The widespread assumption was that the Best Adapted Screenplay prize would go to either ADAPTATION's Charlie Kaufman (my personal favorite) and THE HOURS' David Hare -- and then suddenly there was a startled Ronald Harwood on-stage, taking bows for his work on THE PIANIST and giving a big chunk of the credit to director Roman Polanski.

At this point, the vibe at the Oscar party I was attending (thrown by John and Lynn Pleshette at their beautiful Spanish hillside home, near Beachwood Canyon) started to tilt heavily to the left. People were saying to each other, "What's happening? What's happening? CHICAGO isn't going to lose the Best Picture Oscar, is it? No...no way."

CHICAGO helmer Rob Marshall had recently won the DGA award for Best Director, allegedly by a wide voting margin, and the smart money had him nabbing the Oscar as well. But then Harrison Ford took the stage to announce the winner of the Best Director Oscar. He tore open the envelope, looked up with a churlish grin, and said, "Roman Polanski."

The room exploded. Shouts, screams, pandemonium.

The anti-Polanski smears had failed, and support for a director's art (along with a rejection of the notion that his personal transgressions should have figured into the voting) had triumphed. The camera caught a smiling Harvey Weinstein, the Miramax chief who'd financed and pushed hard for an across-the-board CHICAGO triumph, but his smile had a certain frozen-in-place quality that indicated a quietly building terror.

Suddenly an anecdote about Jack Nicholson I'd heard at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday - i.e., that he'd been urging Academy members to vote for Brody and THE PIANIST, even though a vote for Brody would obviously undercut his own Best Actor nomination for ABOUT SCHMIDT -- flashed in my head. Polanski is an old pal of Nicholson's, and if you know anything about who Jack really is, this story (whether it was true or not) fit right into place.

Then Kirk and Michael Douglas took the stage to announce the Best Picture Winner, and they proclaimed in unison (and with an understandable enthusiasm) that CHICAGO was the winner.

The energy in the room dropped. Nobody expected CHICAGO to lose, but the astonishment of those three PIANIST wins was still reverberating and a sense that perhaps the Miramax team might be dealt a final inconceivable blow had taken hold, despite the seeming absurdity of such a hope being realized less than an hour earlier. But fine...fine. The ole razzle-dazzle had razzle-dazzled. With six Oscars under its belt, the CHICAGO team was positioned to up its box-office take even higher and become the most financially successful musical in Hollywood history.

But man, what a night. I didn't win a thing (I only got 14 right out of 24) and I couldn't have been happier. I drove straight home (no post-Oscar parties for this player, especially with nearly every print journalist of note getting disinvited to the big soirees over the last few days) and got right back into CNN and the war.

As It Turned...

Peter O'Toole's moment at the mike was pure class, but I hope something actually comes of it. A few choice roles, say, in some yet-to-be-cast, high-quality films. Perhaps now, finally, the rights-holders to BECKET ('64), in which O'Toole gave what I've long felt is the greatest and most emotional performance of his life as the shrewd and snarly King Henry II, will arrange for someone to restore this brilliantly-written epic and put it out on DVD. Please!

I was knocked flat by that passionate kiss Adrien Brody gave to Halle Berry when he took the stage to accept his Best Actor trophy. Hail Brody! Here's a guy who's really bounced back from a very rough in start in this business (i.e., being totally cut out of Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE after receiving a build-up in the press that his big moment was about to happen), and who deserves his Oscar ten times over for delivering an uncommonly fine performance.

Cheers and salutations, by the way, to the p.r. people who worked on Brody's behalf -- Michelle Robertson, the Focus Features team, and Laura Kim of MPRM.

The way I see it, CHICAGO deserved the Best Picture Oscar (in the sense that people do like it a lot, that is) and Catherine Zeta Jones absolutely earned her Best Supporting Actress award, but the other four wins seemed dubious, or at least questionable.

No way did CHICAGO deserve to win the Best Art Direction Oscar (not over Dante Ferretti's work on GANGS OF NEW YORK or Dennis Gassner and Richard L. Johnson's work on ROAD TO PERDITION -- sorry) or the one for Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell's costumes for GANGS OF NEW YORK were far more distinctive, creative and alluring).

Martin Walsh's editing of CHICAGO was fast and flashy, but let's be frank and acknowledge that part of Walsh's (and director Rob Marshall's) strategy was to obscure the fact that costars Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger aren't top-of-the-line hoofers. The sound on CHICAGO provided by Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella and David Lee was certainly pro level, but didn't seem that remarkable. The consensus among the folks I saw the show with was that these three guys won their Oscar mostly by being on the CHICAGO bandwagon.

Steve Martin's material was top-of-the-line all the way -- sly, intelligent, adult, urbane. One of his best quips was a declaration that he'd do anything if he could look as good and sexy as Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN star Gael Garcia Bernal, "except, of course, exercise and eat right."

The best anti-war speech (which was really about anti-war-trauma or anti-"collateral damage" to civilians) came from Brody, who received a standing ovation in return. The most obnoxious and over-bearing rant was delivered, of course, by Best Documentary Oscar winner Michael Moore (BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE).

Moore didn't get a whole lot of applause at the Spirit Awards on Saturday when he delivered the same anti-Bush, anti-war tirade he gave at the Oscar ceremony, which perhaps should have told him to try different material. (Not substantively -- I'm not saying Moore is wrong -- but words with a less strident edge.) The response to his Sunday night speech has been described in most accounts as half cheers and half boos, but it sounded like mostly boos to me.

"These are fictitious times with fictitious election results," Moore declared, "where we elect a fictitious president, [and] we go to war to fight a fictitious war for fictitious reasons." Moore said backstage he was completely cool with what he'd said and how it had gone down.

"Anyone who voted for me for this award knew that I wasn't going to give a speech thanking agents and lawyers and agents of lawyers and lawyers of agents," he told reporters. "I'm an American and you don't lose your citizenship when you enter the doors of the Kodak Theatre. I speak my mind in my films and I speak my mind here."

Martin said right after the portly malcontent left the stage that "the teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo."

I felt badly for Martin Scorsese, sitting there solemnly as GANGS OF NEW YORK failed to collect a single Oscar, and probably regretting, to some extent, the whole Miramax-driven campaign, which most people feel was a bit too craven. Then again, as a film critic for a major news weekly said at the Spirit Awards after-party at Shutters on Saturday, "Nobody really likes [GANGS]...I mean, nobody."

Was Denzel Washington's remark as he announced Nicole Kidman's Best Actress Oscar for her Virginias Wolff performance in THE HOURS that she'd won it "by a nose" an unkind jab, or a simple acknowledgement of what everyone has been saying all along?

Hooray for Pedro Almodovar bagging the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his writing of TALK TO HER. He threw in an anti-war, anti-Bush comment of his own when he accepted, saying he'd "like to dedicate this award to all the people that are raising their voices in favor of peace, respect of human rights, democracy and international legality."

The biggest single surprise of the night (the PIANIST wins excepted) was Eminem, Jeff Bass and Luis Resto winning the Best Original Song award for "Lose Yourself," from 8 MILE. It was interesting that Resto, who picked up the award wearing a T-shirt and other street threads, used his 45 seconds mainly to persuade the audience that Eminem (i.e., Marshall Mathers) was an okay, emotionally caring dude -- an obvious reference to the fact that his rep has been lately been leaning in the other direction.

Chris Cooper's Best Supporting Actor win for playing orchid thief John Laroche in Spike Jonze's ADAPTATION was pretty much expected, although it was starting to look over the past couple of weeks that Christopher Walken, who won the BAFTA and SAG awards in this category for playing Leonardo DiCaprio's dad in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, might take it instead.

Cooper's tribute to co-star Meryl Streep, who lost to the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Catherine Zeta Jones, felt true and earnest. He said that "working with this woman was like making great jazz."

I don't know where Elliot Goldenthal's Best Musical Score Oscar for FRIDA came from. I hadn't heard word #1 from anyone that he was favored. Someone said at the party that he'd worked the Academy circuit heavily and basically politicked his ass off. This isn't to put down his work -- it was just a total surprise to hear his name called out.

I was told to vote for Eric Armstrong's THE CHUBB CHUBBS!, which won for Best Animated Short film, but I voted for something else at the last minute -- schmuck. But I knew that the Short Documentary Subject winner, TWIN TOWERS, would prevail. We all did, probably. I'd like to see it sometime soon.

I just can't stop loving that O'Toole guy. According to SCREEN DAILY, he was asked backstage what he thought about movies today, and said: "When they're good, they're very, very good and when they're bad, they're horrible."

Death of Superman

"I do tend to agree with you that WB probably should put the Superman project to bed for the time being, and actually concentrate on some of the other DC properties that they have. Right now, both Superman and Batman are too well defined to really do much with the project. Unless you have something special (which Christopher Nolan may have with Batman, if rumors are true), it might just be best just to do a pass on a project for the time being.

"I think WB is feeling out-maneuvered by Marvel right now. Marvel was able to quickly line up a bunch of films with an interesting set of directors. While not all of them have worked completely (DAREDEVIL was disappointing), most have been moderately good, and boffo at the box office. I'm sure the suits at Time Warner are seeing this as a missed opportunity." -- Jason Birzer

High Octane

"Damn -- leave it to the Academy to turn what had to be the most boring Oscar season in recent history into, without a doubt, the best damn ceremony I've ever seen. (I'm only 22, but still...) I mean, so much about the awards went right. The right movies and people won (except for CHICAGO, but by that time I was so delirious over Polanski's win that I just didn't care). Steve Martin killed, as expected. The political speeches were tasteful except for the one given by Michael Moore, whose inane blubbering pretty much nullified every honor his award represents, especially when people with similar beliefs like Gere, Sarandon and Streisand actually showed some restraint. The look of shock on Harrison Ford's face when he announced Polanski's name was almost as priceless as the one on Halle's face when Adrien Brody, who delivered the best speech of the night, planted one on her. Miyazaki and Eminem won. Gollum won (or the guys who made him did). And the toned-down atmosphere allowed the focus to be placed right back where it should be...on the movies. The Academy would do well to strip down the glitz every year from now on (yeah, right). Best...Oscars...Ever." -- Mark Van Hook, Elon University, NC.