How Oscar Show Opening Became a Crystal Ball

By ROBERT W. WELKOS

March 27, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Yoda: “You must go.”

Billy Crystal: “Go? Go back to host the Oscars again? You mean in Hollywood? . . . I haven’t done the show in so long. It would be too different.”

Yoda: “Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.”

He had ridden into the Oscars on horseback and also appeared in a mask and straitjacket a la Anthony Hopkins’ character in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Now, the question remained: What would Billy Crystal do for an encore at this year’s Academy Awards?

It turns out that Crystal, back after a three-year absence, topped even himself. In a filmed montage that spoofed himself against a backdrop of this year’s best picture nominees, he had audiences laughing as if he had never left.

The 3-minute 2-second film was put together over the past month by Crystal, a team of writers and production personnel at Dakota Films, a Hollywood firm that specializes in irreverent comedy and alternative television.

Producer-director Troy Miller, who owns Dakota Films, said everyone knew the risks.

“It was take no prisoners,” Miller said. “This had to be the best.”

The film consisted of eight scenes edited together with footage from “The Empire Strikes Back” and Oscar nominees “Jerry Maguire,” “Secrets & Lies,” “Shine,” “Fargo” and “The English Patient.”

The script was the work of Crystal and writers David Steinberg, Ed Driscoll, Bruce Vilanch, Joe Bolster, Jon Macks and Billy Martin. It was left to Miller and his crew, which included co-producer Tom Sherren, director of photography Clyde Smith, art director Dan Butts and editor Steve Welch, to work out the details.

“We attacked it in force,” Miller said, “breaking down what walls they had, the cameras they used, the exposure, lighting and even the wardrobe.”

For the scene in which Crystal played Luke Skywalker opposite Yoda, Miller’s team erected 25 trees and added a rubber snake and fog to mirror the swamp in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

In a kitchen scene from “Jerry Maguire,” a shirtless, gyrating Crystal portrays Cuba Gooding Jr. “Jerry, listen,” Crystal says by phone to agent Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise). “The academy asked me to host the Oscars again. What do you think?”

“Show me the money!” says Cruise in footage from the film.

“I don’t want to hear that!” Crystal replies. “That is so boring.”

“Show me the money!” screams Cruise.

Miller said the scene was actually shot in his production manager’s kitchen in Simi Valley. “We hired an African American guy who kind of looks like [the Cuba character’s] brother and we added a wall full of cabinets in her kitchen,” the director said.

In another scene, Miller’s crew spliced shots of Crystal and Frances McDormand from “Fargo.” “We superimposed Billy over the actual actor,” Miller said. “If you were to peel away Billy, you would see the other actor.”

David Letterman, who hosted the 1995 Oscars, even got into the act. “There is a shot in ‘The English Patient’ which is the pilot’s point of view where he sees Ralph Fiennes and we added what we call a ‘little Billy’ in that shot,” Miller said. “It’s a two-second shot but it makes all the difference.”

As Crystal walks across the sand (filmed in Simi Valley), a biplane comes at him.

“Hey, Billy!” Letterman snarls from the cockpit. “How you doin’? Here’s what you ought to do. Introduce Uma to Oprah. Then Oprah to Uma. And then Uma to Oprah! And then introduce Oprah to Uma! And then do it again! Uma-Oprah! Oprah-Uma! And do it again!”

The plane then crashes nose up, knocking Crystal over a bank.

“No wonder Whoopi quit,” Crystal says.