OK, I can't say that I'm shocked -- or for that matter, even a little surprised -- that the first big review that has surfaced on "2012" says that Roland Emmerich's kitschy disaster movie is, well, a kitschy disaster movie. According to Variety's Todd McCarthy, the best thing that can be said of the movie is that John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who play two of the leading roles, "convey above-the-norm intelligence for characters in this sort of fare," which I guess means that the rest of the big-name cast (i.e. Danny Glover, Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet) register pretty low on the IQ scale.

McCarthy even finds a sneaky way to work a reference to "Casablanca" into his review. Here's how he describes what goes wrong with the movie as it lumbers into its third act:

"Let it be said that '2012' plummets from reasonably distracting spectacle to sheerest silliness when, in the pointlessly protracted final reels, it tries to maintain interest in the (confusingly staged) jeopardy of a handful of characters when much of the world's population has already been wiped out or is about to be. Never has Rick's observation in 'Casablanca' been more true, that the problems of a few little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."  

McCarthy ends up calling the film a joke "for the simple reason that it has no point of view; the film offers no philosophical, metaphysical, intellectual and certainly no religious perspective on the cataclysm, just the physical frenzy of it all." I bet that last line gets a hearty laugh from Emmerich, who can only be wagging his head, wondering: "These crazy critics -- after all these years, they still can't tell the difference between me and Lars Von Trier!" 

Photo of John Cusack and Morgan Lily in "2012" by Joe Lederer/Columbia Pictures.

America has a bad case of the doomsday jitters. You don't have to be a Glenn Beck follower to know that whenever things go wrong in this country, you can always find all the anger, bitterness and fear-mongering bubbling up and over into our popular culture. As Shakespeare's witches exulted in "Macbeth," when things go wrong, it's time to stir the pot: "double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble."

With Wall Street fat cats still cashing in while the rest of the country still suffers from double-digit unemployment, with partisan bickering at an all-time high and a war in Afghanistan threatening to suck up another 40,000 more troops, the country is in a sour mood, full of nasty, dark suspicions about the future. It's as good an explanation as any for why Beck is the hottest guy on TV right now, trumpeting his fears of one-world government, assailing corrupt politicians and worrying that Barack Obama, with "his deep-seated hatred for white people," could be angling to subvert our constitutional government.

Peril is around every corner -- even Beck's Fox News colleague, Shepard Smith, jokingly dubbed Beck's studio "the fear chamber." It's telling that Hollywood also has a batch of scary, post-apocalyptic films coming our way, filled with even more doomsday imagery. Roland Emmerich's "2012" takes off this weekend, promising a vivid, special-effects-filled look at the Earth's possible demise. There are more bad vibes in the air. John Hillcoat's brooding adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" opens later this month, offering a bleak view of a father and son attempting to survive in an ash-covered America where nothing grows. Denzel Washington returns, "Road Warrior" style, in January, starring in "The Book of Eli," another stark, days-end vision of the future. Pessimists can also rush out in January to see "Legion," a Dennis Quaid-starring horror thriller about how God, having lost faith in humanity, sends a legion of angels to wipe out the human race.

But what is surely the strangest film about our doomsday fantasies arrives this Friday. Called "Collapse," it features a spellbindingly weird one-man monologue by Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD officer and investigative journalist who believes that we are about to run out of oil, an event sure to plunge the world into a state of collapse since Ruppert is convinced that our entire world economy is built on an unsustainable addiction to petrol. If you ever thought it was impossible to top Beck's over-the-top fantasies, listen to Ruppert, who says that "what I see now is the end of a paradigm that is as cataclysmic as the asteroid event that killed almost all the life on Earth, and certainly the dinosaurs."

The film is directed by Chris Smith, who has made a number of documentaries about oddball characters pursuing impossible dreams -- his 1999 film "American Movie" chronicled the story of a hapless slacker trying to make a $3,000 homemade horror film. But what makes "Collapse" so sneakily compelling is that we have no inkling of what Smith thinks of his subject. Filmed with one camera over the course of two days in the basement of an abandoned meatpacking plant in downtown L.A., "Collapse" is a hermetically sealed package, open to whatever interpretation we might bring to it. It allows us the same freedom we have in watching Beck's show -- we can take it as gospel, be appalled by its wild, undocumented claims or simply watch bemused, appreciating Ruppert's gifts as a performer.

"I think there is something quintessentially American about Michael," says Smith, who financed the film himself, using the money he's made as a successful commercial director. "He comes out of the culture of the moment, in the same way that we foster all these high-flying entrepreneurs and self-help gurus. When you look at his upbringing, to have gone from being a police officer to someone who questions authority, it fits into a storyline that could only happen in this country."

"Collapse" opens Friday in theaters in New York and L.A. while also debuting this weekend on the Film Buff video-on-demand channel. Smith admits that he has "very conflicted feelings" about Ruppert. "A lot of what he says is incredibly thought-provoking, with lots of historical support, but there are things that you'd probably get a lot of criticism for believing," he says. "So I wanted to give the audience the experience of living inside his world for 85 minutes. Even if you can't prove all of his ideas, his passion and belief is definitely concrete."

I got hooked on "Collapse" for much the same reason that millions of viewers have fallen for Beck. Every time I'd start to think that Ruppert was a deluded crackpot, he'd reel me back in, grabbing me by the throat with a burst of seemingly persuasive analysis. He poses his oil-collapse scenario in simple, hard-to-refute logic. "Saudi Arabia has 25% of the oil reserves on the planet," he explains in a soothing, almost hypnotic voice. "Why, if Saudi Arabia has all these untapped reserves on shore, are they moving heavily into offshore drilling? If it's 5, 10 or 15 times more expensive to drill offshore than land, doesn't that tell you that Saudi Arabia knows that they've no more oil to find?"

Why are we so fascinated by doomsday theorists like Ruppert and Beck? Keep reading:

To say that Ruppert is Beck's psychic twin would be an understatement. Beck comes from the right and Ruppert seems to live on the left -- he believes, for example, that we invaded Iraq for its oil reserves, arguing that we have no intention of ever leaving the country since "we built an embassy compound in Baghdad that's bigger than Vatican City." But both men transcend politics, since no amount of partisan posturing could justify their gloomy certainty about the future.

Asked by Smith at one point in the film if he's ever been called a conspiracy theorist, Ruppert offers the kind of answer you'd expect from Beck. "Of course," he says triumphantly. "But I don't deal in conspiracy theory. I deal in conspiracy fact." Once you get past his brisk dismissals of every form of alternative energy ("Ethanol is an absolute joke -- it takes more energy to make ethanol than you can make burning it"), Ruppert's view of the future isn't so different from Beck's. Neither man is an optimist. If they were optimists, they'd be out of business. What fuels them is a chronic pessimism that is surely born out of years of personal anxieties and career setbacks. Beck is a recovering alcoholic with ADHD while Ruppert, even though Smith offers us little personal biographical information, is clearly a man without family ties who appears to live alone with his dog.

Even though these guys aren't artists, they share something in common with people who make movies about doomsday events -- they are consummate storytellers. And our best storytellers are not naive optimists. In fact, even though it is too soon to understand what today's films might have to say about our grim times, if you look back to the last era when things were falling part, you can see how in sync filmmakers were with the spirit of the times. 

By the mid-1970s, America was at least as unsettled and pessimistic as it is today. After Watergate, the agony of Vietnam, the 1973 oil crisis and a 1973-74 stock market crash where the Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 45% of its value, the country was in a foul, defeatist mood. And the movies of the mid-'70s cannily captured all of the hard feelings in people's heads. They were full of angry zealots, including Charles Bronson's brutish vigilante in "Death Wish" and "Network's" Howard Beale, who famously bellowed "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore." (Needless to say, Beck has often cited that film as an inspiration for his own shtick).

The movies were also full of unhinged, paranoia-steeped loners like "Taxi Driver's" Travis Bickle or the cranky surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman in "The Conversation." Audiences witnessed the dark fantasies of "The Parallax View," where Warren Beatty found himself up against a vast conspiracy involving a giant power-hungry multinational corporation.

It turns out that when things go bad, America's full-throated patriotism often devolves into rampant paranoia. Long before Beck and a host of Republican political leaders were accusing Obama of turning the country into a socialist paradise, conservatives in the 1960s were saying they had secret documents proving that the entire concept for a civil rights movement had been hatched decades earlier in the Soviet Union. It was Richard Nixon, when he took office, who claimed the new arrivals to the White House had "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America."

Paranoia has always been an integral part of American politics -- one of the best history books ever written is Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." But paranoia, as we can see from generations of films taking us right up to "Collapse," is an integral ingredient in the artistic playbook too. Writers and filmmakers get a huge lungful of artistic oxygen from confronting their worst secret fears, instinctively knowing that facing up to anxiety and dread often produces great drama. 

It may be small consolation for those of us today, but bad times often make for wonderful art, since peril and uncertainty are more stimulating than safety and contentment. We get a thrill out of imagining the prospect of doom and gloom. When I was watching "Collapse," it struck me how reminiscent Ruppert's disaster scenario was of Orson Welles' 1938 radio production of "War of the Worlds," which briefly had the country persuaded that we'd somehow been invaded by Martians, eager to wipe us out. Like Welles' radio broadcast, "Collapse" reminds us that while the world is a scary place, what we find lurking in our imaginations is often even scarier still.   

Photo of Michael Ruppert in "Collapse" from Vitagraph Films

How did he get that number, you may wonder. According to his story, the Jim Cameron-masterminded film (due out next month and still under lock and key) has a reported production budget of $230 million, but Cieply says that the price tag "would be higher if the financial contribution of Mr. Cameron and others were included." He says that when you toss in the cost of global marketing for the film -- he says Fox itself is planning to spend $150 million around the world -- the film would cost its various backers $500 million.

Cieply's story makes a compelling point about modern-day studio economics. When it comes to a mega-blockbuster like "Avatar," studios like Fox don't just hedge their bets. They involve a wide variety of partners who provide financial and marketing support for the studio's behemoth. According to the piece, a pair of private equity partners -- Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media -- are picking up 60% of the film's budget. But Fox also has built-in protections from Cameron himself. If the film's final production costs topped $300 million, for example, Cameron would "effectively defer much of his payout until the studio and others were compensated."

Cieply says the film also qualified for tax rebates in New Zealand, since much of its digital work was done there. It also benefits from $25 million worth of technological and marketing aid from Panasonic, which pitched in to help the film in return for assistance from Cameron on Panasonic's upcoming 3-D home video systems.

It just goes to show that when you're in the blockbuster business these days, you can always count on a little help from your friends, who are all hoping to make a little money -- or enjoy some reflected benefits -- from a mega-event that casts a giant shadow over the entire Hollywood landscape.

No one is going to throw a pity party for Nic Cage, the $20-million movie star who not only has made more bad movies than Nicole Kidman ("National Treasure: Book of Secrets," "Bangkok Dangerous," "Knowing," "Next" and "Ghost Rider," just to name a few recent ones), but who has spent the last dozen or so years living like a Saudi potentate. The actor is now suing his former money manager, Samuel Levin, for $20 million in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming Levin enriched himself while "sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin."

But according to a wonderfully detailed story by Jacob Bernstein in the Daily Beast, Cage seems to have done a pretty good job of achieving financial ruin all of his own, engaging in the kind of profligate spending habits that gives ample ammunition to critics who say Hollywood is teeming with self-absorbed narcissists. To hear Bernstein tell it: "Cage's appetite was extreme even for Hollywood, with a decade-plus shopping spree that saw him snapping up houses, motorcycles, a jet, yachts, vintage and new cars, expensive watches, meteorites, dinosaur skulls, an enormous pet collection, massive amounts of jewelry for the women in his life, group vacations for his entourage and on and on and on."

Did he say ... meteorites?

Cage's lawyer, Marty Singer, told Bernstein: "Half the stuff you say is false. I'm not going to get into detail." But the reporter offers richly detailed evidence to support his case, which shows Cage having to sell off his 1940 Beverly Hills mansion (former owners: Dean Martin and Tom Jones) for less than half of its original $30-million asking price. Cage has two more mansions in New Orleans that have been foreclosed on and will be auctioned off later this month. Bernstein says they are among "more than a dozen" homes Cage has bought in the past decade, including a castle near Bath, England; an 11th century estate in Etzelwang, Germany; and (count 'em) two Bahamian islands.

In June 2004, Cage owned 18 motorcycles and 30 cars, having spent nearly $500,000 on a Lamborghini Miura SVJ that had been owned by the shah of Iran. He also had a 1955 Jaguar D-Type on exhibit in the billiard room at his Bel-Air home, where it was "lit from above, like something out of a car dealership."

Cage also had a menagerie of animals including rare birds, pure-bred dogs, lizards and snakes, including two king cobras (as well as antidote serum in case they bit someone). He bought his dinosaur skull at auction in 2007 for $276,000 after a heated bidding war with Leonardo DiCaprio. There's so, so much more in the piece, which ends on a bittersweet note, saying that Cage, now in much reduced circumstances, has been forced to ditch his personal chef and decorator, along with a personal trainer, who is now no longer on permanent call.

I guess this can mean only one thing -- watch for a third installment in the "National Treasure" series, since Cage seems like a guy who, even after the riches he's raked in, still needs to star in one more bad movie to make some quick money.

Photo of Nicolas Cage (right) and Lucius Baston in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" by Lena Herzog / First Look Studios

But in his quest to portray this season as marvelously different from all other seasons, he arrived at this whopper: "There are so many films from female, gay, minority and foreign-language helmers that seem to be worthy of consideration this year that it's possible the best-director noms might not include a single English-speaking, Caucasian, straight male."

Say what?

If you look at any one of the multitude of Oscar prognostication lists in the blogosphere, you'll find that among the obvious best picture favorites are movies directed by the likes of Clint Eastwood ("Invictus"), Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds"), Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air"), Pete Docter ("Up"), the Coen brothers ("A Serious Man") and James Cameron ("Avatar"). All of the aforementioned are straight, white guys -- and frankly, from everything I know about the many-times-married Cameron, when it comes to being straight, you'd have to count him twice.

Mark Twain had a term for Gray's kind of wacky prediction -- he called it a "stretcher," as in a preposterous exaggeration. It would be wonderful to have a more diverse lineup of filmmakers in the best director race, since so few studios make an effort to hire minorities or women. But the revolution is still off on the horizon. You can bet that, as always, there will plenty of straight white guys at the Kodak Theatre this year, anxiously wondering if their name will be called oh-so-late in the evening when the best director nod comes around.

Photo of Oscar statuettes by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

There's plenty of great football in the film, which features a host of cameos by such top college coaches as former South Carolina and Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, Alabama's Nick Saban and Ole Miss' Houston Nutt. A native Texan, where football is like a religion, Hancock has college football in his blood. His brother Joe played at Vanderbilt, his brother Kevin played at Baylor and his dad, John, who coached high school football for years, played at Baylor before enjoying a brief career in the early NFL with the Chicago Cardinals.

So I asked Hancock to put on his prognosticator's cap and make some picks for this week's big college football games. Here's the betting line, along with Hancock's picks and commentary (the team in parenthesis is the favorite, followed by how many points they're giving):

LSU at Alabama (Alabama -- 7.5):  My "new best friend" Nick Saban (he's in "The Blind Side") has Alabama's defense playing lights out. But their offense is sputtering. Take LSU and the 7.5 points (though I still think Bama wins).

Ohio State at Penn State (Penn State -- 3.5): I'm just not that impressed with Ohio State. I say take Joe Pa's boys and give the points

Oklahoma at Nebraska (Oklahoma -- 6): The wheels seem to be coming off a bit for the Huskers, take the Sooners giving 6.

Baylor at Missouri (Missouri -- 16):  Hard to bet against my alma mater but since it's not a straight-up pick I can take Baylor and the 16 points. They have to have one great game in them, right?

USC at Arizona State (USC -- 11.5): USC was ripped apart at Autzen last week. I look for them to rebound big. Take the Trojans and give up the 11.5.

Kansas at Kansas State (Kansas -- 2.5): Kansas State has improved greatly this year and Kansas seems lethargic. Take Kansas State and the points.

Vanderbilt at Florida (Florida -- 32.5): Spikes is out but Florida still rolls. Vandy played pretty well last week so perhaps they can score a couple of touchdowns. Take Vandy and the points.

Purdue at Michigan (Michigan -- 6):  I'll say take Purdue and the points as, of late, Purdue's been more impressive and the Big House isn't quite as daunting as it once was.

Texas A&M at Colorado (Texas A&M -- 3): On principle, I never, ever root for A&M, therefore I hope I'm wrong about this pick. Take the Farmers and give the points.

(We'll check in on Monday and see how John Lee's predictions held up.)

The list (read it and weep): ABBA, the Chantels, Jimmy Cliff, Genesis, the Hollies, KISS, LL Cool J, Darlene Love, Laura Nyro, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Stooges and Donna Summer.

It's pretty pathetic when you consider that you can vote for the Chantels and Darlene Love, but not for Linda Ronstadt, Steve Miller, Chicago, Rush, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Journey, Dire Straits or Stevie Ray Vaughan, just to name a few of the ineligible worthies. It's no wonder that Joel Selvin, the veteran San Francisco critic (and former member of the hall's nominating committee), has blasted the hall for its insular decision-making. He heaps most of the blame on Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, the hall's co-founder and dominant force, who is believed to be behind the mysterious last-minute selection of Grandmaster Flash over the Dave Clark 5, with Wenner apparently pushing aside the DC5 (finally inducted in 2008) so the hall could have a hip-hop group in the fold. 

"This thing has sunk to a shameless level of manipulation and behind-the-scenes chicanery," Selvin told the Detroit News in 2007. "If it were a public institution--which it is--it would be held up for public ridicule."

Despite my own shared concerns--I think it would a perfectly appropriate idea to close down the hall for repairs for a few years, until a few more deserving bands become eligible--I still feel obligated to vote. But I'd like some help. Take a second look at the names of the 2010 nominees above and let me know who you'd vote for--and why. Those of us who are actual voters are asked to choose a maximum of five nominees, using numbers (1-2-3-4-5) to signify our preferences. You can do the same. Here's how I'd make my choices as of now, but I'm open to being swayed by any especially passionate or persuasive arguments:

1) The Stooges. (They were short-lived, but had an indelible impact on my teen psyche. Any band that had the one-and-only Iggy Pop on board makes the cut for me.)

2) The Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Local L.A. boys made good, they capture the tumultuous spirit of rock and have made some terrific records along the way.) 

3) Laura Nyro. (Nearly forgotten today, she was a seminal influence on Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash and untold other singer-songwriters.)

4) LL Cool J. (Probably not a major artist, but in his day, he was the epitome of cool.)

5) KISS. (I'm not a member of the Army and I think Gene Simmons is pretty obnoxious, but they were the voice of a generation--no one can forget their first KISS concert.)

Photo: The Rock and Roll Hall Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: Reuters

White is famously contrarian in his tastes, so I'm not saying that he's going to be leading a momentous critical backlash against the film. But it is rare to see an African American commentator not only take apart a gifted black filmmaker like Daniels, but trash Oprah and Perry in the process. White doesn't mince words, calling the film "a con job" that "naively treats Precious' exhibition of ghetto tragedy and female disempowerment as if it were raw truth." Then he really unloads on everyone:

"Winfrey, Perry and Daniels make an unholy triumvirate. They come together at some intersection of race exploitation and opportunism. These two media titans -- plus one shrewd pathology pimp -- use 'Precious' to rework Booker T. Washington's early 20th century manifesto 'Up From Slavery' into extreme drama for the new millennium: Up From Incest, Child Abuse, Teenage Pregnancy, Poverty and AIDS. Regardless of its narrative details about class and gender, 'Precious is an orgy of prurience.... Not since 'Birth of a Nation' has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as 'Precious.' Fully of brazenly racist cliches (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken) it is a sociological horror show. Offering racist hysteria masquerading as social sensitivity, it's been acclaimed on the international film festival circuit that usually disdains movies about black Americans as somehow inartistic and unworthy."  

White is especially disturbed by the involvement of Winfrey and Perry, who have been very open about their own experiences with childhood abuse. He views their much-discussed triumph over their own personal travails as exploitation, arguing that the movie's "self-pity and recrimination" is seen as an endorsement of Winfrey and Perry's own backstories, saying: "Promoting this movie isn't just a way for Perry and Winfrey to aggrandize themselves, it helps convert their private agendas into heavily hyped social preoccupation."

I think White goes a little overboard, since it's hardly the first time Oprah in particular has promoted a film or a book about family abuse and dysfunction -- she's made a career out of it. But it will fascinating to see how black audiences react to Daniels' stark drama. As my colleague John Horn pointed out today, Lionsgate, which is releasing the film, is going after both middle-class black audiences and art-house cineastes, opening the film here at both the Magic Johnson Crenshaw 15-theater complex as well as the highbrow Landmark and ArcLight theaters, hoping to score with two very disparate audiences.

It's a tough needle to thread. In fact, Lionsgate tried a similar strategy with its recent LeBron James basketball film, "More Than a Game," and came up short, never connecting with either young urban sport fans or art-house documentary lovers. After a month in theaters, the film has only made $829,000, a poor showing for a movie that James promoted with wall-to-wall appearances on every major TV talk show imaginable. The themes in "Precious" certainly have the potential to speak a huge disparate audience, but I suspect that, even with its A-list endorsers, it may do better with Oscar voters than rank and file African American moviegoers.

Armond White is clearly a non-believer. He ends his review by saying that some of the film's most emotional scenes "might have been met howls of skeptical laughter at Harlem's Magic Johnson theater. Black audiences would surely have seen the comedy in this ludicrous, overloaded situation, whereas too many white film habitues casually enjoy it for the sense of superiority -- and relief -- it allows them to feel. Some people like being conned."  

RELATED STORY:  PRECIOUS AIMS TO TRANSLATE BUZZ INTO BOX-OFFICE GOLD  

Last night, as part of an awards season film series sponsored by my newspaper, I hosted a screening of "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" with its filmmaker, Wes Anderson, and Jason Schwartzman, who voices Ash, Mr. Fox's ungainly, often not entirely beloved son. After the film's credits rolled, we took the stage and I basically played the straight man, lobbing up some (hopefully) not entirely dumb questions that gave the two guys an opportunity to tell funny stories about their childhood and the making of the film.

Yes, it is true, for example, that Bill Murray, who voices Badger in the movie, tried to cajole Anderson into letting him do the character in a Wisconsin accent, since the University of Wisconsin's football team's nickname is--ahem--the Badgers. Anderson said no dice, although he did allow Murray to assume additionally the tiny, but pivotal role of the film's lone wolf, a mystical creature who is held in awe by all the foxes in the film. 

Before we took the stage, we hung out in the Landmark Theater's bar, where Anderson and Schwarztman dissected the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," which they both had recently seen. We agreed that it was easily their most--perhaps only--personal film, with Anderson, who is clearly a fan of the Brothers Coen, admiring how sneaky smart their work is. He acknowledged that it was easy to underestimate a Coen film immediately after having seen it. "I remember being pretty unswayed by 'The Big Lebowski' when I first saw it," he recalled. "But after a few days, it started to sink in and then I went back to see it again and realized that it was pretty amazing, having found myself quoting dialogue from it ever since."

For me, the nicest moment of the evening was provided by Schwartzman, who is also a talented songwriter and musician, having played drums for years in the band Phantom Planet. He now has his own solo project, called Coconut Records. At some point in our discussion, I asked him about his youthful enthusiasms. As it turned out, even though he was surrounded by movie royalty--his mom is Talia Shire, Francis Coppola's sister, which makes him cousins with Nic Cage, Sofia Coppola and (regular Anderson collaborator) Roman Coppola--his true love was always music. As a typically awkward, alienated teenager, rock music spoke much more directly to his psyche than films.

"When I was kid, I only went to see comedies, so while I enjoyed them, I always thought it was music that spoke most deeply to me," he explained. But at some point in his teenage years, he found himself preparing for an acting audition without really understanding what movies could have to say. When he confided his concerns to his mother, she told him to stay put while she hurried off to a video store. She returned with three movies: "The Graduate," "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Harold and Maude," which Schwarztman watched all in one sitting that night.

"It totally changed my life," he said, realizing for the first time that film could be just as powerful and soulful as the best rock and roll music. From that day on, he was committed to pursuing acting and filmmaking, leading him to his first great role, as Max Fischer in Anderson's "Rushmore." For some reason, I found Schwartzman's story especially inspiring, in the sense that even someone who grew up in a hall-of-fame movie family still needed a jolt of great movie-watching to understand the special glory of the medium. 

I've had a similar experience--for me, it was the first time I saw Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." But I'd love to hear if any of you had similar "gotcha" moments when a movie rocked your world. If you can still remember the visceral thrill of the moment, please share!

Photo of Jason Schwartzman by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

What's not to like about the idea of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin serving as co-hosts of the Oscars, as the academy just announced this afternoon. They're two funny guys who are still at the top of their game, always armed with a gag in their quiver, as Martin proved in the academy press release, when he quipped: "I am happy to co-host the Oscars with my enemy Alec Baldwin."

Baldwin does have quite a few enemies, mostly conservatives who can't stand his politics, so the academy can only hope that they'll do something really lame, like organize an Oscar boycott, which would only give the creaky awards show a whiff of hip appeal.

I hope Oscar producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman take the guys out to lunch, pat them on the back and say "See ya at the show." In other words, leave them alone and let them figure out how much material they want to do solo or together. Baldwin has a reputation of being something of a loose cannon, which frankly is just what the academy needs these days. It would be wonderful to see him wade into the audience a few times and mix it up, Jack Donaghy-style, with all the stuffed-shirt celebs that always get all the good front-row seats. 

After the schmaltzy Hugh Jackman affair last year, this is a giant step in the right direction for the academy.

Photo of Steve Martin at the 2003 Oscars by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times; Alec Baldwin by Stuart Ramson / Associated Press

We knew Fox Searchlight was in love with "Crazy Heart," the low-budget country music drama that stars Jeff Bridges as a faded, booze-fueled singer named Bad Blake who's trying to get his career back on track. Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Scott Cooper, the film costars Maggie Gyllenhaal (playing a small-town reporter), Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell.

Searchlight acquired the film in July, taking it off the market with a low seven-figure bid, enamored by the film's acting and nuanced storytelling. Its original plan was to release the movie in the spring of 2010. But the studio must be smelling award-season gold, because my sources say the movie is moving into Oscar territory, with Searchlight now planning a limited Dec. 11 release in Los Angeles and New York before taking the film wider early next year.

Since Searchlight's only serious Oscar contender, as of now, is its well-reviewed summer release,  "(500) Days of Summer," the studio must be betting that Bridges -- always a favorite with the academy, especially as he's aged into Nick Nolte-style gray-bearded grizzly guy -- could land some best actor nominations. Searchlight suddenly sent out screening notices today, another tipoff that the movie is looking for some early word-of-mouth enthusiasm from the blogosphere.

My favorite movie-music magician, T Bone Burnett, supervised the film's soundtrack, so I'm betting it will have some real C&W authenticity. As soon as I get a chance to see it, I'll report in on whether we've got another serious Oscar candidate or not.

Photo of Jeff Bridges by Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times.

It all sounds perfectly respectful to me. But as usual, the news has aroused a storm of derision from conservative bloggers, who always find a way to be offended by any high-minded Hollywood project. Even though the film apparently hasn't been cast and isn't due to begin filming until 2011, Big Hollywood's John Nolte was in high dudgeon this morning, instantly drawing comparisons between the Muhammad project and Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which Nolte complains was "turned down by every studio in town. You know, even though 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians."

Nolte conveniently forgets that the prime reason why Hollywood studios kept their distance from "Passion of the Christ" was because the film was viewed by many as offering an anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews, not because anyone had a lack of regard for Christians. Also worth noting: Osborne is a prominent indie producer, meaning he doesn't have the promise of any studio backing for his project. So it's likely -- if the movie is ever made -- that he would have just as hard a time as Gibson in getting any studio backing for the Muhammad film

But according to Nolte, the possibility that an indie producer might make a respectful film about Muhammad is yet another sign of Hollywood's contempt for Christianity. Or as he puts it:

"[It's] another example of the mindset of those who control the most powerful propaganda machine ever created. Think about it: 'The Passion' remains one of the most profitable films ever and yet an industry frequently ridiculed for reproducing ad nauseum [sic] anything resembling a hit will have none of it....Please don't make the mistake of accusing Hollywood of hypocrisy. This is an ideological war and there are no rules in war and anyone wringing their hands over 'not playing fair' are missing the point. When you loath [sic] Christians and want to do everything in your power to marginalize who they are and what they stand for, there's nothing at all hypocritical about pissing on Christ and deferring to Muhammad."

I admire Nolte's passion, but I can't say that he's made much of a case. I mean, just because Hollywood shied away from promoting "Passion of the Christ" doesn't necessarily mean that we're in the midst of an "ideological war" against Christianity. In fact, I'd be happy to get Nolte invited to an advance screening of "The Blind Side," a wonderful new film by John Lee Hancock that Warner Bros. is releasing later this month. It tells the real-life story of a wealthy Memphis woman -- played by Sandra Bullock -- whose family takes in a homeless African American boy, feeds him, clothes him and helps him make it through school. He turns out to be a phenomenally successful football player who's now playing in the NFL.

The family are devoted Christians (and die-hard Republicans too, John), yet they are portrayed with the utmost warmth and respect for their selflessness and commitment to sharing their good fortune with others. If this is another example of Hollywood's ideological war against Christianity, then maybe someone should remind both sides what they are fighting about.

Photo: Barrie Osborne. Credit: John McDermott / For the Los Angeles Times.

It's all been a big bummer, especially for the town's talent agents, who have had to weather a thousand-and-one grumpy phone calls from top actors and filmmakers unhappy about seeing their once-reliable salary quotes being tossed out the window.

It's nervous time for talent, especially with the studios crowing that most of their biggest hits this year ("The Hangover," "Star Trek," "Transformers") have come without the presence of any big-name above-the-line talent.

But guess what? This ain't the first time that Hollywood has tried to get tough and dump all that expensive talent baggage. That's the message that WME boss Ari Emanuel delivered to his troops recently, sending out to all his agents a copy of a 1970 Life magazine that detailed Paramount Pictures' efforts to revamp its business by jettisoning most of its costly star talent.

Even though 1969 was a banner year for movies, seeing the release of such groundbreaking films as "Midnight Cowboy," "Easy Rider," "The Wild Bunch" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," to name just a few, it was a lousy year for the studio bottom line. In the fall of 1969, Paramount had laid off 150 employees. As Life pointed out in its story, at the same time as Paramount was cutting overhead and writing down its production losses, Warner Bros. had $59 million in losses, MGM had $53 million in losses and Fox had $67 million in losses, all in an era where a million really meant a million.

Paramount's parent company, Gulf + Western, which had acquired the studio in 1966, was run by the mercurial Charles Bluhdorn, a brilliant financier with big, square Chiclet-like teeth who had such large holdings in the Dominican Republic that he had his own private landing strip for his Gulfstream jet. Always willing to push the limits in search of a killer deal -- he was under investigation by the SEC for much of the 1970s -- Bluhdorn had little patience for the vagaries of the movie business. When films would lose money, he'd pound the table, bellowing in a guttural Austrian accent: "While we've been sitting here, I made more [expletive] money on sugar than Paramount made all year!"

You can imagine any number of top GE executives saying the same thing about Universal Pictures this year, if you simply replaced sugar with light bulbs or jet engines. Forty years ago, people were just as frustrated by the excess and unpredictability of the movie business as they are today. Emanuel wouldn't get on the phone with me to explain exactly why he focused on this Life story, but one of his agents, who sent it along to me, said that Ari's point was simple enough: Don't overreact to the current studio cost-cutting frenzy. As this story makes all too clear, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Studios always think they can make the movie business into a more rational enterprise, but that's a bean-counter fantasy. Making movies will always require a leap of faith.

It's almost comical reading Bluhdorn grouse about his economic woes, knowing that he was voicing the exact same complaints echoed by the overlords of News Corp., Viacom, GE and Time Warner today. All you have to do is add a zero and his beefs are in perfect sync with today's studio's economic grumbling. "This paying stars $1 million against 10% of the gross -- paying directors $500,000 -- that's nothing less than insanity," he told Life. "You see, to recoup you must take in $3 million at the box office for every million up front. And for these expensive movies, the odds against recouping are enormous."

Just as today's studio chiefs think that they can now make "Transformers" and "Hangover"-style hits without movie stars, Bluhdorn was convinced that high-priced talent was superfluous. "You get from these big stars a document of conditions of how many hours they'll work, what they'll do and won't do.... Well, who needs them? With today's young audiences, names won't sell a picture anymore. A great script and a devoted director -- that's what makes things happen."

Substitute "special effects" for "script" and you could easily slip those words into any of today's studio bosses' mouths. So why didn't cost-cutting formulas take hold? Why did Bluhdorn's resolve weaken? Will the same thing happen today? Keep reading:

Despite the similarities between today and 1969, it's important to recognize that Hollywood was a very different place at the end of the 1960s. As late as 1965, the original moguls were still in control of most of the studios, but they were fading old men who no longer had any feel for the emerging youth culture. Jack Warner loathed "Bonnie and Clyde." If it wasn't for Warren Beatty's sheer persistence, the studio would've buried it. When Bluhdorn brought Robert Evans in as a production exec in the late '60s, he told him, "The Paramount [dolt] in charge now is 90 years old. He saw 'Alfie' and he couldn't even hear it."

The studios didn't have all the ancillary revenue streams they have today -- they largely lived or died by the theatrical performance of their films. But they lost money the same way people lose money today -- by trying to do knockoffs of past successes instead of embracing something new. Even though 1969 was a heady year of creative breakthroughs, the studios were still reeling from the failures of the mid-'60s when, encouraged by the huge success of musicals like "My Fair Lady," "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music," they nearly went broke producing such epic failures as "Dr. Dolittle," "Paint Your Wagon" and "Hello, Dolly!"

"Musicals were the tentpole movies of their day and everyone thought that if one was a hit that you could just churn out more of them and rake in the money," recalls Dick Zanuck, still one of the industry's top producers, who was head of production at Fox for most of the '60s. Fox had nearly been bankrupted by "Cleopatra," a disastrous 1963 flop that audiences spurned, despite the presence of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, two of the biggest stars of the day.

Zanuck says Fox was so broke when he arrived in the early '60s that "we had to close the studio for four months. Most of the employees were laid off, the commissary was shut down." By the late '60s, most rival studios were in just as poor condition. When Francis Ford Coppola was making "The Rain People," one of his first films, at Warner Bros. in the late '60s, he recalled being amazed by how empty the back lot was. "It was like a ghost town," he told me years afterward.

What finally got the studios back in business, as the '60s ended and the '70s began, was something in short supply today -- a willingness to take risks on new filmmakers and adventuresome material. Bluhdorn was ridiculed for hiring the handsome young Evans -- a man with dazzling white teeth and a permanent tan -- to run Paramount. Evans had so little experience, having come from the shmatte business, that the town assumed that Evans was sleeping with either Bluhdorn or his wife, Yvette, who'd recommended Evans to her husband as executive material since he was such a "gorgeous" guy.

Evans was colorful and erratic -- he certainly wasn't like the cautious, buttoned-down marketing execs that get the call to run studios today. But he had a keen eye for talent. By the mid-1970s, relying on Evans' often spontaneous creative hunches, Paramount had enjoyed one of the most remarkable runs in the annals of the business, releasing such cinematic gems as "The Godfather" and its sequel,  as well as "Serpico," "The Conversation," "Chinatown," "Nashville" and "Paper Moon."

The best movies, with rare exceptions, weren't the most expensive ones. They certainly weren't the films that tested well with research audiences. They weren't remakes. They were diamonds in the rough, made fast and cheap by talent with something to prove. One of the most profitable movies Zanuck made at Fox was a war film with two little-known newcomers and a director who'd been laboring for years in obscurity, doing episodic TV. It was called "MASH."

To Zanuck, it was as unlikely a hit as last year's breakthrough "Slumdog Millionaire." "It was just a hunch," he recalls. "I loved the script, by Ring Lardner Jr., but all sorts of well-known directors turned it down. No one had heard of Robert Altman at all -- he was still shooting 'Combat' TV episodes. But it only cost $1.5 million and it felt fresh."

Zanuck refused to spend a penny more. All the war-zone scenes were filmed at Fox's studio ranch in Malibu Canyon. When Altman initially insisted that the film, for authenticity purposes, had to be shot in Korea, Zanuck found a bunch of pictures of rural Korea and a bunch of pictures of Fox's ranch. "I told him if he could tell which was which, he could go to Korea, but he couldn't tell the difference," Zanuck recalls. "So he had to stay here. When he needed to shoot the golf scenes [set] in Japan, I told him to put a couple of caddies in kimonos and shoot it across the street [from Fox] at Rancho Park."

If Ari really wants to buck up his troops, he should have Zanuck stop by the agency and tell some more "MASH" stories, which only serve to remind us that hit movies don't come off a sequel assembly line. Hit movies are born out of ingenuity and raw creativity. The studio bosses can try, as they are today and as they did 40 years ago, to slash costs and squeeze blood from a turnip. But if they rely on retreads instead of embracing originality, they will find themselves with a new generation of "Cleopatras" and "Dr. Dolittles" on their hands.

" 'MASH' worked for the same reason that 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Juno' or 'The Hangover" worked today; it was irreverent, inexpensive and it was in sync with the culture," says Zanuck. "It was a discovery and I've been around long enough to know that if there's anything audiences love, it's to discover something new."

Photo of Dick Zanuck by Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times.

It's possible that everyone was just hopped-up on a Halloween sugar rush, but it feels like the Oscar silly season has kicked into full gear with some hilariously outlandish new Oscar pundit best-picture predictions.

My Oscar-obsessed colleague Tom O'Neil has put up a post from an anonymous Oscar voter who, after seeing "This Is It" with an enthusiastic scrum of theater patrons, claims that the Michael Jackson documentary will grab an Oscar best-picture nod. (I wonder if that means that Elizabeth Taylor actually sneaked into a theater over the weekend.)  O'Neil also has a batch of goofy forecasts from World Entertainment News Network's Kevin Lewin, who is predicting that both "The Informant" and "Sherlock Holmes" will land best picture nominations, which means either that Lewin is an awfully big Guy Ritchie fan or that Warner Bros. (distributor of both films) is paying for his Internet connection.

But our wackiest Oscar prediction of the week comes from New York Post critic Lou Lemenick, who says that one of the 10 best-picture nominees will be ... "2012," the upcoming end-of-the-world thriller from Roland Emmerich. According to Lemenick, the logic is obvious: "Certainly there is more precedent for a disaster film (and this one is expected to open huge) to be nominated for Best Picture (as 'The Towering Inferno' was) than for 'The Hangover.' " I guess Lemenick likes long shots, since the odds of a Roland Emmerich film being nominated for a best-picture statuette are about as good as Barack Obama deciding to grab a few brews and watch the Academy Awards with Roger Ailes and his pals at Fox News. 

Call me old-fashioned, but this is another good reason why all of our nutty Oscar pundits should be required to actually watch a movie before being allowed to publicly predict its Oscar fortunes.

Hey Lou: Just to make it interesting, I'll put my money where my mouth is. If "2012" gets an Oscar best picture nod, I'll buy the person of your choice a gift subscription to the Post.

Photo: Top, Michael Jackson in "This Is It." Credit: Kevin Mazur / AEG, Getty Images, Associated Press.

Fat chance. In terms of being a functioning specialty division whose name has any meaning to moviegoers--as it did for years when Harvey Weinstein's big knobby thumbs were on the scale--Miramax is history. Kaput. Finished. DOA. Pushing up daisies. As J.J. Hunsecker says so memorably in "Sweet Smell of Success": "You're dead, son. Get yourself buried."

Variety doesn't seem to have noticed--or more accurately, seems determined to pretend not to notice--that Disney, especially under new studio chief Rich Ross, has zero interest in the specialty film world. The new Disney is all about creating and serving brands, brands that function as mass consumption entertainment, like Pixar, Marvel and Jerry Bruckheimer-produced films. Even at its best earlier this decade, Miramax was a very specialized brand, needing a sizable staff and deep-pocketed marketing resources to do the labor-intensive work needed to break art-house films like "The Queen" and "No Country for Old Men."

But Disney isn't willing to fund a label with such limited upside. The studio made that clear when it cleaned house less than a month ago, announcing that the big studio would handle the marketing of future Miramax releases, a sure sign that it wasn't in the business of nurturing films that needed special handling. (At the time, I predicted that Miramax was already a "dead man walking.") Like most studios today, Disney is in the big score business. Even DreamWorks, which has made a sizable number of quality films, is aiming toward the mass-appeal mainstream with its next round of releases. So say goodbye to Miramax. After its already-in-production films pass through the pipeline, expect to see it die a quiet death. It had a great run, but its era has passed.

Photo: Daniel Battsek. Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

PREVIOUSLY: DISNEY LOWERS THE BOOM ON MIRAMAX

It's a beautifully compiled box set, featuring four CDs' worth of music, some of it from bands familiar to '60s music fans (the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas), some of it from long-forgotten one- or two-hit wonders such as the Deepest Blue, Limey and the Yanks, the Hysterics and -- how's this for a great moniker? -- the W.C. Fields Memorial Electric String Band. If you want to get a great taste of what all the excitement was about, the American Cinematheque is hosting an all-day tribute Sunday at the Egyptian Theater.

The festivities start at noon with a screening of four rarely seen episodes from "The Monkees" TV show, along with an episode of "Happening '69," which has footage of  the Monkees hanging out with Paul Revere & the Raiders. The tribute also has a 4 p.m. showing of a host of '60s promo films including performances by the Turtles, Sonny & Cher and the Mamas and the Papas along with a screening of "Mondo Mod," which features a host of '60s-era bands visiting such Strip hangouts as the Plush Pop and the legendary Pandora's Box. The day concludes at 7:30 p.m. with a screening of "Riot on Sunset Strip" (which features the Standells, the Chocolate Watchband and the Enemys -- with much of the movie having been filmed inside Pandora's Box).

The all-day '60s blast-back has something of a bittersweet air, since Rhino Records recently laid off close to 40 of its staffers, decimating its A&R, marketing and promotion departments, which makes it likely that "Where the Action Is" may be one of the label's last ambitiously curated box-set collections. Among the many casualties at the label was A&R director Andrew Sandoval, who put together the "Where the Action Is" box, which in addition to its amazing assortment of music, offers replicas of vintage concert posters, ticket stubs and matchbook covers as well as absorbing overviews of the nightclubs and boss L.A. radio stations from the period. 

I asked Sandoval why this intense burst of musical creativity happened in L.A. instead of somewhere else. He gives a lion's share of the credit to the Byrds, who debuted in March 1965 at Ciro's, which, with the Byrds as a house band, quickly emerged as one of the hippest clubs on the Strip. (Bob Dylan joined the band for its opening-night encore, cementing the Byrds' status as trendsetters.)

"The Byrds' success there really sparked a club craze in L.A.," says Sandoval. "They looked incredibly cool, but the biggest reason for their influence was that they were the first band in the scene to play original songs with an original style. That really set off the garage band explosion in L.A. If you listen to the other music in the box set, you'll hear the Byrds' style and sound being echoed by a number of other bands."

Sandoval says another big reason for L.A.'s preeminence was the arrival around the same time of Derek Taylor, a shrewd, flamboyant Londoner Liverpudlian who'd been the Beatles' publicist. He set up residency in L.A., where he first launched a music newspaper sponsored by KRLA, the city's top rock station of the time, before moving on to work for the Byrds. Sandoval says L.A. radio was a pivotal promotional tool for the scene. "Each major station published its own charts, so you could break a record and have a big hit in L.A. long before anything moved on to the rest of the country," he says. "It would all happen very fast. The Byrds would record a song at Columbia Studios, drive over to KRLA or KHJ with their acetate and give the station an exclusive long before the record company even pressed or released the song."

After listening to "Where the Action Is" for the last couple of weeks, I can say that the box set totally captures the spirit of a time when nearly anyone with one good guitar riff could cut a single. The box set is crammed with great music, along with wonderful oddities, including a song called "Flower Eyes" that features a very young John Branca -- now a lawyer representing Michael Jackson's estate -- on keyboards; a performance of "November Night" by Peter Fonda (with Hugh Masekela on trumpet), Jackie DeShannon doing "Splendor in the Grass" backed by the Byrds, and a noisy rock rendition of "Last Night I Had a Dream" by Randy Newman recorded long before he became a more cerebral pop satirist.

It may be Rhino's last great collection, so don't hesitate to grab it. You'll be getting a great look at one of the most fascinating chapters in L.A. pop history.

Here's one of the Byrds' first TV appearances, playing "Mr. Tambourine Man" in 1965. Roger McGuinn sings lead vocals and in wide shots you can see David Crosby -- pre-Crosby, Stills & Nash -- playing guitar on the far right.

RELATED

Randy Lewis' review of "Where the Action Is"

The Atlantic has just put up a truly bizarre interview that John Meroney did with Gore Vidal, the acerbic literary lion who's out promoting a new memoir, "Snapshots in History's Glare." It offers Vidal's remembrances of various stages of his career, including his lengthy stint as a Hollywood screenwriter. At 83, Vidal isn't much of a novelist anymore, but he's the man to see if you want to hear explosive (some would say crackpot) theories about American politics and social mores.

He doesn't disappoint in this tart-tongued chat with Meroney, dismissing Teddy Kennedy's legislative legacy as "nothing," writing off the New York Times as "a bunch of dull hacks," dubs Louis B. Mayer "the worst anti-Semite of all" and -- how's this for a whopper -- describing Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson as "virgins." That pushed the interview into Roman Polanski territory, the two men knowing each other via a shared friendship with the critic Kenneth Tynan.

Vidal is just as dismissive of Samantha Geimer, Polanski's 13-year-old victim, as he is of Teddy Kennedy, saying: "Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?" When Meroney gently takes issue with this characterization of Polanski's victim, Vidal continues: "There was a totally different story at the time that doesn't resemble anything that we're now being told. The media can't get anything straight... The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polack -- that's what people were calling him -- well, the story is totally different now from what it is then."

That provokes this exchange:

Meroney: You think anti-Semitism is motivating the prosecution of Polanski?

Vidal: Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to American values in the least. To his prosecutors, that seemed vicious and unnatural.

Meroney: So you're saying that a non-Jewish director wouldn't have to worry about getting caught up in a sex crime scandal? Such a thing wouldn't be an issue for Martin Scorsese?

Vidal: Well, he's an absolutely sexless director. Can you think of a sex scene he's ever shot?

You'll have to read the rest on your own dime. But I would defy Vidal to produce evidence that the media portrayed Geimer as some kind of virginal innocent. In fact, for years the media has flirted with a blame-the-victim portrayal of Geimer, saying she was put in harm's way by a pushy stage mother who left her alone with an insidious Lothario like Polanski. There's also virtually no evidence of any overt anti-Semitism on the part of the media's portrayal of Polanski. He may often have been cast as a vaguely disreputable European smoothie, but it would be a big stretch to find any anti-Semitic tone to that characterization.

But Vidal has his story and he's sticking to it, even if this interview could do more to harm Polanski's cause than anything a thousand of his hysterical detractors could ever possibly say.

RELATED:

IS HOLLYWOOD REALLY A HOTBED OF SUPPORT FOR ROMAN POLANSKI?

Photo of Gore Vidal by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

-

I usually try to avoid getting into dust-ups with critics writing in my own newspaper, but I can't avoid coming to the late Robert Altman's defense after reading Richard Schickel's nasty, dismissive review of "Robert Altman: The Oral Biography" by Mitchell Zuckoff, a new book about the man who brought us "MASH," "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Nashville," "The Player," "Short Cuts," "Gosford Park" and any number of other smart, funny and challenging films.

My primary problem with the review is that if Schickel has no respect for Altman as a filmmaker, how would he possibly be in a position to give a fair review to an exhaustive biography of the man? And it's certainly obvious that Schickel loathes Altman's work, since he starts out by ridiculing "MASH" as "a basically witless film," then moves on to trash the rest of Altman's oeuvre, saying that "misanthropy -- with a strong admixture of misogyny -- essentially substitutes for ideas in his movies and his characters are, in effect, characterless."

Schickel seems especially aggrieved that Altman was a boozer and a pothead who -- as Schickel puts it in the first sentence of his review --  "never passed an entirely sober day in his life." In fact, Schickel seems obsessed with Altman's licentiousness, admonishing Altman over and over for his freewheeling ways, as if he were the first filmmaker ever to use and abuse a variety of intoxicants. He comes off like a schoolmarm, rapping Altman on the knuckles for having a good time, calling him "permissive," "addled by his addictions" and claiming that even in "MASH," everyone in the movie "appeared to be perpetually, mumblingly stoned."

Largely because Zuckoff writes admiringly of Altman's work, as have so many other critics, Schickel throws the filmmaker's biographer under the bus, claiming that Zuckoff "basically knows nothing about filmmaking and film history." I could go on, but you get the point. It would be an understatement to say that Altman admirers were outraged by Schickel's dismissive attitude to one of the great filmmakers of the late 20th century. Speaking to this point, I received a letter from Alan Rudolph, who linked up with Altman as an assistant director on "The Long Goodbye" before carving out an important career as a filmmaker himself, making such movies as "Welcome to L.A.," "Choose Me" and "Afterglow."

Rudolph's entire letter is attached at the bottom of this post, but here is his artful description of Altman's special gifts as a filmmaker. As Rudolph writes:

"Altman was an innovator. His films might seem casual, but intentionally so. They were behavioral in appearance, but carefully crafted with ideas, and strong on consequence. Having served as a screenwriter for Bob, I can personally attest to his rigorous attention to writing. He just didn't want the result to seem written.... Bob knew that continuously working in the rough was the best way to find his jewel. His biting humor never spared reality nor himself. The painful absurdity of it all. There was nobody like him during his professional peak, and there isn't now."

Well said, Mr. Rudolph. As for me, all I would ask of anyone who might be on the fence about Altman is to seek out one of his many adventurous films and watch for yourself.

You'll never be bored and you'll almost always be amazed by what an original, unsentimental approach Altman had to the art of cinematic storytelling. The UCLA Film & Television Archive has a salute to Altman coming up soon, starting with a Nov. 13 screening of "The Long Goodbye," his 1973 comedy that is a personal favorite of mine.

I'll keep you posted on future events as they unfold. Now, here's Rudolph's letter in defense of Altman:

Dear Editor,

Obviously your reviewer waited safely in his lair until Robert Altman
moved on, then bravely said what's been eating at the traditionalist
core of his film soul for years.

He negates Altman because of his life style. Would he dismiss
Huston's drinking or Hitchcock's sexual repression as influences on
their film gifts? Basically, this review says Altman was something new
and different when he made his mark, but the reviewer never really
bought it. So now Altman must be overrated and unimportant. What
has been universally accepted -- that Altman was the one of the greatest
American directors of his generation, an honor automatically inserting
his name into every serious evaluation of cinema forever -- your
reviewer claims was wayward opinion. He simply knows better.

Altman was an innovator. His films might seem casual, but
intentionally so. They were behavioral in appearance, but carefully
crafted with ideas, and strong on consequence. Having served as a
screenwriter for Bob, I can personally attest to his rigorous attention
to writing. He just didn't want the result to seem written. This wasn't a
dismissal of screenplays or writers, but Altman creating. Your reviewer
belongs to the legion of unsuccessful detractors of important artists
when bold work never before encountered was first unveiled. Some just
can't break with the past.

Directors, writers and actors don't have to replicate Altman for him to
have impacted their sensibilities. The power of a major artist is that
he or she is a force, standard, guide. What your reviewer doesn't grasp is
that great artists always lead the way. The torch gets passed, the
message out, the influence permanent. You don't have to be aware of
originators to be modified by them. Bob's insistence on doing things
his own way was essential. It's the major struggle. And Altman won.
Which is the ultimate defeat for the studio ruling class and
establishment apologists. Your reviewer uses Jules Feiffer's troubles
with Bob as an example of overindulgence, but glibly dismisses
Feiffer's description of Altman as a genius. In the critic's mind, Bob
wasn't the right kind of genius.

Altman never changed. To have "comebacks" shows he never went
away. Some of his films might have been less than others, but each had
the stuff of brilliance, and was part of a larger collection. Bob knew
that continuously working in the rough was the best way to find the
jewel. His biting humor never spared reality nor himself. The painful
absurdity of it all. There was nobody like him during his professional
peak, and there isn't now.

Alan Rudolph

Photo of Robert Altman by Mark Tillie / USA Films

There's another reason why Sony is opening Michael Jackson's "This Is It" concert film nearly everywhere around the world at the same time: To dodge America's indefatigable, camcorder-wielding pirates.

In a piece published by London's Times Online, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton says that video piracy is a key factor in Sony's simultaneous release: "If Sony released [the film] only in the U.S. on Wednesday, by late Thursday it would be Camcorded, uploaded onto the Internet, and available free to anyone with a broadband connection."

He goes to say that online theft not only siphons "billions of dollars" out of the marketplace, but contends that piracy is largely responsible for why Hollywood is scaling back on film production. (I guess if you're the head of Sony Pictures, you can't possibly ever put any blame on the dramatic drop off of, ahem, Blu-ray DVD sales.)

At any rate, Lynton concludes his argument with an alarming statistic (at least alarming for anyone to makes a living making movies), saying that "last year the leading Hollywood studios made 162 films -- more than 40 fewer than 2006, and the lowest number in a decade." Yikes!

Photo: Michael Jackson fans at Tuesday night's premiere of "This Is It" at L.A. Live. Barbara Davidson  / Los Angeles Times

If audience reaction is as positive as the good reviews, the movie -- which Sony is opening today in roughly 3,500 theaters -- could end up outstripping all of the early $35 million to $50 million five-day weekend box office predictions.

So how did Sony do it? I turned to Time magazine for answers, since it offered a story with a headline that was too good to resist: "Marketing 'This Is It': How Sony Created a Global Event." Alas, none of the top execs from Sony's crack marketing team is actually quoted in the story, so when it comes to analyzing Sony's marketing prowess, we have to take the word of various outsiders, including Variety's Stephen Gaydos, Fandango spokesman Harry Medved and Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, who is, on average, quoted about 1,000 times a week in the show-biz press. (Time did talk to "This Is It" director Kenny Ortega, who is clearly a talented filmmaker but hardly a marketing expert.)

Time says Sony cleverly kept the movie away from critics until the last minute, pushed the film as a global phenomenon by orchestrating 33 different premieres, 16 of them synced to begin at the same time, and pumped up early ticket buying by saying the film would have a two-week-only run. It all sounds very innovative, except for the fact that it's all been done before, most of it by Sony in its launch of its "Da Vinci Code" series, which had much the same global opening strategy and was also held back from critics until the last moment.

With all the early chatter about Jackson's frail condition and erratic behavior before his death, I admit to having been a doubter when it came to anyone pulling together a coherent film that captured some of his on-stage glory. But judging from the "This Is It" reviews, it sounds as if the wonderfully strange King of Pop will enjoy one last turn in the spotlight. So my hat's off to Sony's marketing team, which took what could have been a lemon and served us a delightful, cool glass of lemonade.

And their efforts are paying off with fans. My colleague Ben Fritz is reporting that "This Is It" earned a robust $2.2 million from its Tuesday night screenings in the U.S. and Canada and could easily gross more than $15 million by the end of today. With that in mind, here's a little over/under poll that we've put together. Let me know how you think the movie will perform at the box office.

RELATED: ANN POWERS' "THIS IS IT" REVIEW: