Messages continue to pour in congratulating PNS for co-producing an Oscar award winning documentary. Even strangers gush to learn PNS editor Sandy Close was just in the audience. So what explains the powerful grip Oscar has on our culture? In part, Close writes, we love the gold plated man because he helps us have faith in ourselves.

SAN FRANCISCO -- I thought my fling with Oscar would be a strictly one-night stand. But a week after filmmaker Jessica Yu thanked me from the stage of Shrine Auditorium for co-producing the documentary that won her an Academy Award, the messages keep pouring in. Strangers gush when they learn I was in the audience. A nun I know beamed at me from her pew in the middle of Holy Week mass and mouthed "Oscar!" Congratulations, a priest whispered as the Easter procession glided by.

Oscar has become America's golden calf -- and not just America's, and not just a calf: what prompted the Czech filmmaker, for example, to cradle his Oscar and talk to it the way one might talk to a child?

It begins, of course, with America's obsession with celebrity, but it does not end there. As one of the mingling throng on Oscar night, I fully expected to be dazzled by the sight of my favorite stars. To my surprise, I recognized almost no one. It was only when I was peering through my rented binoculars ($5) from my third floor balcony seat that I realized the young woman in ghoulish makeup who had stared back at me in the bathroom mirror was Wynona Ryder, now presenting an award.

Up close and personal, Hollywood's glamour fades. Coiffed hair droops, straight seams swerve, stitches stretch to the tearing point. The presenters -- all professional actors -- race nervously through their lines like sixth grade novices; award recipients choke up, with nothing coherent to say. There's a touch of Amateur Night, more sweat and sleaze than savoir-faire. It's hard work being beautiful and the effort shows.

That, a friend suggests, is part of Oscar night's appeal -- to see our celebrities, if only for a fleeting moment, without their masks on straight.

But it is also certainly true that America loves winners. We love the exhilaration of Cuba Gooding accepting his award. Gooding was the lone Oscar winner to thank God for his good fortune (unlike the Grammy Awards, where soul and country music winners invariably thank Divine Providence). Oscar night is about fate, whimsical fate -- the broadcast is "live" and we love the ritual of lightning; where will it strike?

But, finally, the Oscars are about movies -- particularly American movies, the country's number one export -- and what movies tell us about ourselves. In an era when cynicism regarding public life runs so deep that even accusations of treason go ignored, movies are the only opportunity for us to be unabashed optimists, to believe collectively in the improbable.

Last year's Best Picture Oscar went to "Braveheart." Everyone knew it wasn't the best, but who cared?

Wasn't America at the time in love with leaders with conviction (Newt comes to mind), men and women of moral character ? This year "The English Patient" triumphed, reflecting not just a nostalgia for the great epic romances but also our hunger for intimate life.

For as long as I can remember, I have devoured movies. I must have them. I go to movies to find out what I believe in. I'll forgive technical flaws if the narrative grips me. One of my favorite film heroes, Snake Blisken, betrayed by the entire political spectrum from left to right, plunges the world into permanent darkness at the end of "Escape from LA." Then he strikes a match and lights up a cigarette in a kiss-my-ass finale. And I cheer.

"Breathing Lessons," the film I helped produce, is about a man who lives in an iron lung and turns his breathing into poetry. Keeping the pain of life at bay with the irony of his words, he teaches us how to live. Last year Sundance gave "Breathing Lessons" second billing to a much longer documentary celebrating abortion. I suspect Sundance's judges accepted "Breathing Lessons" not for its message but for the instant cachet of diversity -- a film about a cripple made by an Asian American filmmaker.

So there I sat, hoping Hollywood had been able to hear the eloquence of Mark O'Brien's voice and see the artistry with which Jessica Yu brought it to the screen. Early in the evening,, the woman sitting next to me, a woman who worked "for the studios" all her life, confided that this was her 17th Oscar. "I come every year for the creativity. Many unknowns will be discovered tonight," she explained.

I don't remember which star announced the winner in the short documentary category. But I know that when I heard the words "Breathing Lessons: the Life and Work of Mark O'Brien," my seat mate, now my collaborator for the night's events, gave me a knowing smile.