The art of promoting the Academy Awards

CULVER CITY, Calif. -- Artistic appreciation may be the motor that drives Hollywood's awards season, but hype is the gasoline.

For the Oscars to remain relevant in an industry that defines projects in two ways -- hits or flops -- the show planners would like to entice about 55 million people to tune their televisions to ABC Sunday and watch celebrities win what are essentially high-gloss employee of the year prizes.

That's the high-water mark from 1998, when "Titanic" was the big winner.

The marketing blitz this year has included cable TV ads (unique because they urge viewers to change to a different channel), tie-ins with Oprah Winfrey's show and a high-profile airline flight for this year's Oscars from their factory in Chicago (a statuette was passed around the cabin for admiring passengers).

They even let the press into the Oscar theater to photograph the rehearsal seat markers to let fans know in advance what stars will be sitting where.

It's all aimed at boosting the event's TV ratings, which sagged to its lowest point of 33.1 million viewers last year, and the key is to put Oscar in front of people again and again and again.

Before dawn on Tuesday, Oscar telecast producer Joe Roth and actress Julianne Moore, a four-time nominee who will present the editing trophy this year, arrived at a small television studio in Culver City for a promotional marathon.

Thirty interviews in three hours, to be exact.

The questions were fed to them through hidden earpieces, while their responses were beamed to TV stations from Tucson to Boston.

Roth and Moore fielded the same questions repeatedly, but they remained game -- smiling and supplying an answer for the gazillionth time as if it were the first.

"If the lids go down," Roth told Moore, his signature half-open eyes sinking closed, "just give me a ..." And he nudged her with his elbow. "I'll do the same for you."

Among the most repeated questions: "Joe, what kind of surprises can we expect this year?"

"Well, 'surprise' and 'expect' are funny words to have in the same sentence," he responded at one point, but he gave up pointing out paradoxes in favor of talking up host Billy Crystal's multimedia comedy bits and the silly, rather than sappy, tribute to "The Pink Panther" filmmaker Blake Edwards.

Amid the tedium came a few flourishes. After about 10 versions of that question, a broadcaster asked what, specifically, Crystal had planned. "He's going to take his top off," Moore giggled.

When asked what it was like to attend the Academy Awards, Moore became fond of answering: "It's like the biggest prom in the world." Or some variation thereof.

At least twice, she diplomatically deflected questions about whether she'd be surprised to win -- because Moore isn't nominated this year.

"It's always so much fun, but for me the pressure is off because I'm just presenting," she said the first time. The second time, she answered, pleasantly but pointedly: "I'm not nominated this year -- so that would be a big surprise!"

When it was all finished, Moore told the Associated Press that such questions supply a healthy dose of humility: "It's a good reminder that we are not the center of the universe."

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEES

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

Ben Kingsley in "House of Sand and Fog"

Jude Law in "Cold Mountain"

Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation"

Sean Penn in "Mystic River"ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Alec Baldwin in "The Cooler"

Benicio Del Toro in "21 Grams"

Djimon Hounsou in "In America"

Tim Robbins in "Mystic River"

Ken Watanabe in "The Last Samurai"ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Keisha Castle-Hughes in "Whale Rider"

Diane Keaton in "Something's Gotta Give"

Samantha Morton in "In America"

Charlize Theron in "Monster"

Naomi Watts in "21 Grams"ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Shohreh Aghdashloo in "House of Sand and Fog"

Patricia Clarkson in "Pieces of April"

Marcia Gay Harden in "Mystic River"

Holly Hunter in "Thirteen"

Renee Zellweger in "Cold Mountain"BEST PICTURE

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King"

"Lost in Translation"

"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

"Mystic River"

"Seabiscuit"