Power lunch? Power tools
The host gets the photo shoot, the nominees get the luncheon, and the winners, of course, get the Oscars. But the people who make the Academy Awards telecast possible get the cool Oscar gear -- sweatshirts and hats emblazoned with the show’s number and famous logo. That and all the Pop-Tarts, Skittles and assorted “truck food” they can eat.
The Academy Awards show is consistently the largest entertainment-driven live broadcast in the world, and it takes roughly 1,000 people to make it happen. At this year’s production meeting, there were more than 200 in the room, representing the disparate areas of expertise the show requires, from the medical staff to the stage manager, from the set designer to the telephone technician, the limousine coordinator to the director. Some have 30-plus years of experience working the show; for others, this is their first time. Regardless, Oscar will own them all for the next two weeks.
Last year, the set builders’ days were haunted by metal pipe -- 8,000 feet. And gold leaf -- 120,000 sheets. Applied by hand. This year, it’s all neon all the time.
For the three dozen or so people building the sets this year, “Oscar” means yards and yards of neon, towering walls as softly curved as any starlet and highly sculpted accents, all done up in silver and black.
“I went into the first meeting thinking, ‘Well, it can’t be as bad as last year,’ ” said Dino DeCristo. “I mean the gold leaf alone took days and days. But then, my God, all that sculpting and neon. Basically,” he added, “we look at it every year and say, ‘We’ll never be able to do it.’ ” And then they do.
DeCristo is foreman at Scenic Express, where much of the initial hands-on work for the show is being done. The scenery and prop construction company is situated off San Fernando Boulevard in Glendale, just behind Payless Produce and the Carniceria Latina.
And while other people worry about ratings and star power, the folks here stand knee deep in blueprints and sawdust.
“You see that?” DeCristo asked, pointing to a nondescript ring of plywood. “That was how it started. That was the first thing we built, to test if it would hold those.” He pointed to a stack of rounded plastic boxes that would eventually create two internally lighted proscenium towers. “Doesn’t look like much, but you have to start with something.”
It will take three construction shops and more than 40 members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union Local 33, not to mention the help of an art director, assistant art directors and various supervisors, more than two months to turn production designer Roy Christopher’s Art Deco and Baroque homage to the golden age of movies into reality for the 78th Academy Awards.
Some, including head scenic artist Kevin Ward, will follow the pieces from blueprint status to installation, pacing the stage at the Kodak Theatre hours before the show begins, checking for seams and shiny spots, anything that might ding the image of sleek perfection.
“Those are the tensest hours,” Ward said, “walking around, trying to figure out if something is going to go wrong, look wrong.” And sometimes it does.
In 1990, Steve Martin had to ad lib a response when an electrician, attempting to fix an overhead sphere that wasn’t turning, dropped his cellphone, nearly braining the comedian. (That portion of the set was not a Scenic Express creation.) But for the most part, any glitches or potential glitches, or possible potential glitches, have been worked out before the opening music cues.
“By the time things leave here,” DeCristo said, “everything fits and works and does what Roy wants it to do.” A few days after nominations were announced, Scenic Express was still fairly quiet. The break bell buzzed, and workers in paint-splattered, dust-rimed pants gathered in clusters by the open back door.
Portions of light boxes were scattered about like half-finished shop projects, unpainted curved walls formed a maze in one part of the shop, and long pieces of wood that would frame the stage lay across another, end to end, their silver paint drying.
“In a week or so it will get much louder, much crazier,” DeCristo said.
DeCristo is second-generation set construction -- his father still works over at CBS -- and he remembers when the Oscar set would be done by one company alone. But the increasingly high-tech sets now make that impossible. This year Scenic Express is doing 70% of the work; ABC and NBC are picking up the rest, with a separate company producing the actual Oscar statues that will be seen on stage. (ABC will televise the March 5 ceremony beginning at 5 p.m.)
For many involved in the set-construction business, the growing number of awards shows have become their bread and butter, replacing the half-hour television shows that once ruled the airwaves. Ward and DeCristo have worked at Scenic Express for almost 20 years; between them they’ve done dozens of Oscars, hundreds of awards shows. As they stood discussing the Academy Awards, flats of lights were being loaded up for the Grammys.
“It’s a big liability issue, considering the stuff we hang over famous people’s heads,” said Ward, with a laugh. “You have to be pretty specialized in what you do.”
Nearly everyone who works on the Oscars is a specialist in one area or another. Christopher has done 16 previous sets and won Emmys for six of them. Art director Greg Richman has worked with him often over the years. This is Richman’s eighth Academy Awards; his involvement began early in November when Christopher gave him sketches to make into board models.
The original model, Richman said, though inspired in part by the S. Charles Lee theater of Christopher’s youth, was fairly straightforward. “But when I said that to Roy, he said, ‘That’s a knife in my heart,’ and so we began to embellish it.” They had a model finished enough to be approved by Oscar producer Gil Cates in late November. Bids came in right after New Year’s, and building began a week or so later. Everyone signs a confidentiality agreement -- the set will be unveiled Tuesday. And all those extra Oscar images created to dress the set for the show?
“No one can take an Oscar,” Richman said, no matter what it’s made of. “The academy is very protective. Last year, we had a lot of Oscars made of foam. No one could take one as a souvenir; we had to destroy them.” Among the three men there is the easy banter that comes from facing down the challenge of the show year after year. Though Richman works out of the show’s Century City production office -- and wears a jacket and dress shirt -- he comes to Scenic at least every other day to answer questions and keep an eye on the progress. DeCristo is as watchful and laconic as a foreman from Central Casting, the sort of man used to viewing any situation with an eye to making it work or making it work better, while Ward, in his paint-spattered pants, often goes for the joke. Except when he’s explaining the work. Then he is very focused.
Ward is in charge of the finishing work -- the paint and screens and film that eventually cover most portions of the set. He got his start in the early ‘80s painting sets at ABC, back when sets were still painted.
“Now a lot of it is digital,” he said. “So a lot of those people are just not working.” He came to Scenic 20 years ago and now works on about 30 awards shows a year, as well as corporate events. The company used to build for a number of sitcoms but not so much any more.
“There aren’t any sitcoms,” he said. “Now it’s all reality TV. That part of the business is just going away.” For Ward and DeCristo and the people who work for them, pre-Oscar chatter is less about handicapping the nominees and more about whether the silver film they ordered from Japan is going to arrive intact and in time.
“Because they never want things you can actually get here,” Ward said, shooting a grin at Richman.
“No,” Richman said, “the more exotic the better. It isn’t fun unless it’s tense.” Sometimes, the hard-to-find items with their last-minute deadlines backfire. Last year, the musical number from “Phantom of the Opera” was to include a special two-way mirror -- which didn’t arrive until the day before the show. When they opened the box, it was completely wrong. For one thing, it wasn’t two-way.
As the workers went on their 11 a.m. lunch break, the smell of roast chicken filled the air and the men reminisced about the 2002 show when Cirque du Soleil planned an act that everyone but those involved in Cirque du Soleil knew would burn the floor. “They said, ‘No, it won’t’,” Richman said. “But then we tested it and sure enough -- big, burned circle in the floor. So we had to fix that.”
For all the nuts and bolts involved, the men admit there is something undeniably glamorous about working on the show.
“We do get the sweatshirts,” Ward said, “and the hats. But it’s cool because everyone watches the show. I even watch it.” “I look to see what isn’t there,” said DeCristo, laughing. “All the details and sculpting we’ve sweated over, and then of course it doesn’t even get on camera.”
By the time the Oscars air, the Scenic Express workers will be well into their next project, and the minute the show wraps up, even Richman is done. A whole other crew of stagehands tears the set down.
“First time I did this show, it was so beautiful and glamorous, and the next day it was on the street and in the dumpster,” Richman said.
“Each show is unique, so when it’s over, the set really is just dead.”
