Oscar relocating
AMPAS theater may be ready in 2001
After a flurry of lengthy meetings over the past few months, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has signed off on architectural and design plans for the Academy's new theater, which should be ready for Oscar night 2001.
"We're in enthusiastic approval," Bruce Davis, the Academy's executive director, told Daily Variety on Thursday, after developers of the project at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue had earlier briefed reporters on the subject.
"We have not just signed off," Davis continued, "but they have allowed us to design the theater in a technical sense and we have approval of the aesthetic components of the theater."
Davis, in the midst of organizing Sunday's Oscar bash at the Chandler in downtown Los Angeles, said the Academy's experts in lighting, sound and production design, among others, had met frequently with representatives of developer TrizecHahn and architect David Rockwell "to figure out how to come up with the ideal venue for the show."
The experts' demands inevitably added to the price of the project, but the developers "swallowed hard and stepped up to the plate," Davis said. The theater, which the Academy will rent for just one month a year, is planned as part of a $385 million "urban entertainment destination" -- to use the developer's words -- that will include retailers, restaurants, movie theaters, television production facilities and a parking structure.
"Everybody has looked at this thing and looked at it hard and we think it's going to be a terrific theater in which to do our show," Davis said.
Among the features announced by Rockwell are a 70-foot-tall portal at the entrance to the complex that will be decorated with a huge cast-glass curtain onto which movie images will be projected; thousands of glass beads on interior walls and balconies through which lights will glow; and a pretzel-like steel sculpture above the auditorium -- the architect calls it a "tiara" -- that will draw the eye away from catwalks and lighting equipment.
Rockwell, whose recent architectural projects include the W New York Hotel and the renovation of Radio City Music Hall, said the 3,300-seat Academy theater and the surrounding Hollywood & Highland complex is designed to embody "a very powerful idea," namely the Oscars and the history of Hollywood.
As such, the complex will include reminders of the golden age of motion pictures, such as an open courtyard modeled after the set of D.W. Griffith's 1929 pic "Intolerance" and a permanent display of best-picture winners.
Rockwell's design for the theater, which will be used by other tenants when the Academy doesn't need it, was inspired by opera houses such as Milan's La Scala, with three tiers of balcony boxes and plush red tones throughout. The house curtain will be pale green and gold.
The theater will be equipped with a "media cockpit" in the center of the orchestra seating that will serve as the technical heart of live broadcasts. It will contain both steadicams and crane-mounted cameras and will be designed to disappear into the floor when not needed.
TrizecHahn senior vice president David Malmuth, the project's director, said there had been "an enormous amount of progress" since his company began discussions with the Academy two years ago.
"They've been extremely active in dealing with us not only on technical but also on aesthetic issues," Malmuth said during the briefing in the El Capitan Building, as bulldozers hummed on the project site across the street.
Malmuth said also that two major Hollywood studios were "close to a deal" on becoming tenants in the complex, although he could not say in what capacity. In addition, two other entertainment entities are discussing tenancy, one of them for use of a proposed 25,000-square-foot television production space that is considering installing a live talk or game show on the premises.
