Hollywood, Feb. 20, 2001 — Now that the Oscar nominations have been announced, the producers of the Academy Awards show are busy preparing for the entertainment show of the year on March 25. Gil Cates, this year’s producer, took time out to talk with Hollywood.com’s Sandy Kenyon today about the show, Steve Martin and interpretive dance sequences.
Where are you at this stage, with the show about a month away? What does your day look like these days?
Essentially, we learned the nominees, so that gave us some of the entertainment sections on the show. We know, for example, who is going to sing. We know that Randy Newman is going to be here. We know that Bob Dylan is going to be here at this point. Sting is going to be here. Bjork. So that part is good. We have a sense for some of the special moments, which are being prepared. The film clips, the film assemblages, have just begun, so I won’t see any of them for at least another week or 10 days. And this is a good week. It’s an interesting week. It’s a week where stuff happens and it starts to grow.
Tell me about Bob Dylan. Did you actually talk to him personally? How did that come about, getting Bob Dylan to do the Oscar show? And what does that mean in the scheme of things?
I should say firstly that he has not quite agreed to do the Oscar show yet, because he has a lot of schedule complexities. And I have not spoken to him, but I really look forward to that. I am a big Bob Dylan fan and I think it will be a highlight of the show, if it indeed does work out. And I am confident that it will.
Let’s talk about Steve Martin. What does he bring to this Oscar table?
Steve is his own man. He has his own unique view of the world. He is a very literate, thoughtful and intelligent person. Obviously, I know that your audience knows that he is a writer. He just recently published a book called “Shopgirl.” He is a contributing editor or contributed to New York Magazine among others. And he has wonderful, light and amusing point of view about the Oscars. I think the audience will find it’s almost like a sorbet. And I just think it’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful time. I really look forward to it. He’s fun to work with I’ll tell you that.
What convinced you, maybe an anecdote or two, that he was the right guy for the job, when you started working with him?
You know, being the host of the Oscar show is a bizarre job when you think about it. Whoever the host is, firstly we want him to be a star. Secondly, we want someone who can work a room, who can really control the live event portion of it, who is quick on their feet. And there are not too many of those people around. It’s easy to sit around and think that there are dozens of them. There aren’t. There are only a handful. And Steve is just amazing. He’s a big movie star. He has been a presenter on the Oscar show many times, on three of the shows that I have done. I have always been a big admirer of his. He worked with my brother on a lot of specials, comedies, stuff like that. And I am just delighted that he is doing it. And I think he is excited about it, so that between his enthusiasm and ….
I’ll give you a great Steve Martin piece that I just found extraordinary. I had a meeting with him last week, with Steve, and with two of the writers on the show. And Steve came in with his computer, and he just opened up the computer, sat at the desk, and started typing. I never met a star who actually typed his own material. And as a matter of fact, at one point I went to him and I said, “Do you want an AC line to plug your computer in?” He said, “No I’m fine.” He is totally portable. He came, computer was powered up, sat down. That’s the kind of guy he is. So unique and I really look forward to his doing the show.
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An example of his wry sense of humor?
Well, I think not taking the AC power and keeping his own battery is probably pretty exemplary of his sense of humor. The other thing that was great about him is that I had asked him to do the show once before, and he couldn’t because he was doing a film. And this time I spoke with him, he thought about it. And the next day I spoke to him again (actually, I talked to his agent, Ed Limato, first and he spoke to Steve.) Steve thought about it over night and said, “OK, let’s have lunch.” We had lunch, and he agreed to do it. So, it wasn’t complicated at all. I simply asked him on a Tuesday and he said yes on a Wednesday.
What’s the biggest difference between being at the Oscars and watching it on television?
Well, the first time I took a year off from doing the Oscars, I watched on TV. And I think really my job as the producer of the show is to make sure that that difference is slim. I try to think of that fact all the time, that I’d like the people who are watching it on TV to really feel as if they are there. And to put as little possible between them and the show, so that the emphasis really is to produce the show in a way so that one could assume that they were there.
It’s also to tell a story.
Yes, obviously each Oscars is different, each year is different, but essentially you’re quite right, Sandy, it’s to tell the story of the evening and to tell the individual stories of the nominees and the people that take home the Oscar. I know the last show I did was two years ago, when Elia Kazan was presented an honorary Oscar, and there was some controversy surrounding that. We had decided beforehand that whatever the reaction was to his getting the honorary Oscar, we would make sure that everyone at home knew what was going on in the theater. So, Lou Horvitz, who is a wonderful director, and really does tell a story, showed exactly what was going on in the hall. And I think honestly, the people at home got the same flavor of the reaction as the people in the theater did. And I think that’s something that we really look forward to. We don’t do the show for the studio audience, I mean for the theater audience. And we don’t do the show for the people at home. We do the show for both.
Interesting …. Does the absence of controversy hurt you? I mean last year there was a lot of material to work with, in terms of stolen Oscars, in terms of a lot of controversy.
I think that people watch the show essentially to find out who is going to get the Academy Award. I mean that’s it. Who’s going to take home the Oscar for Best Picture or Best Actress? Is it going to be Julia Roberts this year? Is it gonna be …. I don’t want to pick on individuals. Actually, I shouldn’t mention any names. But, people watch the show for the horse race. And to the degree that it’s a good horse race, you know you’re gonna get a larger audience. The Oscar audience is humongous anyway. I think it’s the largest entertainment audience in the world. I don’t know how it fares against the Superbowl or a sports event or the Olympics. But, as far as an entertainment show, it is the biggest entertainment show in the world. And there is good controversy and bad controversy. I guess the P.T. Barnum mentality is that any controversy is good. Just spell the name right, Oscar, and people will watch. But, I like the controversy of a good horse race. That’s what is most satisfying to me and, I think, to the audience.
You’ve done this nine times before. After the show, what is the first thing you think about, when you wake up the morning after?
It’s interesting, the folks that have been doing this show with me for all these years, we all wake up the morning after a little down, because obviously of the high from the night before. We meet at a deli here in LA and we have brunch. So, we have the associate producer, Mike Seligman, the director, Lou Horvitz, Dannette Hurben, who books the show, we all kind of meet and think about it. It is an exhilarating experience. The thing that is so unique about the Oscars … is that it genuinely is live. There is no tape delay on it. There is no opportunity, as in a film, to do it again. And there is no opportunity, as in the theater, to know that you are going to do it tomorrow, as well. It all comes together at 8:30 Pacific Standard Time and, ready or not, here we go. It’s some ride for that three and a half to four hours.
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Did you miss it when you didn’t do it last year?
Last year I went to the show. And it was an interesting experience. I sat there, and my son came with me. I didn’t obviously miss it when I was watching the show, but there were times when I really felt like getting up and doing something. That was kind of difficult. It is a special experience. I thought when I did it the first year, that I was only going to do it one year. Each year I think to myself it’s the last. Somehow I have been on a summer film schedule, with the exception of last year, where I did a film, James Agee’s “Death in the Family” for PBS, and we shot that in the spring. So again, it opened up the schedule. I love doing it.
So, here’s the question a lot of people want to know. Are you going to bring back the interpretative dance sequence?
It’s so interesting. Well, actually they did have a dance sequence last year. They had Robin Williams in that “Great Canada” number. It is so interesting to me, the talk among the press and some of the folks about dance, because the dance sequences, firstly, when they’re in the show are always the biggest successes in Europe, Asia and Latin America. It’s so amazing as I travel around the world. And we make a European version and they love those dance sequences. The second thing is, even your term, San, is kind of funny. Called an interpretative dance it sounds like a medicine, you know? Dance is just fun. It’s great to see beautiful women and good looking guys dance and move around. I also always feel that for so many people who watch the show who don’t have an opportunity in their regular lives to see dance, that it’s a good way to introduce them to a bit of dance and a bit of original singing. So, I think of it as a positive.
I’ll tell you one good thing about the show; this I learned, and I think you’ll agree with me. No matter what you do on the Oscar show, Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., told me this — he had done two shows and this was his advice. He said no matter what you do on the Oscar show there is always going to be a percentage of people who won’t like it. So, you know that. Unlike a movie, where you have the hope that everyone will like your movie, or with a play, that everyone will like your play, you know that 10 percent of the people are going to gripe about it. So, if you don’t do dance there will be people who say you were wrong and you should have. If you do dance, there will be people who say you were wrong and you should not have. So, at the end of the day, what I tell everybody who works with me on the show is, let’s do a show that we can be proud of because we are never going to make everybody happy. So, let’s at least start making us happy, and of course the network and the Academy.
Now, let me tell you how I sometimes approach stories that I am doing. I’ll go for the biggest bang first. Cary Grant had not talked in ten years to the press, and I went up to him and it was a good night and I got him to talk to me. I have used the same system many many times where you start with the big and you whittle it down and hope to surprise people so much of the time, a percentage of the time. Is that how you do the surprises at the Oscar’s? Do you start with the biggest reach? How do you go about surprising us?
I think there are two things to bear in mind. One is that I am mindful of the fact that the show is long. It’s three-and-a-half-hours long if we are lucky. And you have to keep people’s interest for three-and-a-half-hours. As I said earlier, the interest you can most count on is the horse race. People do want to see who some of these awards go to. And there are some awards that they are more interested in than others. So, we try to routine the show so that we present interesting awards throughout the show. I am not talking about the importance of the awards, and I am not saying one award is more important than another. But, what I am saying is that some awards elicit more interest than others. Then we try to spike that with entertainment segments, so that you never go more than seven or eight minutes without something terrific happening.
It’s a little bit like when I went to college and you studied writing novels. There were two concepts. One was the order of support the other was the order of climax. The order of climax being obviously where everything is building towards a big climax. The other, the order of support, is the order of a long suspension bridge. The order of climax in the Oscars show is Best Picture; that’s in the end. Coupled with Best Picture are obviously some other seminal awards: director and actors, etc. And then you have the order of support where throughout the evening you have to have stuff so that people won’t go to the refrigerator and start playing cards.
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Are you going to do a film, ‘A la Billy’s film last year?
What a terrible question to ask me. What a terrible … Sandy Kenyon you should be ashamed of yourself. One of the things you know I don’t want to talk about what’s going to be on the show, because otherwise it won’t be a surprise. You’ll have to wait, and you’ll have to see.
At least I didn’t ask you is there going to be … a surprise? I have heard people ask what the surprise is going to be. I’m older than that.
This year there’s not going to be any ‘A la Billy; it’s all going to be ‘a la Steve. So, you will have to tune in for the ‘A la Steve portions.
Finally, what do you have in you that makes you a good person to handle stars? Now, I was with you in the trailer one year, the day before the Oscars. And one of our biggest motion picture stars called panic stricken about doing the show. And in front of my very eyes, you calmed her down. She did the show and she did just fine. What is in you that allows you to assuage the fears of these nervous Nellies?
Oh gosh, that’s the kind of question that however you answer you come off a little bit like a horse’s you-know-what. But, essentially, I really like show business and I really like people and I really like stars who basically are people. At the end of the day, it’s only a show. I don’t mean that in any negative sense, but it’s a show. If you don’t do well at it, yes, there are repercussions, but the repercussions are not life threatening. So, I think that most stars who get nervous, get nervous because this is an unusual venue for them. I mean a movie star can do take after take and they have make-up and hair around them, etc. A theater star or actor knows that there is always the next day and there’s always the next day. Here, as we discussed earlier, it’s just this one moment in front of a lot of people, hundreds of millions of people. More significantly, it’s in front of not only a lot of people, but it’s everybody that you know. It’s not only your family and your agents and your fans, but it’s also the person who pumps gas at the gas station. So it’s not like a bad film where if it’s truly bad nobody sees it. Everybody sees it. People who come on the show, stars who come on the show, have an awareness of that. They know that everyone is going to see it. They know that there is no second take. They also know that this is not their expertise. This is not what they are trained for. So, it’s understandable that they would be nervous about it. And the point is to tell them that, firstly, they are going to rehearse it. They are not doing it cold. They come down on the Friday or Saturday before the show. They know what the teleprompter looks like. One of the things that I insist on — which a lot of shows don’t, and it’s interesting to me that they don’t — we insist on having whoever is going to present on the show come down to the theater and actually go through their presentation before the show. And I think that solves 90 percent of the problem. Because once you come down to the show and you look at that teleprompter and you do it once, you’re at ease. Can you imagine how nervous you would be if you didn’t?
What was the most nerve-racking episode that you ever had producing the show?
You know, it’s interesting, there are the surprises that we plan and the surprises that happen to the show. One of the things that was really troubling to us, was the very first show we did. The Berlin Wall had come down, it was 1990, 1991, for the 1990 show. We had a party throughout the world, so we were live from the opera house in Buenos Aires, Japan and London. We had Jack Lemmon in Moscow with Natalia Nagota, a wonderful beautiful Russian actress. And it was live. And as he started to speak live there was tremendous feedback. You couldn’t really hear him. There was this high, piercing sound. And it was just one of those terrible circumstances because it was unacceptable sound. There was no way to really contact Jack Lemmon. What do you do? Come back to America, not give the award? Who’s going to give the award? We don’t even have the envelopes here. The envelopes are all in Moscow. Fortunately, we were able to telephone directly on a landline and get the production assistant there who spoke English to do it. And the whole enterprise, the whole operation took about 40 seconds. In the truck at the time it seemed to be an hour. It seemed like the worst disaster. [PAGEBREAK]
But then again, when I listened to it again, yes you could still hear him. It’s funny about the audience. I’m convinced, within reason, that the audience loves that. Because so much of the stuff we see today is canned and prepared and dubbed over and smoothed over. There’s something wonderful about seeing something live, seeing a live problem, and knowing that everyone’s tense. The whole audience realizes what mayhem must be going on in the truck, and then somehow it’s resolved and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief. So, in retrospect, I think it was a wonderful moment, but during it was kind of awful.
Gil, thanks. Any final thoughts on how the show is coming together?
I just think it’s going to be an interesting year this year. And I think the nominations are fascinating. I just hope that you watch it, Sandy, and I hope you have a terrific time. Because I know one thing — I will.
