Keeper of the Oscar script

The second in a series of occasional stories on the people behind Hollywood's biggest night.

The script for the Academy Awards telecast runs about 250 pages. With another 250 pages of ancillary lists — of phone numbers, nominees, presenters, orchestra breakdowns and schedules — it weighs, with its official three-ring binder, almost 8 pounds. By the night of the show, it will look something like a rainbow — every change requires a new color, and changes are made up until the show begins.

Two hundred and forty people get Oscar scripts — most variety shows average 40 — and some need to get the new pages the moment any cue shift or dialogue tweak is made.

For three weeks, there are sound and lighting visions and revisions, the writers write and rewrite, the show board is re-ordered, minutes are shaved or added. The producer prods, but still the host may hang on to his material until the last possible minute.

One person is in charge of making sure that every change, down to the correct pronunciation of each nominee's name, has been made, that everyone has the revisions when they need them and that there are absolutely, positively no inconsistencies or glitches. At all.

That person is the script supervisor, and her name is Jenny Stanley.

"It is important to stay calm," she says with a small laugh. "And to be detail oriented. It's very easy to get frazzled if you take any of what happens personally. You just can't. You have to be totally focused on the show."

Stanley, who moves quickly and speaks softly, describes the six-member department, which is headed by production supervisor Victoria Zika, as the communications center of the show. It is their job to gather all the necessary information from the academy, the network, producers, director, writers, stage managers and talent and seating departments, incorporate that information into the rundown, schedule, script and lists, and distribute it, Stanley says, "in a timely fashion."

As in, yesterday.

Few people understand all the various parts of a show as well as the script supervisor, and that was why Stanley took the job four years ago. Because, she thought, if you can learn the Oscars, you can pretty much handle anything.

At 32, she's already been in the business for 17 years — she answered fan mail for "The Tonight Show" when she was still in high school. Over the next 10 years, she worked her way up to casting. During a card game, she heard an assistant director mention that they were looking for a script supervisor for "The Martin Short Show."

"The stage manager on 'The Tonight Show' told me that if I wanted to learn how a show works, I should be a script supervisor," she says. Stanley interviewed on Friday and started on Monday.

She started working with Louis J. Horvitz five years ago on the 2001 Emmys, which were rescheduled several times because of Sept. 11. When Horvitz asked if she wanted to do the Oscars with him, she jumped at the chance.

"Graphics, credits, pronunciation, anything you see or hear, we do," Stanley says.

Horvitz, she says, is an efficient and fastidious director, scrupulously marking his script almost a month before the show. "Lou is very script oriented," she says. "Some directors barely look at the script, but he plans out every shot, marks every shot."