Tomorrow night, as American Beauty fights it out for Oscar glory with Cider House Rules, the chances are that some enterprising producer is already looking ahead to next year's ceremony and the accolades that await his as yet unproduced big-budget tearjerker, Fulgear's Fortune.

Mr Big (our imaginary money-grabbing movie mogul) envisages a Sidney Poitier type in the role of Willie Fulgear. Willie is the 61-year-old black man from Los Angeles who last week discovered 52 stolen Oscar statuettes under a heap of rubbish near his home. The Hollywood wags are already saying that it's the only way a "brother" can get an Oscar these days.

Fulgear, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment and salvages discarded machine parts for a living, couldn't believe his good fortune (hence Mr Big's working title for the movie) when he stumbled on the bronze booty. On Thursday he was handed a cheque for $50,000 from Roadway Express Co and given a ticket for the ceremony in the Shrine Auditorium in downtown LA.

This is Hollywood, so Fulgear is already hoping the find will secure him a book contract or (and this is where Mr Big saunters in) a poignantly crafted movie about his life. Fulgear's 15 minutes of fame is probably the best example yet of how the biggest story from the biggest show in town is rarely cinematic endeavour.

Italian director Roberto Benigni won an award last year for his superb movie Life is Beautiful, but is remembered most for his chair-climbing antics and his admission that he wanted to make love to everyone there. Cher's see-through frock-horror garnered more attention the year she won Best Actress for Moonstruck than did her golden award itself.

Tom Hanks had television viewers groaning when he invoked a heaven "packed with too many angels" after winning best actor in 1993 for Philadelphia. His acceptance speech after winning the same award for Forrest Gump was similarly saccharine ("God bless America," he blubbered) - proving that Oscar life is like a particularly sickening box of chocolates.

No one knows this better than Gwyneth Paltrow. According to a recent interview with the actress, the Oscar she won for her part in Shakespeare in Love last year remains confined in bubble wrap in the basement of her Manhattan town house. So mortified was Paltrow by her tearful acceptance speech - in which she seemed to thank everyone on Earth - that she took to her bed, answering the phone (as one does) only to Madonna. Paltrow clutching her Oscar to her bosom and weeping all over her pink Grace Kelly gown is the abiding image from last year's ceremony.

Oscars have been the source of intense fascination and scrutiny ever since a few members of Hollywood royalty decided it would be awfully nice to start an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1927. The Oscar itself was designed by Dublinborn Cedric Gibbons, an art director who went on to receive 11 awards. His design was first scribbled on the tablecloth at a Hollywood banquet and the resulting Iron Man was sculpted by George Stanley.

Depending on which story you prefer, the statuette was called Oscar either because the academy's first librarian, Margaret Herrick, saw it and said "Why, it looks just like my Uncle Oscar," or because Bette Davis remarked that its backside reminded her of her ex-husband's face.

Over the years, the Oscar glamfest has carved a role for itself as the most important event on the global movie calendar. An Oscar can double the box office take of a movie and for the elite of the movie scene, showbiz commentators say it is akin to canonisation. Many in the business would prefer an Oscar to a Nobel prize. George Bernard Shaw, who won one for the original screen version of Pygmalion, is the only person in history to have received both.

It is the hype, glamour and sheer silliness of the Oscars that really draws the crowds. Traditionally, members of the American public queue up outside the venue more than a week before the event in order to be first in line for the best vantage point to view the arriving stars.

This year, for the first time, the faithful have been banned from camping out. Far better off are the Oscar seat fillers whose job it is to occupy the seats of the stars when the chosen ones go to the bar or the toilet so that the cavernous auditorium looks full during every minute of the four-hour event.

As much as he is coveted for his career-making capabilities, a fair amount of scorn has been heaped on poor Oscar over the years. George C. Scott refused to accept his for Patton in 1971, calling the ceremony "offensive, barbarous and innately corrupt". When Woody Allen won his for Annie Hall he went to play jazz in a New York nightclub instead. Marlon Brando sent Native American activist Sasheen Littlefeather to reject his Oscar to resounding boos from the audience.

Oscar has been good to the Irish, although the statuettes seem to have disappeared since the days when we expected as a matter of course to receive at least one high-profile nomination. Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot, The Field and In the Name of the Father and Neil Jordan's The Crying Game were nominated or won awards during a period when it seemed the Irish film industry could do no wrong.

"For such a small community we had quite an effect," says Morgan O'Sullivan, chairman of our own version of the Oscars - the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA). That award is called an Aisling, incidentally. Maybe it will catch on.

BUT tomorrow night in LA, with all the limos booked, the gowns ordered and the valium supplies secured, is all about who ends up in the exclusive Oscar winners' circle. With each tear of the envelope there will be more adrenalin coursing through the Shrine Auditorium than in an Olympic Stadium.

Perhaps more nervous than even the nominees will be last year's best actress, Ms Paltrow, who returns, as is traditional, to present the same award to this year's winner. Her only consolation as she arrives on stage is that tomorrow night someone else's bad haircut, bad manners or bad taste will replace her as the latest silly Oscar story.

She can also take heart from the fact that someone once made an even more embarrassing acceptance speech than she. Sally Fields was unable to hide the desperate need for the approval of her Hollywood peers when she won her Best Actress award.

"You like me, you really like me," she beamed. Michael Dwyer's Oscar predictions, Weekend, Page 7