OSCAR, THE SECRET STORY

By Jamie Malanowski

Next Monday night, 75 million Americans will watch the Oscars. As in other televised spectacles--election night, the Super Bowl--there will be winners and losers. Unlike viewers of those other competitions, however, Oscar watchers will have no idea of the score. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences resolutely refuses to reveal the raw vote totals. Why? One reason may be that if the numbers ever did appear, folks at home might realize that it does not take all that many votes to win.

There are 5,614 voting members of the academy. This is a pretty good-size electorate, but, even so, it means that with five nominations and a close race, somebody could get about 1,200 votes and go home immortal.

But a nomination can be had much more cheaply. Academy members belong to one of 13 craft branches. Voting is restricted: members can nominate someone in his or her branch, plus a film for Best Picture. The actors' branch, with 1,380 members, is the largest. It can be fairly assumed that each of the five nominees for Best Thespian got a couple hundred votes. (Apparently, very few professional actors thought Madonna and Courtney Love award worthy.) The other branches are considerably smaller: 417 writers, 413 sound professionals, 354 directors, 352 art directors, 315 people in the short-film and animated-feature branch, 253 in music, 225 editors and 161 cinematographers. Just by doing the math, it's clear that the fifth nominee for cinematography got in with fewer than 30 votes.

Fun as it would be to chalk up the votes, they're highly classified. The academy prefers that we think of the Oscars as something that has more to do with stardust than with stats.

--By Jamie Malanowski