‘THELAZARS’--FOR THE ‘A’ TEAM

To hear Irving Paul Lazar (a.k.a. Superagent “Swifty”) tell it, he can’t fathom the fuss made each year over his little Oscar-watching party. “It’s not that important,” he’ll say.

Right. But to say that Lazar and his wife, film maker Mary Lazar, make a few calls to their pals, throw a couple of bowls of peanuts around, crack some beers and turn on the tube, somehow doesn’t capture it.

Oscar watching at “Thelazars”--one word to Hollywood’s Establishment--is as much an institution as the awards ceremony itself, and much tougher to attend. For 28 years, in several different locales (now in its third year at West Hollywood’s Spago), a select 200 Triple-A List types have amassed for drinks, dinner, schmoozing and, of course, a bit of Oscar-watching.

Monday night, as arriving guests posed for pictures (Lazar’s party attracts paparazzi ), greeted Lazar, found their tables and talked to friends, Frank Price eyeballed the room anxiously. “Are we going to be able to hear?” he asked dubiously.

Indeed, while each of the 20 or so tables had its own--or at least a shared--television monitor, the sound was barely audible above the frenzy. Lazar guests arrive in two waves: the early crowd is there by 5:30 for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, Wolfgang Puck-style--tiny pizzas of duck, salmon and sausage. The rest of the invited guests are downtown at the Music Center as nominees, presenters or heads of studios with nominated films; therefore, the dinner itself isn’t served until after the show.

This was Price’s first year to attend a Swifty Lazar party from start to finish. Last year, as chairman of MCA-Universal’s Motion Picture Group, he reigned over Universal Studios’ sweep as “Out of Africa” pulled in one Oscar after another (seven in all). In fact, it has been a long time since Price has been anywhere but in a choice seat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Oscar night. In his tenures both at Columbia, where he was chairman, and at Universal (he resigned last summer), Price has seen three of his projects take best picture and other honors in the past seven years: In 1979, it was “Kramer vs. Kramer”; in 1983, it was “Gandhi,” and last year it was “Out of Africa.”

Monday night at Spago, as waiters bustled about serving cocktails and Champagne, the soft-spoken Price, who currently is not working for anybody but is considering a “range of options,” discussed the implications of the annual academy ritual from the special perspective of a man who makes movies that bring home Oscars. “It was rather thrilling, those wins,” he said. “I really felt very good about them--last year in particular. My biggest thrill was seeing Sydney Pollack getting the director and producer awards.” When a studio executive sees a movie win best picture, it automatically produces a vision of dollar signs. And it was through that specialized lens that Price assessed the upcoming show Monday night (“No other industry does something like this,” he mused. “What would Detroit be like if they were allowed to vote on car models?”) as the opening television credits began to roll.

“The Oscar race always varies. There are years when you don’t have the big commercial pictures up there. Now, the only commercial hit for this year would be ‘Platoon,’ which has a little over $100 million in box-office receipts--that’s as much as the other four put together.

“That is the most substantial Oscar win--the award of best picture can mean a lot. For instance, if ‘Platoon’ gets it (and it did), where they will get the payoff is in foreign distribution. Most of the other nominees have already played overseas, so that wouldn’t be a major factor for them.

“For example, in ‘Out of Africa,’ we did $43 million in (domestic) film rentals before the Oscars. With the Academy Award, we picked up an additional $57 million for the rest of the world. That’s the kind of instant publicity that goes out worldwide through the Oscar telecast.”

So what does a studio executive ponder as he is sitting in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion waiting to hear the fate of nominated films? “Well, you’re rooting for the people you’ve worked with to win, that’s primary. In addition to that, if the awards in the show and all that can operate to make people curious to see the pictures, that’s terrific. I certainly like that.”

Sometimes the Oscar season attention has to be shared, especially when a studio has multiple nominations. Whatever a studio head does, Price says, chuckling, he does “very carefully.” In 1983, for example, Price not only had “Gandhi” nominated for best picture, he also had “Tootsie,” the acclaimed gender differentiation comedy. To further complicate matters, in addition to “Tootsie’s” Sydney Pollack and “Gandhi’s” Sir Richard Attenborough, Columbia also had, by way of its Triumph Film Division, director Wolfgang Petersen nominated as director for “Das Boot.”

“When we were at the Directors Guild dinner that year, I had Sydney, Wolfgang and Dickie all at my table,” recalled Price. “And, well, I wanted every one of them to win.

“When you have those multiple things, you have to make very certain that you give absolutely identical support in every way to every picture and every performer--you couldn’t do it any other way.”

Price was reluctant to make a prediction on the evening’s outcome, before the Oscar ceremony started. He said: “It appears that everything is lined up for ‘Platoon’ to do extremely well. I liked it very much; I think Oliver (Stone) did a great job with it.”

But, he conceded, “I suppose my dark horse would be ‘Room With a View,’ which has been a great success, but really just on the art-house circuit; it hasn’t become mainstream.

“But one of the problems in analyzing how anything is going to come out is that you have five contenders, which means it will take a plurality to win, and it only takes one vote to make the difference. So what you try and look at is, how do the votes split up?”

The votes, as it turned out Monday night, split fairly evenly, with Price’s first instinct--that “Platoon” would take best picture--being realized. And as the Spago party began to dissolve into the chatter of post-Oscar analysis, Price took a swig of his grapefruit juice and, in his typically low-key manner, summarized the “Platoon” win.

“Just as I suspected,” he said, “with the best director and the best picture . . . . This movie would have done well overseas anyway, because of its subject matter. Now it will go through the roof.”