Every year, it seems, the hubbub surrounding the Oscars grows bigger and louder. It's no longer a show without a "pre-show." It's no longer a matter of conversation, but a trigger for Las Vegas odds-makers. Watching the winners accept their trophies is almost anticlimactic, given the amount of television coverage they get in the weeks preceding the event.

The party's over: a workman hauls off one of the giant Oscars after this year's Academy Award nominee luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

In years like this one, when big-time Hollywood movies share the honors with smaller, offbeat films that most people haven't seen, some folks complain that the Oscars have lost their luster. (How many people do you know who actually saw last year's Best Actress, Hilary Swank, in Boys Don't Cry, in a theater before the awards were handed out?)

I beg to differ. In spite of the current glut of award shows we have to suffer through, the Academy Awards remains unique. There is no other honor in American pop culture that can match it for history or continuity.  Seventy years of tradition is almost unfathomable in a community as fickle and trendy as Hollywood.

Despite their quirks and foibles, the Oscar voters remain impervious to box-office pressure, trying to maintain an admirable standard of excellence. How else to explain the number of small-scale films that have been honored in recent years, shutting out the mainstream competition? Nor can an Oscar be bought. A promotional ad campaign in the Hollywood trade papers can remind voters of a great performance, but they can't convince Academy members that something was good when it wasn't.

I remember the days of stiff-collared tuxedo shirts and bouffant gowns, and the era when some awards would be presented in New York, precipitating a primitive transcontinental split-screen.

I remember the night that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared as presenters, and he twirled her around in a seemingly impromptu dance move on their way to the podium. Thrilling!

I remember the days of Bob Hope as host--and his funniest line, "Welcome to the Oscars, or as they're known in my house, Passover."

And I remember the brouhaha when Hope was usurped by Johnny Carson, a TV personality who had virtually no movie credentials. Carson defended himself by explaining that he had in fact appeared in the Connie Francis movie Looking for Love, and added that the movie was being transferred to volatile nitrate film, ensuring its destruction.

Swirling around in my memory are emotional highlights--like Louise Fletcher, the unforgettable Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "signing" her thanks to her parents--and moments when present-day Hollywood acknowledged the past. Not long after the reclusive Mary Pickford appeared on a remote hookup to accept an honorary award, Jack Nicholson won his first Oscar, for Cuckoo's Nest, and thanked Miss Pickford for pioneering the concept of actors receiving a percentage of a movie's profits! Another time, relative newcomer Ryan O'Neal presented an award alongside the still-charming woman who'd won the first Best Actress Oscar in 1929, Janet Gaynor.

One of the major upheavals in my life was moving to Los Angeles and coming to terms, first-hand, with what I already knew but never quite absorbed: the ceremony begins in daylight! Instead of staying up late, I now had to battle early rush-hour traffic with Angelenos racing home to catch the 6:00 broadcast.

Then, one year, I had the ultimate experience: Entertainment Tonight sent me to cover arrivals. At that time, Leeza Gibbons handled that task on a regular basis, with her usual poise, but in 1991 she came down with strep throat. I asked my then-producer why he was sending me, when I had no experience. He explained that with the number of TV crews on hand, it was important to have a familiar face the arriving stars would recognize and go to.

"In other words," I said, "I'm there as bait."

"That's about it," he replied.

So it was that at 3:30 in the afternoon I made my way to downtown Los Angeles and the venerable Shrine Auditorium, where a vinyl canopy had been erected over the red carpet, as there was a threat of rain. I noticed that the covering didn't extend to the press line, which meant that I might be soaking wet while interviewing an array of dry celebrities.

Fortunately, the rain never came, but the celebrities did. I quickly learned that all the rules of politeness I'd learned growing up would have to be discarded at a moment's notice. Such niceties as not shouting at someone, maintaining eye contact during a conversation, and saying a proper hello to a person's spouse would suffer body blows during my two-hour stint. Goodness knows, I tried my best.

As I'd been warned, the flow of celebrities was slow at first. Denzel Washington arrived quite early, as his wife was pregnant at the time, and they wanted to avoid a last-minute crush. This also gave the actor plenty of time to chat with all the television crews on hand without any feeling of pressure.

During our first hour we only logged a handful of interviews. Then, in the final twenty minutes, the red carpet was mobbed...and securing a one-on-one with every star was no longer guaranteed.

"KEVIN! KEVIN! KEVIN! KEVIN! KEVIN!" I shouted at Mr. Costner, trying to be heard above the other reporters, and hoping he would stop at our camera site (which I wasn't allowed to leave). This being the year of Dances With Wolves, it was imperative that I get him to talk to ET. He saw me, smiled, and approached our microphone. Whew!

One of the challenges of covering a star-studded event such as this is not missing out on a major star because you're busy interviewing someone else when they happen to turn up. Sure enough, as I was talking to Francis Ford Coppola, along came Julia Roberts--then riding the crest of a wave called Pretty Woman. Trying not to shortchange Coppola, I kept Roberts in my field of peripheral vision, and saw to my great relief that CNN, to my right, was not letting go of her so quickly. Another whew! I got my turn with Julia, and all was well.

Or was it?

Having never performed these duties before, I didn't know what I was supposed to ask the stars. Soon I found myself reduced to a level of babble that I found embarrassing but useful.

"Some night, huh?"

"How about this crowd?"

And, of course, "Who designed your outfit?"

The stars were incredibly gracious.

Since the Oscarcast is live, it starts at 6:00 on the nose, and any stars that are late aren't likely to stop and chat. That meant I was free, at 6:01, to hop in a car and head home to watch the rest of the show.

It was an odd feeling to see the stars on the World Stage when I'd been inches away from them just a bit earlier. When Jeremy Irons appeared I told my wife, "I talked to him tonight."

"What was he like?" she asked.

"How would I know?" I replied truthfully. Shouting a superficial bit of banter back and forth over the din of a crowd hardly constitutes a conversation.

But you know what? It was incredibly exciting to be there.