THE ARTS

Lost Quote File: With the 1993 Los Angeles Festival set to kick off Friday, festival artistic director Peter Sellars is quoted in the Viennese magazine Profil as saying he has trouble working in Los Angeles because of a social climate with “class wars and open racism” and where “600 kids were shot in the streets since January (and) the level of violence is horrible.” But Sellars told The Times there was “a byte missing” from the printed Q&A; interview and that it “condensed” his picture of L.A. “I find much more vibrant work in Los Angeles; what’s not here is the financial support that I can get in Europe for my work,” said Sellars, whose critics charge that he spends too much time directing opera there and neglects his festival duties in Los Angeles. “I was explaining that this atmosphere is conducive to another type of work (than work shown at European festivals). That (social) conflict is very, very strong for culture, and that’s where artists should be--at the center of conflict.”

*Felicidades!: Opera tenor Placido Domingo will receive the lifetime achievement award at the Music Center’s annual Viva Los Artistas! Performing Arts Awards, Sept. 5 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Other honorees include performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena, actress Elizabeth Pena and ballet dancer Fernando Bujones. The awards are co-sponsored by the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts. After the awards presentation, a free fiesta celebrating Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) and Hispanic Heritage Month will be held at noon. Included is a concert by Latino singer Emmanuel and a family arts and crafts festival.

POP/ROCK

Write a Song, Go to Jail: Bob Marley sang “I Shot the Sheriff,” but Jamaica’s new police chief says that such talk by current singers will land them in jail. “I don’t care if you are a Grammy winner, Emmy winner or any kind of international star,” said Trevor MacMillan, a retired army colonel who plans to prosecute singers for espousing violence against police. “If you preach violence and it’s against the law, you must be dealt with,” said MacMillan, who takes office Sept. 1. His warning followed concerts in which Jamaican dancehall-style singers urged the shooting of police, homosexuals and Pope John Paul II.

TELEVISION

Sneak Preview: ABC and NBC will take part in an upcoming test of “Your Choice TV,” a proposed pay-per-view service where cable subscribers would pay to see reruns of favorite shows or programs that they’d missed the first time around. NBC has not yet disclosed which of its programs will be included; ABC will reportedly allow “20/20,” “PrimeTime Live” and other shows to be part of the test, in which viewers can order up single episodes for just under a dollar each. The four-month test starts in October.

*Target Audience: Another newsmagazine is on the way, this one targeted to 18- to 34-year-olds. “Generation X,” a one-hour weekly syndicated series featuring correspondents in their 20s, is scheduled to premiere in the fall of 1994.

MOVIES

Box Office-aurus: With Monday night’s ticket sales, Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” was virtually assured of crossing the $300-million mark after only 10 weeks in U.S. and Canadian theaters. Only one other film has grossed more in its initial theatrical release--Spielberg’s 1982 “E.T.,” which sold $359 million in tickets. The “Jurassic” figure translates to about 60 million admissions. . . . Meanwhile, in other “Jurassic” news, Sam Neill, who plays paleontologist Alan Grant, says he’s “had it with dinosaurs” but will not rule out a “Jurassic Park 2.” “The thing has been so colossally successful that I imagine there will be a great deal of pressure from the powers-that-be to make another one,” Neill said at the film’s New Zealand premiere. “Whether or not they pick on me is another thing altogether.”

QUICK TAKES

Radio and former VH-1 personality Don Imus, 53, was in satisfactory condition in a Connecticut hospital Monday after being hospitalized for the second time in two weeks with a collapsed lung. He is scheduled to be transferred toda to Cornell Medical Center in New York City. . . . Ireland’s arts minister, Michael Higgins, said that music videos by rock group U2 and the films of Oscar-winning director Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”) should be included in the curriculum at Irish universities. The proposal comes a week after U2 announced it was giving $450,000 in concert proceeds to seven Irish charities. . . . Motown Records founder Berry Gordy and Michael Jackson were honored in Atlanta over the weekend at the annual Jack the Rapper awards, named for pioneering black disc jockey Jack (“The Rapper”) Gibson.

Quotable: “It’s not just an arts festival; it’s a lark, an ordeal, a drinkathon, a holiday, a lot of hard work, a talent contest, a love-in, a rite of passage, an enduring test.”

--Tim de Lisle, arts editor of British newspaper the Independent, describing the three-week Edinburgh arts festival, which kicked off in Scotland on Sunday.