FORGET about the golden statue. The most coveted item in Hollywood this weekend is not made from precious metal, or inscribed with the name of a winning starlet. It is a ticket to the Oscars ceremony itself.

The system of doling out tickets to the biggest event in showbusiness has long been the cause of shameless favour-mongering, inter-office politics and celebrity tantrums.

This year, however, things are worse than ever. A new and squeaky-clean bureaucrat called Thomas “Eliot Ness” Thanangaden has taken charge of seating and a revised ticket lottery has been introduced.

Even the fortunate 3,300 who get tickets for the event at the Kodak Theatre, in the rather unglamorous setting of the Hollywood & Highland mall, are not always happy. That is because there are Oscar tickets — and Oscar tickets. The real deal will provide a seat in the orchestra section. A compromise will put the guest on the main floor (parterre). As for the upstairs mezzanine — Siberia, as regular Oscar-goers call it — most A-Listers would rather stay at home.

As if this pecking order was not enough for Hollywood’s overworked personal assistants to contend with, there is another, potentially even more disruptive, wild card: the Governors Ball (written with no apostrophe). Only about 1,600 tickets for the ball are available, and most VIPs will not show up for even the best seats at the Kodak Theatre without an accompanying invitation to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ official aftershow celebration.

Invitations for the widely photographed, non-official aftershow parties, which include the infamous Vanity Fair shindig at Morton’s Steakhouse, and Sir Elton John’s Aids Foundation benefit, can be similarly difficult to obtain.

“(The Academy Awards) should be a celebration, and instead there’s clawing and fighting over who gets what ticket and who sits where,” one studio executive told Daily Variety.

Ric Robertson, executive administrator for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, responded: “Any system that produces a wide range of unhappy people is probably pretty fair. If everyone is equally unhappy, then maybe we’re doing it right.”

Much of this year’s grumbling is because four of the five movies nominated for Best Picture were made by so-called “mini-majors”, the arty, semi-independent offshoots of large studios such as Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox. Yet tickets are allocated according to a studio’s size, with majors given ten pairs of tickets and the mini-majors only six pairs.

Studios always managed to play the system to their advantage, but this has become impossible after the appointment of the new Oscar ticket chief, Mr Thanangaden. This year, all those who have already been allocated seats must remove their names from the lottery, ending a loophole that had allowed some executives to get double allocations.

Oscars veterans point out that before the awards moved to the Kodak in 2001, the ticket situation was arguably worse. When the event was held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, there were only 2,500 seats.ABC’s three-hour live broadcast earns $50 million in advertising, but only 41.5 million viewers watched last year, well down on 1998’s 55.2 million.

THE BOOKIES' FAVOURITES
BRITISH HOPES

Best actress
Keira Knightley
(Pride and Prejudice) 33/1

Dame Judi Dench
(Mrs Henderson Presents) 33/1

Best supporting actress
Rachel Weisz
(Constant Gardener) 4/11

TOP ODDS

Best Film
Brokeback Mountain 1/2

Best Director
Ang Lee
(Brokeback Mountain)1/12

Best Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman
(Capote) 1/7

Best Supporting Actor
Paul Giamatti
(Cinderella Man) 5/6

Best Actress
Reese Witherspoon
(Walk The Line) 2/7

Best Supporting Actress
Rachel Weisz 4/11
(prices courtesy of William Hill)

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