Oscar’s Contingency Plan

Let not your hearts be troubled, movie fans. We’ll get the Academy Awards one way or another, you’ll see. Sure, I’d love to have the traditional sparkly gala complete with impossible-to-walk-in shoes and dumb red-carpet questions, but if not, I’ll settle for whatever they can give us. Because I know it's all a diabolical plan to yank our chains. It's better if you know that right up front.

With the writer’s strike still in full swing, organizers of the 80th (has it been that long?) Annual Academy Awards show say they’re, in fact, planning two shows: “The show we would love to do and a show that we would prefer not to do,” Academy president Sid Ganis told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In the event an agreement is reached, the traditional star-studded gala is in the works. If not, a contingency show with history, film clips, and out-of-the-box concepts – hmmm, wonder what that means -- is also being planned. Yeah, I prefer the first one, too.

“We have an obligation to the art form to present the Oscars, so we have to deal with the possibility of not being able to do the show because of pickets or agreements not being concluded," Ganis said.

Meanwhile, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is talking with striking writers. (Really? Then how come we’re still in reruns?) Even if the strike isn’t resolved by show time, producer Gil Cates hopes writers will decide not to picket the Academy Awards.

“This show, in my view, is really above politics. It is wrong to treat the show as anything other than a gift from all the people who work in this business, really, to the exceptional talent and the community and the country."

Yeah, a gift…and a curse…