CNN - Stars get ready to shine for Oscar night

Stars get ready to shine for Oscar night

March 25, 1995
Web posted at: 1:00 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Paul Vercammen

LOS ANGELES (CNN) --
Monday is the biggest night of the year in the movie business. At the Academy Awards ceremony, stars rise, necklines plunge and speeches seem to stretch forever.

It all looks so glamorous on Oscar night. But it's a different picture in the days before, with lots of practice and strenuous work.

The weekend before Oscar night, models Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell and actor Pierce Brosnan were doing a last-minute rehearsal of their roles for the 68th Annual Academy Awards ceremony.

Behind the scenes, people have been toiling every day for almost three months preparing for this year's show at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and setting up the after-show Governors Ball for more than 16,000 Hollywood stars and insiders.

Chef Wolfgang Puck is leading some 100 chefs in whipping up an Academy cuisine frenzy.

"We have a chocolate cake with a golden Oscar so they can eat our Oscar or take him home," explains Puck.

The space where stars will pass the pasta and trade tidbits is being adorned with enormous sculpted glass ornaments by Dale Chahooli and complementary paintings.

"We feel like the glass is like blooming flowers or gardens of glass, so this is to evoke the image of blooming flowers," says Carl Bendix, designer for the Governor's Ball, describing one of the paintings that will hang in the pavilion.

The precious Academy Award ballots have been sent off returned, counted and secured by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

"We put them in a safe which is behind three locked doors to get to and we do count them in a locked room that's very, very secure," explained Franklin R. Johnson, a Price Waterhouse partner.

Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg will host the show for the second time. Quincy Jones is producing.

But there's just one black nominee of 166 for this year's awards. And the Reverend Jesse Jackson reminded Los Angeles churchgoers Sunday he will protest the Oscars.

"I could get a ticket and a choice seat, but I identify with the afflictions of those who are locked out," Jackson told his congregation. (116K AIFF sound or 116K WAV sound)

But Jackson's criticisms have not turned away Oscars star gazers, many who stake out choice spots for glimpsing glitterati a day before the awards begin. Mild weather has made them happy campers.

"It hasn't been cold at all. It hasn't been hard on anybody," says one man who was camping out Sunday.

Still some fans prefer last year's site -- the Shrine Auditorium.

"There's no potties. There's no fast food places. It's very difficult for us," said another camper.

The world's news media found parking. There haven't been so many satellite trucks stationed here since O.J. Simpson was tried in a nearby courthouse.

Oscar, it seems, can still draw a crowd.

Stars get ready to shine for Oscar night

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