It started with hysteria. As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences planned the 72nd Oscars, a growing panic seized the nation: What if all the computers suddenly self-destruct on Jan. 1, 2000, crippling life as we know it?

“This is not one of the summer movies where you can close your eyes during the scary parts,” President Bill Clinton warned of the fear of the looming Y2K bug in a 1998 speech.

Americans stockpiled food, bought guns and prepared for the apocalyptic worst. But not the academy. As Sid Ganis, a former academy president then on the Board of Governors, recalled, “The contingency plan was we scratched our heads and said, ‘Oh my goodness, what are we going to do?’” As the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on the new millennium, the computers survived. But a string of foreboding events soon paved the way for a wholly unpredictable 2000 Oscars.

First, thousands of ballots vanished. Ten mail bags containing about 80 percent of the voting sheets were misrouted, resulting in a mad dash to resend new mailers three weeks before the ceremony.