Oscar Show in Rehearsal Not as Good as It Gets

Two days, five hours and 10 minutes before the 70th annual Academy Awards ceremony was to be broadcast live to the world, and outside the Shrine Auditorium, where the festivities will take place, worker drones buzzed with a cool efficiency, seeing to every detail of the production.

Well, almost cool efficiency. On Saturday afternoon, a crew member anxiously sputtered into a walkie-talkie: “Hey, most likely if this was an ‘A-9’ dolly, it would say ‘A-9’ on there somewhere, huh?”

That, no doubt, along with every other glitch, will be cleared up before the cameras go live Monday. Over this weekend, the three-hour ceremony was to be continuously evolving inside the Shrine during furiously paced rehearsals.

This much is known: Billy Crystal will again host, and a special part of the ceremony will feature all the past Oscar winners that the producers could round up for a special bow. But those close to the production were keeping quiet about how this will be incorporated into the show (though Fay Wray, the object of the 1933 “King Kong’s” affection, is scheduled to be a presenter).

And, if Saturday’s tentative seating arrangement was any indication of how things will go Monday night, it was worth noting that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, nominees for “Good Will Hunting,” will be in the front row, along with Judi Dench (“Mrs. Brown”), Kate Winslet (“Titanic”), Peter Fonda (“Ulee’s Gold”), Joan Cusack (“In and Out”) and Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt (“As Good as It Gets”).

And though he figures to be making several stage appearances Monday evening, James Cameron, the director of “Titanic,” will actually be several rows back (though much, much closer than “The Sweet Hereafter’s” director Atom Egoyan, who will be seated so far back he might as well be in the balcony).

On Saturday afternoon, the news media were given a brief peek at a rehearsal for one of those legendary Oscar dance numbers during which cynics roll their eyes and the rest of the world takes a bathroom break.

Stars will stroll down the red carpet, flanked by fans, cameras, and a floral display of 60,000 blooms and 2,500 other plants imported from Thailand, Costa Rica, Colombia and the Netherlands. Inside, the stage will be flanked by two giant Oscar statues tucked inside what appeared to be gold-gilded waffle ice-cream cones.

At one point, actress Jennifer Lopez will introduce a “choreographed medley” of the nominees for original musical or comedy score, by choreographer Daniel Ezralow. “The work these composers have done for their respective films is truly, ‘As Good as It Gets,’ ” she will say.

With that, dancers portraying Nicholson and Hunt will stroll onto the stage to Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated “As Good as It Gets” music, and, after a flurry of scissor steps and twirls, the female dancer will leap before the male and he will catch her by reaching around and pulling her to his body.

As they scamper offstage, James Newton Howard’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding” score will commence, and a tuxedoed male dancer will variously pursue and be pursued by two women, one in a wedding dress. He will then swing them around simultaneously, which must settle things, because they will soon leave the stage in favor of the male strippers from “The Full Monty.”

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As this is network television, the men won’t actually go the Full Monty while Anne Dudley’s composition is played. They will simply doff their hats and jackets and be instantly transformed into some frenetic “Men in Black,” hopping and high-kicking to Danny Elfman’s theme.

“Anastasia’s” score, by Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and David Newman, will be the final nominee. A female dancer, in harnesses attached to an overhead pulley, will glide gracefully through the air and then swoop down.

It’s just a guess that it won’t go the way it did Saturday, as the dancer tried her darndest to keep her jaw from cracking on the stage floor.

Afterward, a production assistant was overheard commenting on the scene: “Oh, she’s hitting the stage! She’s hitting it!”