As Los Angeles burns, Hollywood's Oscar season turns into a pledge drive

The Hollywood Sign is seen in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

When the Palisades Fire broke out in Los Angeles last Tuesday, Hollywood’s awards season was in full swing. The Golden Globes had transpired less than 48 hours earlier and a series of splashy awards banquets followed in the days after.

But the enormity of the destruction in Southern California has quickly snuffed out all festiveness in the movie industry’s high season of celebration. At one point, the flames even encroached on the hillside above the Dolby Theatre, the home of the Academy Awards.

The fires have struck at the very heart of a movie industry still trying to stabilize itself after years of pandemic, labor turmoil and technological upheaval. Not for the first time this decade, the Oscars are facing the question of: Should the show go on? And if it does, what do they mean now?

“With ALL due respect during Hollywood’s season of celebration, I hope any of the networks televising the upcoming awards will seriously consider NOT televising them and donating the revenue they would have gathered to victims of the fires and the firefighters,” “Hacks” star Jean Smart, a recent Globe winner, wrote on Instagram.

The Oscars remain as scheduled, but it’s certain that they will be transformed due to the wildfires, and that most of the red-carpet pomp that typically stretches between now and then will be curtailed if not altogether canceled. With so many left without a home by the fires, there’s scant appetite for the usual self-congratulatory parades of the season.

Focus has turned, instead, to what the Oscars might symbolize for a traumatized Los Angeles. The Oscars have never meant less, but, at the same time, they might be more important than ever as a beacon of perseverance for the reeling movie capital.

The film academy on Monday for the second time delayed its nominations announcement. Nominations will now be announced virtually on Feb. 23. The academy also canceled its annual nominees luncheon and said it’s planning to honor frontline workers and to support relief efforts.

“We will get through this together and bring a sense of healing to our global film community,” vowed Bill Kramer, academy chief executive, and Janet Yang, academy president.

The fires, one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, continue. The ongoing nature of the crisis, which has killed at least 25 people, has made remaking well-laid plans a moving target. The Critics Choice Awards have been postponed. Nominations to the Producers Guild Awards have been delayed twice with no new date set. On Tuesday, the guild established a fund to support producers affected by the fires.

The 67th Grammy Awards, scheduled to be held Feb. 2 in downtown Los Angeles, are going forward, albeit with significant changes. Harvey Mason jr., Recording Academy chief executive and Board of Trustees chair Tammy Hurt said this year’s Grammys “will carry a renewed sense of purpose: raising additional funds to support wildfire relief efforts and honoring the bravery and dedication of first responders who risk their lives to protect ours.”

Some telethon-like element also seems sure to accompany the Oscars. In recent days, many throughout the industry have voiced suggestions for how the broadcast could be reconsidered. A not dissimilar process happened during the 2021 Oscars, which were postponed to late April because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Oscars have been moved a few times throughout history, including in 1938, when the show was delayed a week due to historic flooding in Los Angeles.

For the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the wildfires have been acutely personal. Four of the academy’s 55-person board of governors lost their homes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, including producer Lynette Howell Taylor, visual effects governor Brooke Breton, sound branch governor Mark P. Stoeckinger and animation branch governor Jinko Gotoh. The Pacific Palisades, which was largely destroyed by the fires, was home to many stars and executives.

For potential nominees, this would normally be when they’d be at their most active, campaigning in Q&As and other events tied to the all-important nominations voting period. All of that has ground to a halt. Isabella Rossellini, who’s favored to be nominated for best supporting actress for her performance in “Conclave,” on Instagram posted a photograph of an Oscar lying in ashes. The photo turned out to be fake, but it accurately captured Hollywood’s current mood.

“We have a lot of friends and colleagues who have either evacuated or really lost their houses,” “Conclave” director Edward Berger said following Wednesday’s BAFTA nominations. “So it’s a very strange time to be feeling great about awards, to celebrate them. And the one thing that really picks me up is speaking to these friends and seeing how resilient they are.”

Several high-profile TV series were forced to pause production because of the fires but notably few movie shoots were affected. That, in itself, is a reflection of a Hollywood that has seen the majority of film production seek tax incentives in other states.

Work throughout the film and TV industry hasn’t rebounded following the 2023 strikes, leaving large numbers of crew members unemployed. So quiet are studio lots that actress Natalie Morales (“Grey’s Anatomy”) has advocated for studios, in the wake of the fires, to turn empty soundstages into temporary classrooms, erected by out-of-work craftspeople, for children whose schools burned down.

It’s a reminder that many in the film business need all the work they can find, including all the jobs that accompany the Oscars. Not only are the Academy Awards a vital spotlight on a wide swath of movies that otherwise might struggle to find audiences, the awards provide a lot of jobs to an awards season industrial complex of workers, stylists and vendors.

With so many out of work before the fires hit, Silvina Knight, an Emmy-winning makeup artist, calls this latest crisis “another setback – a big one.” She is currently working on “Suits LA,” one of the series that stopped filming due to the fires.

“I’m not sure how people are going to feel about getting dressed up and when they just lost everything,” said Knight of the Oscars. “But I don’t know, it might be a show of force when we come back. Yeah, this is tragic, but we are all coming together. Even driving home the other night, motorists were being very considerate of each other, which is unusual for Los Angeles.”

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AP’s Hilary Fox in London contributed to this report.

Jake Coyle And Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press