No red carpet but Oscars show to go ahead

LOS ANGELES - Academy Awards organizers said today that they expect the Oscars show to go on as planned this coming Monday (NZ time) - despite a looming war with Iraq - but with a scaled-back version of its glitzy red carpet festivities at the request of the stars.

"If you are a betting man, the show will go on, really and truly," Gil Cates, the show's producer, told a press conference one day after President Bush gave Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave his country or face war.

"We all want to do the show," he said. "The public wants it, the stars want it. But we're all good Americans, so we'll try to (make it) a show that we can be proud of."

Cates said the decision to "truncate" the red carpet entrance was made to spare celebrities who might feel uncomfortable discussing films and fashion while American soldiers were putting their lives on the line.

But Cates and Frank Pierson, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, conceded that the outbreak of war in the coming days could scupper Hollywood's biggest night entirely - or at least the televised version.

Pierson said ABC, the US network scheduled to carry the show, has informed them that it would cover war news "as it happens" - which apparently means that it could cut away from the Oscars as events dictate.

"We are not going to address that question now," Pierson said of the possibility that the Academy Awards could be canceled or postponed. "We are all at the mercy of the winds of war; we just don't know. We don't have enough information."

Pierson and Cates said Oscar officials intended to meet with reporters again on Friday and might have made a decision by then, but said that in any case the ceremony would likely be more somber than usual.

Earlier, Cates said that Oscar officials were "glued to the set" for President Bush's nationwide television address yesterday that gave the 48-hour ultimatum.

The Oscar ceremony has never been canceled in its 75 year history but has three times been postponed - by the 1938 Los Angeles floods, the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, and the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan.

Postponement, even for a few days, would mean a logistics nightmare. Some 3,500 VIP guests have cleared their schedules months in advance to attend. Travel arrangements, security plans for the show and television schedules would all have to be cast aside.

The live Oscar telecast by ABC is one of the biggest advertising nights on US television, drawing an audience last year of around 42 million people.

Cates has said that if the country is at war on Sunday, the tone of the show would "reflect the tone of the times."

ABC, which is owned by Walt Disney Co., declined to discuss its talks with the Academy, saying only, "If there are world events that warrant coverage on the night of the Academy Awards, ABC News will bring them to the American audience with the full support of the Academy."

Party planners are also caught in limbo. A spokeswoman for Vanity Fair magazine, which traditionally hosts one of the biggest for about 1,000 A-list guests on Oscar night, said, "We are taking it one day at a time. It will be clearer as the week goes on."

It was unclear whether Hollywood stars - many of whom have campaigned fervently against any war - still planned to attend Sunday's ceremony if military action was underway.

Daniel Day-Lewis - considered a front-runner for the best actor Oscar for his role in "Gangs of New York" - told reporters last week it would "seem obscene if we're seen bouncing up the red carpet grinning when people are dying. It's going to be very difficult to find a way to do this."

Nicole Kidman - a hot favorite for the best actress Oscar for her role in "The Hours" - said last week she was of two minds about attending in the event of war.

"There are two arguments ... where they say you need to continue on with things and not be stopped; and then there's the other thing where you just say, of course, it would feel very strange to show up," Kidman told reporters.

Other stars may be dissuaded by security fears from flying to Los Angeles to attend, present, or perform on the night, although there have been no reported cancellations so far.

Tight security is planned at the Kodak Theater in busy, downtown Hollywood. Several streets have already been closed off; the stars and their guests will have to go through metal detectors before entering the venue; vehicles will be checked for bombs; and authorities have requested that airspace over Hollywood be closed for the afternoon.

"We will have a larger presence outside the venue than last year," said a Los Angeles police spokesman, who declined to give numbers but said officers would be boosted by FBI officials and private security officers.

- REUTERS