Meanwhile, Backstage at the Shrine . . .

Winners love a landslide victory, whether it’s politics or Oscars.

And there were so many “The Last Emperor” winners that comedian Billy Crystal quipped backstage that the movie “has just passed Michael Dukakis in the primary in New York next Tuesday.”

Even Olympia Dukakis, one of the rare non-”Emperor” winners, saw a political bent to this year’s awards. Declaring that this was “the year of the Dukakii,” she said her Oscar would be good for her cousin, the presidential candidate: “I think the name Dukakis has become more familiar.”

Cher, too, benefited from the popular vote. Winning best actress with a standing ovation from the audience, she nevertheless confessed to reporters, “in the end, I just thought I wasn’t going to win.”

Right before Paul Newman announced her name, she said, “It was really weird. It’s like I went into another place. And then they called my name, and I was still in another place.”

Entering the press tent sans shoes--”my feet are killing me”--Cher made some immediate comment about her apparel. She called it “conservative,” noting that “everything was covered, I think. And even if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter.”

Still, the dress was a little formal for her post-Oscar celebration plans with family and friends. “If I lose, we’ll go have pizza. And if we win, we’ll go have pizza,” she explained.

She elaborated about why she singled out “Silkwood” co-star “Mary Louise Streep”--”that’s her name”--in her acceptance speech. “It never occurred to me that I would be competing in the same category with her. She taught me so much. I knew nothing.”

But that was then, her first big role in a big move. And this was now, her first Oscar.

Bernardo Bertolucci, a true movie-making veteran, also received his first Oscar. But Oscar kept coming and coming for the “Last Emperor,” nine altogether with Bertolucci himself capturing two. “It’s very encouraging,” he said, elated.

But “Last Emperor” producer Jeremy Thomas blatantly refused to answer questions about David Puttnam, the ex-Columbia Pictures chief who had given the “Last Emperor” the green light. “He didn’t produce the film,” Thomas said curtly.

Michael Douglas, looking relieved at having captured the best actor Oscar, couldn’t stop talking about his father. Or maybe it was just that the press couldn’t stop asking him about Kirk Douglas.

Noting that his father had encouraged him to play a villain, Douglas said he had to give his father some credit for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko since, after all, “I’ve got half my father’s genes in me so I guess I’ve got a lot of Father in all my parts.”

Douglas poignantly admitted that he joined others in wondering if he could ever be as good an actor as his father: “There’s always been doubts. My father carved a very strong image, and it took a long while for me to find mine.”

Noting that his father was “too nervous” to attend the awards ceremonies, Douglas reiterated backstage how much the older actor deserved an Oscar after three unsuccessful tries. “I really hoped tonight I was able to tell how I truly do share this with him,” Douglas said.

Douglas appeared eager to play more “bad roles” after he takes a hiatus from work this summer.

He also said he will “always continue” to act as well as produce: “I would be a fool not to continue.” And though he had felt “great satisfaction” when he won an Oscar as producer of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1976 because it had been a dark horse, he confided that “for me, looking for some credibility and recognition personally, this probably means a bit more.”

Just as Douglas wanted to share his Oscar, John Patrick Shanley, writer of the best original screenplay for “Moonstruck,” acknowledged that he, too, had mentors.

“Oh, Shakespeare, Shaw . . .,” the New York playwright quipped. “They’re pretty good.”

Shanley said writing for the theater had “helped” him pen “Moonstruck,” and he was planning to sandwich more theater between his movie work. But he stopped short of complaining how the writers’ strike is holding up his next project, another Norman Jewison film.

“I am on it. I am in it. And I embody it,” Shanley said proudly about the walkout.

Dukakis had refused to believe she was a shoo-in--despite what people were telling her. “I kept a corner of my brain uncommitted because things can happen,” she told reporters. “I tried not to be too convinced.”

And maybe, too, she had learned a lesson from cousin Michael, whose campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has had its ups and downs throughout the primary season. She was eager to get to a telephone to talk to him since he had been watching the awards from the same Italian restaurant in New York that was featured in “Moonstruck.”

The actress’s mind was as much on politics as on her film career. “I’m running to be a Dukakis delegate from New Jersey,” she said. “I’ll continue to act and to campaign.”

While obviously committed politically, she is as yet uncommitted to her next movie role. “No film has been secured,” she said. But, now with an Oscar in her hand, “I hope it’ll mean working in wonderful parts, with wonderful people, for wonderful money.”

Connery, holding a glass of wine, said the first thing he was going to do was “to have a few drinks. Oops, I’ve started somewhat early.”

Age was much on Connery’s mind backstage. He seemed to agree with Chevy Chase’s remarks that some Oscars are given to actors simply because they’re too old to have never won. “It’s for an accumulation of a body of work,” said the gray-bearded Connery, who was attending his first Academy Awards show in 30 years. “I’m thrilled.”

Nor did it much matter that the Oscar was for a supporting role. Small “never deterred me from taking a part anyway,” he said modestly.

So now Connery can go back to playing James Bond in good conscience? “ Nooooo ,” he sheepishly told reporters. “I’m too old for that now.”

Too old to worry about becoming a Hollywood insider?

“I still think I’m an outsider,” he said.

And too old to elaborate on who the “enemies” were that he had thanked in his speech. “They know who they are,” he said with a laugh.

Connery did have a lot to say, however, about the effect of the writers’ strike. Calling the damage being done to the industry “almost irreparable,” he bitterly complained how his next film role playing Harrison Ford’s father in the Indiana Jones series was “stymied” now.

If Bertolucci’s ears were ringing, it was because award winner after award winner--all “Emperor” colleagues--were singing his praises backstage.

Oscar-winning “Emperor” cinematographer Vittorio Storaro said Bertolucci’s success was “not an achievement for one movie. It’s an achievement for a life journey.” And Bill Rowe, a soundman on the movie and co-winner of an Academy Award, described the Italian director as “a poet first, then a film maker.”

That’s not how director Billy Wilder, recipient of the Thalberg Award, sees himself however. Asked by reporters how he wanted to be remembered, Wilder didn’t miss a beat. “As a great lover.”