Paramount chief Brad Grey's campaign to hedge his bets at the Academy Awards is generating some Oscar-worthy drama.

On the big day, Grey will presumably be rooting for Paramount's Babel to take home Best Picture. But if he has his way, he'll also take the stage if The Departed wins—Grey was credited as a producer on that film for his role in acquiring the rights to the South Korean original, Infernal Affairs, and negotiating deals to bring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon on board.

But Grey's involvement ended when he was named chief of Paramount, shortly before director Martin Scorsese started filming for rival studio Warner Bros.

The Producers Guild of America, to which the Academy defers when it comes to the arcane business of determining producing credits, had decreed that Grey's fellow producer, Graham King, would be the sole recipient of any Oscar. But someone—the L.A. Times says there was a letter-writing campaign on Grey's behalf—appealed to the Academy for a reversal. The Academy's web site currently lists the nominee for The Departed's Best Picture award as "to be determined."

Predictably, Grey's campaign to be associated with a rival studio's picture isn't sitting well with Paramount's rank and file, and—after his table-hopping antics at the Golden Globes, in which he arranged to be sitting at the Dreamgirls table when Jennifer Hudson won and the Babel table when that film won—is said to be cementing his rep as a gloryhound.

"The problem with Brad has always been that he's greedy and egoistical," snipes a Paramount insider. "He was a manager and was paid for his services for The Departed and he gave that up to take the big job at Paramount. Now he wants it both ways. He's dying to get his little self up on that stage and clutch an Oscar in his sweaty little paws."On the other hand, some producers in Hollywood aren't too keen on one of their own being shut out of a film so easily.

"Why should people criticize him?" asks Howard Rosenman, who worked with Grey as president of motion pictures at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment. "He did the work. It's horrifying that [the Producers Guild] wouldn't consider it. He should go up there with King. Why should just a financier get it? It was Brad's power and clout that got the movie put together."

A spokesperson for the Academy says the executive committee of the Academy's producers branch met last night to resolve the dispute. Adding to the incestuous, conflicted mess is the fact that Babel star Brad Pitt is also one of The Departed's credited producers, and could conceivably also get on the Oscar ballot for that film if the committee so chose. A spokesperson for Paramount declined a request for comment.