Cover
story
Mass
and awards with show business sense
Hollywood awards ceremonies that include an annual Mass and
luncheon don’t just happen. They’re produced like a movie. Planning
began last April for Oct. 27’s four-and-half-hour Catholics in Media
Associates’ 10th annual celebration.
That’s when CIMA members sat down to decide which movies and
television shows they would screen to select their awards winners. This year
CIMA chose “Changing Lanes,” a movie starring Ben Affleck and Samuel
L. Jackson, CBS television’s “Judging Amy,” and its board of
directors selected TNT television’s “Door to Door.” CIMA
cofounders director Jack Shea and screenwriter Patt Shea were chosen to receive
lifetime achievement awards -- at a meeting held while they were out of the
country so the modest couple couldn’t object.
Six months later, the Beverly Hilton day itself began at 5 a.m.
for the set-up crews. An hour or so after that preproduction was in full swing
under chairpersons Jane Abbott and Joy Holland, with clipboard-carrying
coordinators Brian Oppenheimer and Beverly Nichter stage managing.
Open folders on worktables showed the morning broken down into
tight time slots. The ballroom was animated by waiters who set up tables,
Hollywood folks who carried those clipboards, and men and women in dark clothes
wearing headsets who scurried around talking into mikes.
Why mention this? Because what’s noticeable is not the
activity so much as the quietness. Everyone’s accustomed to working on a
set where silence is at a premium.
By 8:40 a.m., amid much movement in the darkened ballroom, beyond
the first ring of luncheon tables, CIMA chaplain Capuchin Franciscan Fr.
Anthony Scannell and Dennis Heaney, executive publisher of The Tidings,
Los Angeles’ archdiocesan newspaper, were among those scouting out open
spaces for eucharistic ministers.
By 9 a.m., somewhere beyond the scene of soft-footed bustle,
Cardinal Roger Mahony and a half-dozen priests were vesting, while on the
ballroom screen, images from the later showings were tested for color quality,
as the choir under Helena Buscema held a mini-rehearsal near the set-up
altar.
By 9:40 a.m., the tables were filling up; by 9:55 most places were
filled.
And just at 10, the murmuring quieted, it was time for Mass.
Lights. Camera. Action.
-- Arthur Jones
National Catholic Reporter, November 08,
2002
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