his A-list.

Take the United States.

“I’m not that confident with security in this country. When the World Trade towers were hit, they used our own aircraft,” said Unger, who is on call to his clients 24 hours a day.

In a city where actors have been known to hang out too late, drive too fast, go home with people they barely know and run on heavy, heavy fuel--today could be the safest night of their lives.

Unger operates a worldwide, high-security version of one of the dozens of limousine services that will send as many as 1,500 luxury vehicles to the Kodak Theatre tonight.

The Oscars ceremony has created a limousine state of emergency, and so overtaxed Los Angeles’ capacity that reinforcements are coming in from as far away as San Diego, Santa Barbara and Las Vegas.

And if haute Los Angeles seems suspended in a permanent Gilded Age, flashy cars are out of favor. This year, less is more.

“The norm has changed. Most of your execs and movie star people would prefer a lower-profile vehicle like a sedan or a town car,” said Norm Kinard, director of special events at Valet Parking Service, the limousine coordinator for the Oscars. “That’s a new phenomenon.”

“With everything that’s happened,” Kinard said--everything being the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--the car of choice is “lower-profile and a lot more inconspicuous.”

Sixty percent of limousines nationwide are white, but at the Oscars, most movie executives want their clients to be seen stepping out of black cars. Lower-ranking invitees, Kinard said, tend to want the splashiest limousines they can get. There’s a broad range: Limousine is a loose term for anything from a luxury sedan to a sport utility vehicle or a 12-passenger stretch vehicle.

At the high end are the limousines made by American Custom Coachworks of Beverly Hills, whose limos with a 120-inch stretch will be among the Oscars coaches.

The seat section becomes a bed, and “if the stars want to relax, take it easy, they can lie down,” said Oscar Meyer, the company’s vice president.

The cars have ice and champagne compartments, bars, CD and DVD players, “even mirrored ceilings with over 200 star lights that change to six different colors,” Meyer said.

Those can cost up to $85,000. There are even 130-inch-stretch limos with things like hot tubs, aquariums, fog machines and karaoke. But they won’t be at the Oscars.

“Your average Joe,” limousine coordinator Kinard said, “may show up in a six- or 12-passenger limousine, a stretch vehicle with all of the amenities, television and wet bar.”

And they’ll be in good company. Limousines, once associated with funerals, are so wedded to Hollywood and the Oscars that Lincoln took out a 20-page spread in Vanity Fair to trumpet itself as the “Official Luxury Vehicle of Campaign Hollywood.”

Celebrities--Martin Sheen and Allison Janney of “The West Wing” and rocker Richie Sambora--posed with Lincolns for splashy photographs.

Uber agent Pat Kingsley said her clients will ride in Cadillacs: General Motors has a corporate relationship with the parent company of Kingsley’s agency.

Because cars, like stars, are commodities.

The Cadillac A-list includes Robert Altman, Helen Mirren, Uma Thurman, Helen Hunt and Kirsten Dunst, Kingsley said. Gwyneth Paltrow and Russell Crowe will ride in Cadillac Escalades, an SUV, rather than traditional limousines.

“It’s a courtesy thing of making these limos available, because we always run short this time of year anyway,” Kingsley said. “Some people, like me, get nauseous in limousines. They sway a bit.”

Brian Kish was the limousine driver for an Oscar nominee, David Franzoni, the lead screenwriter of “Gladiator,” at last year’s Academy Awards.

On the way to the Shrine Auditorium, Franzoni told Kish about going on location, from Morocco to Italy.

“He was a gentleman, from start to finish,” Kish said. “You’d never know he was one of these Hollywood guys.”

Franzoni and his wife walked to the Governor’s Ball. When Kish picked him up, Franzoni was psyched, even though he had not won the screenwriting Oscar; “Gladiator” had won Best Picture.

They hit the party trail. There was the Vanity Fair bash at Morton’s. The rest was a blur.

“The last one, it was a zoo when he came out,” Kish said. “He got in the car and he said, ‘I’m too old for these parties. I’m ready to go home.’”

Home turned out to be a long drive to deep Malibu. Franzoni tipped him $60.

“He kept asking me if I was all right,” Kish said. “I’ve had a couple of idiots. So it was a breath of fresh air.”

A lot of limo companies will talk, sotto voce, about which movie stars they drive around, about how they have sex and do drugs in the back seat.

Not Zeke Unger. He’s in the Rolodex of prominent Hollywood executives--but he won’t tell you the names of any of those he is sending to the Academy Awards.

As far as he’s concerned, his drive-and-tell competitors are “just prostitutes. To make a dollar, they’re willing to prostitute their clients’ security.”

Unger’s is among the handful of companies that have gotten permission to park their limousines away from the herd to be corralled at the Hollywood Bowl.

Keith Kaplan, of Ace Limousine Service in Santa Monica, said he had to submit his drivers’ names to the FBI for approval. He was told the drivers can expect the cars to be searched with bomb-sniffing dogs.

“I’ve been doing this for 18 years, and this is the first time that security has been so tight,” Kaplan said.

The limousine tracking system at the Oscars is about as democratic as Hollywood gets.

Limousines arriving at the Kodak Theatre will be met on the street by greeters, who will present the celebrity with a ticket. The drivers will get a package with a meal ticket and head off to the Hollywood Bowl.

When celebrities emerge from the awards, they will present their tickets at the callback table. Greeters will call the Hollywood Bowl, the ticket number is announced over the public address system, and the driver hustles off to the Kodak Theatre.

A lot can happen in the back seat of a limousine. So, for chauffeurs a typical protocol is: Ignore it. Even if they end up cleaning the cars with plastic gloves.

Limousine drivers have limits. They’re sometimes asked to perform services they’re not supposed to, such as procuring women. One driver said he almost stopped the car to kick out an obnoxious DreamWorks executive on his way to the Grammys last year.

All this for between $11 and $14 an hour. Plus gratuities.

“Generally, it’s a good tip that night, because it’s a very prestigious night, an exciting night,” said Kaplan of Ace Limousine. “The people in the car know that they are very obligated to tip this evening. It’s common to get a $100 tip.”

But, as Richard Scott, senior manager of Westside Limousine Service, notes, “the winners tip better than the losers.”

That jibes with the experience of limousine driver Kish, who is a retired officer of the California Highway Patrol.

Last year, he drove to the Screen Actors Guild awards with one of the main actors in a nominated film.

The first setback was some glitter left in the car by a woman. It got all over the actor. And he got all upset. “It was ridiculous,” Kish said. “But the lint brush seemed to pacify him.”

The actor was in the running for an outstanding cast award with others in his film. But the cast of another movie won. So this star left early and went straight home, Kish said. “He was all bummed. He got on the phone with his wife and was all boo-hooing about losing,” Kish said. “I said, ‘Hey, there’ll be other times. That’s life.’

“He didn’t tip me a dime,” Kish said. Two weeks later, Kish said, the actor was on a magazine cover.

When Kish was invited to drive for the Oscars this year, he declined.

“I don’t think they really get the big picture,” Kish concluded. “There are so many better things they could be doing with their 15 minutes of fame.”

*

Times staff writer Cara Mia DiMassa contributed to this report.