The rundown
At 2:30, an academy spokeswoman takes the stage and warns that we have one hour until we will be swept clear of the room. "If you have problems, now is the time to solve them," she says to the growing camera corps who are now set up throughout the theater's rows.

At the front of the room, a man squats on the floor feeding slides into a dozen carousels. Two academy employees stand above him, arms cross. I ask, "Are those —"

"They're real," I'm told. "They're the real thing." And the men train a menacing stare my way lest I try for a peek.

 

The maestro enters
Minutes later, the director of both the nominations announcements and the Oscar ceremony itself, Louis J. Horvitz, sweeps in flamboyantly in a dark overcoat. He is met by two assistants, who seemed flanked by a dozen more, who lead him directly to the stage where they use a small digital camera to take a picture of him smiling in front of the podium.

Horvitz takes his chair at the command console in the room's center. Set up for his arrival are a pyramid of five monitors, a spiral-bound script of the show, a giant digital clock, two pencils, two erasers, a pencil sharpener and little dispensers of four different colored Post-It flags. He glances with a steady, but deeply searching gaze from each of the monitors back to the script to the clock to the monitors again, calling into a headset orders to adjust the lights, sound, camera angles.

He begins the run-through, studying the shots and snapping his fingers toward the man sitting to his left when he wants a cut between cameras. In his 10th year directing the event, Horvitz reflects, "It's [like] we're going to play the Super Bowl again and…have to duplicate the win."

Breakfast of the gods
At 3:30 we are swept out of the theater and into the alley, where we trudge like vagrants around to the front of the building where after passing through the metal detectors we will be served breakfast. After the build-up the buffet turns out to be scrambled eggs, bacon, French toast and hash browns, bagels and muffins, fruit and cereal, juice, an espresso maker and, not at all surprising considering the crowd, Bloody Marys.

The academy lobby quickly fills and the mood turns as buoyant and cheery as a roomful of journalists is capable of, the magical effect of free food on the media. Along the edges, publicists, on hand to be the first to bear the news to their clients, nervously chatter while awaiting zero hour. One in a pink baseball cap says to a friend, "I try just to stay away from people. It's just too early to exchange pleasantries."

The guardian
Standing in the middle of the room respectable as a Swiss Guard, a man in a conservative business suit sips coffee and studies the crowd. I introduce myself and learn he is Bradley Oltmanns, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a.k.a. the Bearer of the Ballots. Having delivered the names of the nominees at 9 p.m. the previous night, Oltmanns says his work is done, but he wanted to come back and survey the scene.

When I ask how it feels to be the only person in the room who knows the secret we have all gathered for, Oltmanns laughs, saying it will be a relief to have the news out and confesses, "I've assiduously avoided conversing about movies with anyone for the past week."

The countdown begins
At 5:20, the crowd is led up the stairs back to the theater. Many race for open seats in the front, while cameras grapple to set up. Every 10 square feet or so a TV reporter stands speaking into a camera, narrating the building tension.

At his table, Horvitz scans back and forth between his script with the countdown times written at the top of the page and the TV monitors. He stands at his console, rocking back and forth on his brown leather loafers, snapping his finger at his side. He leans into the mike and intones, "Five minutes."

At the front of the room, Andy Hazlewood serenely surveys the crowd, "Working no bugs at the moment," he nods.

Four minutes to go. The back rows of the theater are filled with publicists, cell phones poised at the ready, prepped to break the news to their clients. "It is what it is," one sighs to a friend, seemingly bracing herself to make an unpleasant call.

Two minutes and the room falls nearly silent. The publicists stop their chatter. Just to the side, one lone reporter suddenly goes on the air. In a voice of booming enthusiasm, he manages to get out the words, "'CRASH' DIRECTOR PAUL HAGGIS" before the sound of his shouting breaks the nervous tension and sends the publicists' section into a paroxysm of giggles, which in turn cause the reporter to break down and crack up on camera.

Horvitz speaks, "20 seconds...15...10..." and the music rises.