When the call came to organize a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina, Joel Gallen knew he had no time to waste.

“I had between six and nine days,” said Gallen, executive producer of the show that aired Sept. 9, “Shelter From the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast.”

In Hollywood, where it can take months to finalize the lineup for the Academy Awards, a week is no time at all. Yet somehow, “Shelter” and other shows, along with celebrity telethons, benefit parties and other events across the city all managed to fall into place. But how?

The star-studded outpourings showed that Hollywood can get it together in a time of crisis. Still even if everyone’s intentions are the best there are the schedules, the handlers, the release forms, the questions of rights and star billing that normally take up so much time and attention. These issues don’t just go away.

“You think: I can make calls, I know a lot of people they’re not going to say no, it’s a beautiful cause, right?” said fundraiser RuthAnne Gibson, who’s planning a red-carpet Hurricane Katrina relief event for this week.

Gibson plans to have her event, called “Hollywood SUK’S” (Hollywood Soaks Up Katrina) on Tuesday, for reasons having as much to do with the availability of the Highlands Hollywood venue as the availability of her potential A-listers.

“A Tuesday won’t mess with everyone’s schedule too much; It’s not a weekend, people will be in town,” Gibson said.

The event is to include deejays, a celebrity poker tournament, live performances, T-shirts and buttons. But with less than a week to go, she still doesn’t have her A-list finalized. God forbid it should become a B-list.

“It’s a little bit difficult, to be honest with you,” said Adam Manacker, assistant general manager of Highlands Hollywood. “Everyone’s heart and intention are in the right place but I can’t say yes to every single person that wants to do a hurricane thing.”

Celebrities and rock stars bring a higher profile, and therefore higher receipts, to a benefit so securing those big names can make or break the night, even for a good cause.

For their event, Manacker and Gibson last week were waiting to hear if Jada Pinkett Smith’s band would agree to play. “And if she performs, then Will (Smith) is definitely playing in the poker tournament,” Gibson said. “And if we get Will, then we’ll get Ben Affleck and his whole crew.”

Lee Maen, a partner in Innovative Dining Group, kept it simple when he put together a Thursday benefit at the firm’s restaurants Sushi Roku and Katana.

Radio personality and “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest agreed to maitre d’ for the evening (Seacrest is an investor in IDG). Through a few well-placed phone calls, rock star Tommy Lee and actor Tom Green also came to dinner.

“We jammed on a quick release and flooded the restaurant with invitations,” Maen said. The key, Maen said, was that it wasn’t strictly a celebrity event, the restaurants were open to the public, and Thursdays are busy anyway. IDG donated more than $20,000 to the Red Cross from that evening’s receipts.

For Manacker, the question of which stars attend is not just a parlor game. Big stars bring big crowds, and if they don’t show up, little is accomplished for the storm victims. “Basically, I’m trying to figure out if I’m staffing for 500 people or for 1500 people,” Manacker said.

Even when stars want to do everything in their power, it’s their handlers who often stay up all night arranging the details.

Gallen’s company, Tenth Planet Productions, was able to get the Dixie Chicks because they were in the studio and not on tour, he said. Same with Neil Young, he wasn’t on tour. Alicia Keys was in New York already and had agreed to do Black Entertainment Television’s hurricane relief special “Save OurSelves” the same night so she shuttled back and forth between the two studios.

Sending a golf cart


In L.A., Randy Newman was working on a Sony lot, so Gallen just had to send over a golf cart. Getting U2 took a little more accommodation. The group was in Toronto rehearsing for an upcoming tour; Mary J. Blige agreed to fly up to perform a duet with Bono.

“I’ve been doing this for a while. I have the phone numbers for the managers, the artists I deal directly with the decision-makers,” Gallen said. Still, he was on the phone for four days straight.

“If you dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, there’s a lot of work to be done,” said Jay Cooper, a lawyer with Greenberg Traurig LLP and chair of the firm’s western region entertainment department. He’s nearly made a practice out of benefit concerts, representing the organizers of “Live8” (2005), “NetAid” (1999), “Hands Across America” (1986) and “We Are the World” (1985), though he said the firm did not advise the organizers of “Shelter.”

Modern benefit events involve not only live performances but cell phone transmissions, streaming video, digital downloads, ring-tones, satellite radio not to mention the possibility of a CD or DVD. “With the number of players involved, you really could have a lot of balls in the air,” he said.

With disaster benefit concerts, there often isn’t time to wrangle over details. Sometimes the contracts aren’t prepared ahead of time, said Kenneth Burry, another Greenberg Traurig lawyer.

Burry’s job at the “Live8” concert in Philadelphia was to make sure nobody went onstage without a signed agreement.

For the “Shelter” benefit, Gallen said he had performers sign small, general releases but there was “no legal jargon, no conversations with lawyers,” he said, and no haggling over who’s performing with whom.

“Nobody said to me, ‘I want to go first,’ or ‘I want to go last,'” Gallen said. “They just showed up and said, ‘What do you want me do to do?'”