You Know You've Arrived . . .

. . . When You Stroll Casually Along Oscar's Red Carpet -- Though Taking Those Steps Is a Feat of Choreography

Actress Charlize Theron poses for photographers on the red carpet as she arrives at the 2004 annual Academy Awards. (Kevork Djansezian - AP)

The first and most obvious misnomer about the Academy Awards' red-carpet arrival ceremony is the carpet itself.

It may have been red in 1922 when movie impresario Sid Grauman rolled out Hollywood's first for the opening of his elaborate Egyptian Theatre, but nowadays the red is dead.

Red -- as in the color of blood or fire engines -- tends to photograph a little dark. What's more, those shades don't complement the temporary drapes strung outside the Kodak Theatre, the Oscars' home. So the carpet for tonight's festivities is more pinkish, or perhaps, as an Academy spokeswoman describes it, "cranberry."

The second and more substantial myth about the walk on the red (or cranberry) carpet is that it's somehow ad hoc and informal. Celebrities gliding the carpet tend to fix a look of slight bedazzlement, as if the noise and camera flashes, and all that grubby hubbub among media types and other lesser mortals, were startling and unexpected and really quite overwhelming.

In fact -- sorry to blow the cover on another bit of Hollywood magic -- not much about tonight's red-carpet stroll has been left to chance. How could it be? With 375 credentialed reporters, photographers and TV people on hand, with 350 carefully screened fans sitting in the bleachers, with international TV coverage (including three American TV networks carrying the arrivals live), there's too much at stake in those 500 feet of polyester pile to leave anything to whim.

Everyone -- publicists, media, stars, assorted handlers -- has a role in this set piece, this highly processed product of the celebrity-industrial complex.

The arrivals offer something for everyone involved. Nominees and stars get vast media exposure to plug their movies, their free designer gowns and loaner jewels, and themselves. The news media get access, albeit fleeting, to glamorous faces. The Academy -- officially, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- reaps enormous publicity for itself and its awards.

The Academy has even figured out how to make a few dollars off the arrivals. ABC has a deal that gives it the exclusive right to broadcast live from the carpet's final half-hour, when the mega-celebs tend to traipse through. Other media can keep yakking and taping until the 8 p.m. Eastern showtime, but home viewers will need to click over to ABC if they want to catch the final sashays right then.

And the fans? The fans get old-fashioned "glamour," the illusion of Hollywood as a star-clotted community and weeks of arrivals fashion spreads in InStyle and Us Weekly magazines.

"People love [the arrivals] because they can see what these people look like in daylight," quips Joan Rivers, the catty queen of red-carpet interviewers (she and daughter Melissa will be asking the likes of Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts whom they're wearing for the 11th time tonight on the TV Guide Channel). "It's a rite of passage. And anything can happen. You never know because it's live."

In fact, weeks of preparation go into ensuring that the unexpected doesn't happen.

A-listers making the scene start their 500-foot odyssey at the hangar-size arrival tent at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. After one last security check -- even movie royalty get wanded and metal-detectored -- the famous meet up with their handlers, the small army of personal publicists and Academy-appointed escorts that accompany the celebrated and the nominated. These functionaries have several roles: media go-betweens, traffic cops, clock watchers, hand-holders to the stars.