THE BELL CURVE:

The Motion Picture Academy Award ceremony is one of those hallowed institutions that long ago planted itself in our culture with a sense of permanence in which the relative quality of the product is less important than the institution itself.

I’ve been engaged with it ever since it came to us only by radio, and I’ll be watching it Sunday play out for the 81st time, even though I no longer recognize many of the finalists nor the people who introduce them nor the cacophonous music with unsingable lyrics contesting for best song.

But I do have several special inducements besides habit for watching.

In the two decades I covered Hollywood for the National Observer and several national magazines, I attended the Academy Awards 15 times, and the memories of those evenings are still vivid — and has probably been pumped up over the years.

The ceremonies were then held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center, and accredited members of the press were provided two seats in the auditorium as well as access to the winners and presenters at a media center backstage where I hung out, and small dramas sometimes took place.

I remember particularly the free-for-all in 1978 between Jane Fonda, who won Best Actress for “Coming Home,” and producer Michael Cimono, who won Best Picture with “The Deer Hunter.” Both films dealt with the Vietnam War and the issue was Fonda’s loud criticism of Cimono’s fictionalizing of history.

My wife and daughters shared my two seats in the theater with foreign students who were living with us at the time and with UCI students of mine looking to a career in the arts.

One who always remembers his evening at the Oscars whenever we connect is Stephen Silverman, an editor at People magazine who has written four fine biographies of notable film directors.

It always pleased me to get into the line of limousines in my beat-up Toyota and unload my young passengers on the red carpet where the people who had been waiting in grandstands for God knows how many hours tried to figure out who we were.

I don’t know if that system has moved over to the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood where the Academy Awards are now.

But my memories will likely be a greater motivation than this year’s array of films for watching at the family party that has met for many decades on Oscar night to eat, drink, debate the merits of the contestants and pick winners.

I’ve seen only three of the five finalists for Best Picture, but I have a feeling that my choice of “Frost/Nixon” would have held up had I seen them all.

The performance of Frank Langella as Nixon was pitch-perfect in catching the complexity of this man and the physical tics that I remember in the few times I covered him.

A few days after seeing “Frost/Nixon,” I found myself having breakfast with my friend and house shrink, Dr. Joseph Pursch, who practices in Newport Beach and lectures around the world.

Even though he’s known for having treated White House families, he never met Nixon or the younger Bush.

But when I asked him if he thought our departed president would break down under the type of questioning that finally produced that result with Nixon, he said, “No. George W. Bush was always doing God’s work.

He saw himself in a solid place with the ultimate in support from his religion. Nixon was maybe halfway to that place and so was more vulnerable than Bush.”

Why did Nixon expose himself in this way?

“First, the money. He got $600,000 and a piece of the action. Then, his low regard for the man he was going up against. But most of all he thought the interviews would enhance his place in history. This was three years after he left Washington and he hoped the exposure could start his return to public recognition.

“Oddly enough, that’s what Frost wanted for himself — personal recognition to give him power in his line of work. And it had almost slipped away when his staff urged the tough stuff in the last interview. Neither one had a benefit to the nation in mind.”

Pursch recalled the ending to an earlier movie about Nixon that he thought captured his essence. “He is seen leaving the White House down a stairway of pictures of all the presidents, and he stops in front of John Kennedy and says: ‘I can never be admired and loved as you are because when people look at you, they see what they would like to be. And when they look at me, they see what they are.’”

So I’ll put my money on “Frost/Nixon” Sunday night — and hope the young ones at my party will fill me in on all those people on the screen I don’t know.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.