This guy can stand the heat.
Louis Horvitz, UCLA alumnus, will direct the Academy Awards for
the seventh time this year. He may feel pressure from the breakneck
production schedule and the impending telecast’s 3-hour time
frame, but experience keeps him cool.
Horvitz began his televisual experience some thirty-odd years
ago at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Cinematography was his trade of choice, complementing his studio
training with photojournalism at the Daily Bruin. He moved steadily
into television directing after college, specializing in live music
shows like “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” and
“Solid Gold.”
His resume of TV music shows made him an ideal candidate for
live telecast direction, a realm few know about.
“Most people don’t know how a television show gets
put on the air,” he said. “There’s five semi-vans
in the parking lot, 25 camera monitors, 130 collective monitors for
international feeds. It’s a master control room beyond the
realm of people’s imagination. And it’s the size of a
closet.”
From this place comes the edited feed of the Academy Awards seen
by millions the world over. Horvitz calls the shots during the
telecast with the audience and story in mind.
“Two things should happen,” he said. “We
don’t want that show to go extremely long, because I
don’t think anyone in this day and age has an attention span
beyond three hours.
“And secondly, the way I pace the show is like a film: it
moves like it was supposed to move, unfolds like it’s
supposed to unfold, only it’s live,” he added.
To try to make the notoriously long show unfold more smoothly,
Horvitz has stressed the time limit on acceptance speeches
increasingly over the past few years. He’s offered everything
from web-space for winners’ thank-you essays to monetary
incentives to keep winners to their 45-second blocks.
“When somebody goes beyond their time limit, if it’s
poignant and interesting, people will put up with that,” he
said. “But when it becomes a laundry list of names and names,
(they won’t).”
Not that he lacks sympathy for the flabbergasted and
long-winded. Horvitz has won numerous Emmy Awards for his
directorial achievements at the Oscars and other live television
events, and he’s had to subject himself to the same stringent
clock.
“As soon as I cut to myself, I see the clock, and
it’s ticking away, and I think, “˜Where’s the
other 30 seconds?'” he said. “It’s tough to
use only 45 and speak only from your heart.”
Horvitz felt pressure from more than just speech times last
year, as it was the first year the awards were presented in their
new home, the Kodak Theater.
“It’s a vertical opera house, very different from
(previous Oscar venues) the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the
Shrine, which are more like amphitheaters,” he said.
“TV is a horizontal form, so how do you get a vertical house
to translate?”
Horvitz tackled the verticality of the Kodak by prominently
featuring it in last year’s telecast, from the ascending
opening shot to Whoopi Goldberg’s “Moulin Rouge!”
inspired entrance to the ceiling acrobatics of the Cirque du Soleil
performance.
“There’s something about the low angles, shooting
across the nominees in the foreground, seeing the boxes on the left
and right, and people way up in the air,” he said.
“It’s really grand. Last year was the first time (in
the Kodak), and it worked, and this year I have a jump on
that.”
The show’s a tough job. Two and a half months are spent
putting it together.
“I’m very fatigued afterward,” he said.
“Gil (Cates, the show’s producer and Geffen Playhouse
art director) puts together a luncheon, we compare notes, say
thanks and goodbye. Shortly after, I like to ski for a couple weeks
if I don’t have a show jammed behind it.”
He may have to postpone those skiing plans; in the next few
months alone, Horvitz will direct the next “Divas”
concert for VH1, as well as the American Film Institute’s
Tribute to Robert DeNiro. But he knows that his experience,
especially his UCLA education, will help him stand the heat.
“I always felt that my success was because of my education
at UCLA,” he said. “It’s that discipline that the
university gives you. Above and beyond career things, it’s
the discipline that’ll carry you through the rest of your
life.”