Hanks leads stars slated for Oscarcast
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Organizers Thursday unveiled details of this year's Academy Awards, including Oscar-presenting roles for stars such as Tom Hanks and Nicole Kidman whose presence was in doubt due to the Hollywood writers strike.
Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Gil Cates, producer of the 80th Academy Awards on Feb. 24, were happy to have the strike behind them so they could produce a traditional awards celebration with A-list stars to accept the world's top film honors.
"We are now full steam ahead on what has come to be known as 'show A,' " Ganis told reporters at a news conference.
He said Cates had also been outlining a "show B" had the strike by some 10,500 members of the Writers Guild of America continued into the Oscar ceremony. If that had happened, picket lines would have gone up outside the gala event and few stars who would have crossed those lines to attend.
Without big stars such as Best Actor nominee George Clooney, for legal thriller "Michael Clayton," it is likely audiences would have shunned the 3-hour-plus Oscar telecast on ABC.
The strike, which began on Nov. 5 and ended Wednesday when film and TV writers returned to work, has crippled the U.S. television industry and caused drastic changes to other Hollywood awards shows.
The Golden Globe honors, one of the glitziest annual ceremonies, was transformed into a news conference, and the result was a meager 5.8 million viewers watching it on TV -- about one-quarter the typical 20 million.
But for the Oscars, stars including Penelope Cruz, Renee Zellweger, Denzel Washington and Colin Farrell will be on hand, and nominees such as Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Julie Christie and Ellen Page are also expected to turn out.
Amy Adams will sing "Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," and Jon McLaughlin will perform "So Close," also from "Enchanted." Both are nominated in the original song category.
The show will be hosted by comedian Jon Stewart with a team of writers that went to work on Wednesday dreaming up jokes, sketches and other movie-oriented bits for Oscar viewers.
NBC News is apologizing again -- this time for Jane Fonda. The 70-year-old actress used a vulgar slang term on the "Today" show Thursday while talking about the play "The Vagina Monologues." Fonda is appearing in a 10th-anniversary performance and was on "Today" with author Eve Ensler. Fonda told co-host Meredith Vieira that she was asked to perform a monologue with a slang term for vagina as the title -- and Fonda used the term itself on the air in explaining why she said "no." "I said, 'I don't think so, I've got enough problems,' " Fonda said. About 10 minutes later, Vieira told viewers that Fonda had used a word from the play that normally isn't used on television. "It was a slip and obviously she apologizes and so do we," Vieira said. "We would do nothing to offend the audience, so please accept that apology."
Fans of the Fox drama "24" will have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again, this television season's most prominent casualty of the Hollywood writers strike. The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks, and had been planning to start last month. But if it had started airing new episodes soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs. Even though eight episodes for this season had already been filmed before the beginning of the writers strike, producers would have had to ramp up production soon to complete the season. A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said on Thursday.