The Ballots, Please

From his corner office on the 50th floor of the PricewaterhouseCoopers building in downtown Los Angeles, Gregory Garrison can see to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. By Friday, his view will reach into the future.

Garrison and fellow accountant Rick Rosas are the only two souls who will know the outcome of the Oscar race early. Final Oscar ballots are due in their offices by 5 p.m. today. On Wednesday, they start counting.

Pricewaterhouse has tallied the Oscar ballots for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences every year for the last 70 years. Consequently, it takes its role in this event very seriously. There is no Oscar betting pool at the office, no “Russell Crowe versus Ben Kingsley” gossip around the water cooler. And definitely no loose lips. (Garrison admits that “when I first started doing this [seven years ago], my kids and friends would joke around. But [now] they know I’m not going to give them any hints or anything.”)

Accountants, weary from tax season, covet the appointments to the elite five-member preliminary ballot-counting team. “One of the ways we work to keep this thing a secret--in a town with very few secrets--is we don’t get many people involved,” Garrison said.

Once all 6,000 ballots have arrived, they’re stacked in a conference room and divided among the young staffers, who are forbidden from talking or consulting one another. “We also put the fear of God into them before they start,” Garrison said.

From then on, it’s just Garrison and Rosas. Their final tally determines the winners. “It’s easy,” Garrison said. “You just add them up and whoever has the most votes wins.”

By Friday, Garrison and Rosas are stuffing envelopes. The envelopes, that is, that will be handed to award presenters during the show.

By Saturday, the two accountants are memorizing the winners’ names--just in case the envelopes don’t make it to the show.

“Actually at the end of the day ... you’re familiar enough with it then, that most of them you’ll know,” Garrison said. They won’t, of course, write down anything that could get into the wrong hands.

Then the envelopes are locked in a safe at the Pricewaterhouse offices. On Sunday afternoon, Garrison and Rosas will travel separately to the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, each with an armed guard and a briefcase full of Oscar winners. Once inside the theater, they will be posted on either side of the stage, handing out envelopes to award presenters throughout the show.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Garrison said. “It’s different than what we do the rest of the year. You’re part of the biggest party in town.”

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Space for a Classic

The audience had grown slightly restless. In some rows, popcorn flew between the seats. Then, the 100-piece symphony orchestra took the stage, striking the well-known opening bars. A hush fell over the crowd, and even those whose feet did not reach the floor fell silent in anticipation.

Five-time Academy Award-winning composer John Williams conducted the Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles in a live performance of the soundtrack during the premiere of the 20th anniversary version of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” at the Shrine Auditorium on Saturday afternoon. The event, which benefited Special Olympics, drew 3,600 people, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver as well as Melissa Etheridge and Melissa Joan Hart.

At the after party, a replica of E.T.’s spaceship doubled as a diner, and the exposition hall, decked out in fir and leaves, doubled as a camping ground for families, who munched on pizza and hotdogs.

“I cried,” said Neve Campbell about the movie, as she passed by.

At one end of the hall, a crowd had gathered around E.T.’s creator.

Drew Barrymore threw her arms around her godfather, Steven Spielberg, kissing his cheek and whispering in his ear. Then it was his wife Kate Capshaw’s turn at the ear. She whispered, Spielberg smiled.

As Barrymore made a beeline out of crowd where well-wishers, friends and family competed for the director’s attention, waves of people almost knocked over Haley Joel Osment.

Producer Ron Meyer made his way toward Spielberg, shouting salutations across the table that stood between them. He introduced his family.

“Families don’t change,” said Spielberg, explaining the movie’s status as a classic.

With its re-release, the movie has changed, though, as some scenes have gotten a digital facelift. But the original will be preserved on the DVD release of the movie, which will contain the updated film and the 1980 original--for the purist, Spielberg said with a laugh.

“There are a lot of purists out there,” he said. “I respect that.”

C. Thomas Howell, who played Tyler, one of the children in the movie, tried to get past handlers and security guards. “I just wanted to say hi to my boss.”

As the evening wore on, big people pressed flesh and exchanged business cards. And on chairs scattered around the replica spaceship, little people slept.

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Quote/Unquote

“I don’t want to sit here and pretend that everything’s great, that I’m some sort of enlightened person,” Ben Affleck says in the April issue of Details magazine due out next Tuesday. “I have a lot of struggles. I’m conflicted. I think about things. I wake up in the middle of the night. I have regrets. I’m very insecure. So it’s not like I’m living in some great tranquil state out in my rock garden.”

Sightings

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Ralph Fiennes at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard on Saturday, asking for introductory books on Jung.

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City of Angles runs Tuesday through Friday. E-mail angles@latimes.com