LOS ANGELES -- "Wow, this is geek heaven," remarked Dr. Douglas R. Roble upon receiving his certificate at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific and Technical Award, Saturday evening at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel.
It may not be the glitzy, internationally televised Academy Awards, but to the 80-plus men (and no women, unfortunately) who received commendations for important behind-the-scenes inventions, this was the big time.Though the winners' products have been used on such huge hit films like "Titanic" and "Back to the Future II," they have a sense of humor about their relatively obscure contributions to filmmaking. The program, hosted by actress Anne Heche, was laced with laughs.
At what other awards shows will you see a video of the inventor of the Shock Block, Stephen J. Kay, demonstrating the product by standing barefoot in an aquarium and dropping a live light fixture into it?
That video was followed, as a joke, by a clip from a James Bond movie where Bond electrocutes a villain by knocking a lamp into the water-filled bathtub he's fallen into.
With the exception of one Academy Award of Merit given to editing equipment-maker Avid Technology, the awards were in the form of certificates or plaques rather than the familiar Oscar statuette. That mattered little to the men whose creations are used for such things as cleaning film, visual special effects and blocking electric shocks when lights are accidentally submerged in water.
Many brought their families to the ceremony and commented on their amazement at receiving an award from the academy. In fact, the event was the best-attended in the history of the technical awards, with about 700 people there.
Most of the winners are still active way behind the scenes in the film industry, but a few have moved on to other fields where they're applying their scientific expertise.
Highlighting this -- and the crossover between high-tech Hollywood and other technology-based businesses -- Bala S. Manian, who shared an award for developing a laser film recording process, is now a Silicon Valley entrepreneur specializing in medical applications for lasers.
In his acceptance speech, Manian referred to this laser technology being used to help patients with conditions from cancer to AIDS. Most speeches were brief and to the point: This was not a show where anyone proclaimed himself King of the World or asked the audience to send good thoughts to Tibet.
This was working Hollywood, people without whom we wouldn't have the striking images and sounds that continue to keep Los Angeles the dominant film center of the world.
For her part, Heche valiantly made it through dozens of technical, detailed descriptions of winners' inventions with the help of a script and a TelePrompTer.
In her introductory remarks, Heche proclaimed, "I am so thrilled to be in a room full of people who can honestly say that they know what they're doing in this business."