Stephen Speilberg said what I was thinking all night,
“It’s a clean sweep!”
Finally Peter Jackson gets his due! LOTR won in every category in which it was nominated.
Has this happened on Oscar history before?
Eww. That was awful.
In all of Oscar history, has this ever happened before?
I don’t know if it was a sweep, but the booming voice announced that ROTK tied “Titanic” for the most awards won.
Woohoo! The good guys do win sometimes!!!
TITANIC and BEN-HUR. Thank you, Jesus!
Along with Ben Hur.
Ben Hur also won 11 Oscars.
Barry thanked the fans, that means I have been thanked in a Oscar BP speach 
Brian
According to CNN, the previous record for a sweep was 9 (Gigi* and Last Emperor)
Brian
*Not to be confused with Gigli
From the AP:
After the first two installments of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy were shut out of major awards, “Return of the King” swept all 11 categories in which it was nominated. It matched the record 11 wins of “Titanic” and “Ben-Hur” and became only the third movie to sweep every nominated category, following “Gigi” and “The Last Emperor,” which both went nine- for-nine.
I was watching with Harborwolf and Alias, and we were getting a bit nervous after LOTR’s first two wins. Usually wins for technical categories (art direction, makeup, etc) are a sign that a film isn’t going to get any of the big prizes. I think it was around the best song win that it finally began to sink in.
They won it all. It’s about damn time.
There’s a whole lot of yahoo-ing going on in the Embassy Theatre in Wellington, the local radio stations have been broadcasting the news, I expect the TV stations will be wall-to-wall Peter Jackson for ages yet.
He and the production crew and team have done New Zealand proud. And finally, fantasy film gets the recognition it deserves.
Now if only Sean Astin had been nominated for Best Supporting, it could have been 12! Could. But Tim Robbins still might have won, and then it wouldn’t have been a complete shutout.
Mr. Rilch called it, too. About two hours in, he said, “Someone’s gonna thank LOTR for not being in their category,” and the Best Foreign Language winner (IIRC) did just that!
I’m with the people who said that these awards are for the trilogy in its entirety, not just for ROTK. IMHO, it’s not the best of the three: that would be Fellowship. But I’m not about to quibble!
Um it wasn’t a sweep. ROTK didn’t win Cinematography.
It wasn’t nominated in that category.
Oops. You are right.
I thought it was nominated because I had read a Slate discussion about the Oscars where David Edelstein wrote : “I would love to see Master & Commander win for cinematography, but my hunch is that Lord of the Rings will take all the tech awards.”
Well, apart from all the movies that were nominated in one category and won that…
Congrats, Peter & company. Well deserved.
Excellent and about time. The only award LOTR shouldn’t have won was “Best Original Screenplay.” 
So what’s the total over all three films? That’s got to be a record in itself.
Well, here I go again: The scientific and technical awards were given out at a separate ceremony on February 14. Individual films are not nominated for scientific and technical awards. Art direction and makeup are artistic awards, not technical awards.
Me too. And when Billy Crystal thanked everybody on Long Island, where I’m unfortunately from, that means I got two mentions.