Deep Throat, which had the look of a garden-variety low-budget porn film, had opened and closed in L.A. in four days, causing no stir whatsoever. But after Mr. Goldstein's glowing (swelling? throbbing? spurting?) assessment appeared in Screw, Deep Throat became a sensation. It grossed more than $40 million and ushered in the era of porno chic, as the upper middle class flocked to the World Theater in Times Square. Executives took their clients. Husbands took their wives. Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew were early audience members. Barbara Walters mentioned having seen the movie in her autobiography. When Bob Woodward of The Washington Post invoked the reference in identifying W. Mark Felt as his informant in the Watergate scandal, it was clear that the film had entered the nation's collective consciousness.

When I first met Mr. Goldstein at Big Wong's in Chinatown in the summer of 2009, he called himself "an old condom somebody popped a load into, then threw away." I was immediately charmed. We started to spend time together, meeting for eggrolls and moo shu pork every month or so. In 2005, though, Mr. Goldstein, after ballooning to 350 pounds, underwent gastric bypass surgery. This made dining out problematic: he requires unfettered access to a toilet, ideally a private one, whenever he eats. More and more he has preferred to conduct his communicationg over the telephone. Here, for example, is a voicemail I received last fall:

"Hi, Lili. Al calling. If you and I were talking 10 years ago, I would tell you how many mouths I ejaculated into, how many clits I licked. But now, since I have no money and no one's interested in me, I want to tell you what TV shows I'm watching. Invasion of the Jellyfish, a 5 o'clock documentary on the mountains of Drakensberg, a PBS two-hour documentary on the ballet dancer, Rudy I-can't-pronounce-his-last-name. I finally sprang for Verizon FiOS. I love TV. I fuckin' love it. It's better than an orgy. Not better than a buffet, though. I'm doped up on sleeping pills, so don't call me back tonight."

Fumbling sounds and muffled curses follow, then a dead-air click. Other messages have contained offers: analingus; a bootleg copy of Let My Puppets Come, a musical comedy featuring Muppet-style marionettes violating each other; use of Mr. Goldstein's Costco card. Still others have contained demands: various sex acts, the name of the '80s thriller in which Al Pacino does it to Ellen Barkin against a wall (Sea of Love), assistance registering his Starbucks card online. These messages, whether in give mode or take, always inspire in me the same reaction--a laugh-wince, equal parts amused and grossed out.

The public's reaction to Mr. Goldstein, though, has been more wince than laugh. He was a pornographer and he looked like one--a hairy, sweaty, cigar-chomping, eczema-ridden fatso. He never posed like Hugh Hefner, pipe and smoking jacket over urbane lounge wear. The pictures he peddled were of ordinary-looking women letting it all hang out, not ponytailed girl-next-door types acting nasty but being cute about it. Screw was utterly without pretensions to middle-class respectability. In it, fucking wasn't a beautiful experience, fucking wasn't art and fucking certainly wasn't tasteful; fucking was fucking. And Mr. Goldstein was, by all appearances, a genuinely scummy guy in a genuinely scummy business.

Lovelace's first official interview, to Mr. Goldstein in Screw, was less an interview than an episode of oral sex in a $17-a-night hotel room. It was her handler's way of thanking him for the marquee line--"the best porn film ever made!"--that the World Theater was featuring to such great effect in its promos. "Here I was with the world's No. 1 cocksucker," Mr. Goldstein said years later, "and yet it was a lonely experience. I felt like a hooker faking orgasm with a john." Mr. Goldstein soon had a falling-out with Lovelace (who died in a car accident in 2002; she had been converted to anti-pornography crusading by the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin). He dug up a piece of juvenilia, an obscure work called Dog Fucker, a title and plot synopsis in one, and ran photos in Screw of Lovelace and her paramour in flagrante. When later Mr. Goldstein showed up at the book party for Inside Linda Lovelace, she had him thrown out by a couple of tuxedoed goons. In her later memoir Ordeal, she referred to him as "crude, rude, infantile, obnoxious, and dirty."

By the time they were at odds, the pair no longer needed each other. Sex had entered the popular culture. Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Love Making came out in 1972. So did Behind the Green Door, the first hard-core film to enjoy wide release in the U.S., featuring, with ejaculate all over her dewy-fresh face, the girl who appeared as the young mother on the Ivory Soap box. In Screw, Mr. Goldstein offered, in addition to the expected pleasures of explicit images of acts of depravity, incisive political and social commentary. He ran pieces with titles like "Is J. Edgar Hoover a Fag?" and would drop references to Aristotle and Spinoza while swapping sex tips with the porn star Seka. Screw was dirty, but it could also be smart. And so it achieved a certain antiestablishment credibility. Celebrities like John Lennon and Jack Nicholson submitted to interviews that ran alongside interviews with porn-world figures like John Holmes and Georgina Spelvin.

Mr. Goldstein's business thrived for three decades, but in 2003, his company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and Midnight Blue, went into bankruptcy, the result, he claims, of the burgeoning of online porn, his own mismanagement of funds and the unscrupulous antics of a lawyer-cum-girlfriend. Mr. Goldstein lost everything, including his townhouse on East 61st Street and a mansion in Pompano Beach, Fla., with an 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger. Mr. Goldstein did time in prison for harassing a former employee (he published indiscreet photos of her in Screw, along with her name and phone number, urging readers to give her a ring), then received three years' probation for similarly harassing his third ex-wife, Gena. He was briefly homeless in 2005 until his friend Penn Jillette, the magician, rented him an apartment. His 2008 campaign for president ("Support Al. He likes it on top") received scant attention. As James Wolcott said, his "senior years could add a chapter to the Book of Job."

I'd like to say that I've been a good luck charm for Mr. Goldstein, but that hasn't been the case. His life since we've met has gone from bad to worse. Last fall, Mr. Goldstein's social worker arranged a meeting between him and his estranged son, Jordan, a corporate lawyer and a graduate of Georgetown and Harvard Law. (Father and son have been distant since 2002, when Mr. Goldstein, in a fit of pique, decided once again to use Screw as a forum to air his personal grievances, printed a mock-up of Jordan being fellated by his mother, the long-suffering Gena.) Just before the reunion was to take place, Mr. Goldstein went into a seizure.

I stopped by the hospital to visit him. He was naked save for a single dingy gray sock on his foot and a sheet over his crotch. He hadn't eaten in days apart from a McRib sandwich smuggled in for him by his new fiancé, a former mistress from the '80s named Donna. The engagement came as a surprise; every time I've seen Mr. Goldstein, he's been wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan DEATH BEFORE MARRIAGE. After offering my congratulations, I told him I hoped he wasn't jinxing himself. He shrugged, mumbled something about us--us meaning humanity--being "the flea on the ass of a dog," then asked me what was happening on the television program In Treatment.

In portraying Mr. Goldstein this way, I realize that I've fallen into the trap that he himself has set. He comes on like a dirty old man. And he is, without question, a dirty old man. He has been a dirty old man since he was a comparatively young one. (In 1970, when my father was 23 years old, staying at a youth hostel in France, he met Mr. Goldstein, who was hanging around the same hostel. Mr. Goldstein asked my father if he liked looking at pictures of naked girls. My father said yes, and Mr. Goldstein provided an eyeful. Mr. Goldstein was then only 33.) He has a twinkly-eyed slyness, though, that lets you know he's making fun of the fact that he's a dirty old man--that the wheezing and slobbering and biting his knuckles every time a pretty girl walks by is, at least in part, shtick.

Because Mr. Goldstein plays the clown so well, it's easy to underestimate him. Philip Roth did so when he turned Mr. Goldstein into a motor-mouthed vulgarian--and an anti-Semite's wet dream--when he had his alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, impersonate a Goldsteinesque figure, the editor of skin rag Lickety Split, in The Anatomy Lesson. But Mr. Goldstein has been influential all along, both within the world of pornography and outside it. Before Screw, no magazine in this country had ever come close to addressing sex with such unapologetic candor, and without the posturing of Playboy. Hustler stole from Screw constantly: Screw's "Smut from the Past" became Hustler's "Porn from the Past"; Screw's "ShitList" became Hustler's "Asshole of the Month." Mr. Goldstein's personal style, his maggoty brand of charm, has been widely imitated, as well. The grubby fingerprints of his influence are, for example, all over Howard Stern. The way Mr. Stern waxes on about his undersize penis and oversize nose and his general sexual incompetence is ripped straight out of Mr. Goldstein's playbook. Constant, ruthless self-ridicule will make everyone else take it easy on you. 

And then there are Mr. Goldstein's efforts in the cause of free speech. A hipster outlaw in the tradition of Henry Miller and Lenny Bruce, he was brought up on obscenity charge after obscenity charge, including 19 times in one two-year-period. David Foster Wallace dubbed him "a First Amendment Ninja." 

But while Hollywood puzzled over who would play Linda Lovelace, Mr. Goldstein's jinx entered the picture. In December, he suffered a cerebrovascular accident--in other words, a stroke. When I visited him a few days later at the Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Harlem, he couldn't remember what street he lived on and was calling trains "phones"--the usual fixed-cognitive-impairment gaffes. I asked him about Let My Puppets Come (I wanted some clarification: Was he the voice of one of the puppets, or was his role in the movie more of a guest-appearance thing?); his eyes lost their vagueness and he said, without hesitation, "You mean, the one about the pussy-eating Muppets?"  Sad as it was to see him in this state, I found myself imagining what the lead-in to this story would be if he were still running Screw. Final Stroke for Geriatric Pornographer? Or maybe, Stroke-Mag Publisher Stroked to Within an Inch of His Life? Thanks to the double-entendre-rich properties of the word "stroke," the possibilities are pretty near endless.

editorial@observer.com

Almost a month and a half ago, as the buxom actress was filming Herbie: Fully Loaded, about a NASCAR-racing Volkswagen bug, her dad was playing a real-life speed demon on the streets of midtown Manhattan. On the afternoon of Sept. 20, while driving a rented yellow Ford Mustang, the 44-year-old father rear-ended an investment banker's Subaru at the intersection of 53rd and Third. "He got out of the car asking, 'Are you O.K.? Are you O.K.?' He clearly knew that he was responsible. He admitted that he'd been on his cell phone when he hit me," the other driver told The Transom. When our source asked Mr. Lohan if he wanted to report the accident to his insurance carrier, Mr. Lohan said that he didn't and then proceeded to play the celebrity card. "He asked, 'Do you know who Lindsay Lohan is?' And I said yes, and he said, 'Well, that's my daughter, so you know I can pay.'"

Before parting ways, the two exchanged information, and Mr. Lohan gave our source what he believed to be a bogus number. "Every time I called it, it was a fast busy signal-like a phone that's been disconnected. It was impossible to get in touch with him. So I went to his lawyer and, over a month later, nothing's been done. I'm getting sick and tired of being blown off. All I'm asking for is what it cost me to replace the bumper."

Mr. Lohan insists otherwise. "There weren't any false numbers-that's ridiculous!" he said when we reached him on his cell phone (a different number from the one he'd given the other driver). "I had another number, but that phone was lost weeks ago and Nextel gave me a new number. Tell him to call me on this phone. He can call me directly and I'll just deal with this myself!"

Of course, this isn't Mr. Lohan's first encounter with car trouble-or the law, for that matter. This past May, after the family celebrated the first communion of Lindsay's 7-year-old brother, Dakota, Mr. Lohan reportedly followed brother-in-law Matt Sullivan home, tailing the bumper of his car for the duration of the ride. Once in his relative's driveway, Mr. Lohan attacked his relative, who received 16 stitches in his head at the local hospital. Michael Lohan's blood-splattered car was reportedly impounded by the police-as was Mr. Lohan, who was later released on $14,000 bail. Meanwhile, the same week he was playing bumper cars on 53rd Street, Mr. Lohan was kicked out of the topless club Scores for belligerency, and pled guilty to assault charges for an altercation with a New York City sanitation worker.

While the $700 it will cost to replace the damaged bumper is chump change for Mr. Lohan's daughter, who now has an $11 million-per-film asking price, the figure may be too much for her father and his financial woes. Since 1986, Mr. Lohan-who served a four-year federal prison term for securities fraud-has accumulated nearly $30,000 in civil judgments from close to 20 creditors.

Despite the damage estimates, Mr. Lohan contends: "Nothing even happened. There was no damage or anything. We didn't even file a report with the insurance companies. My lawyer just got the letter about this."

Mr. Lohan admitted that he's been difficult to reach this past month. "I just got out of the hospital. I had a minor heart attack. And before that, I was on vacation."

-Noelle Hancock

Porn Again

Adult-video stars and their admirers crowded into the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea on Oct. 30 for the book-release party of XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits, a book of photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders that features the big guns (and their glorious endowments) of the porn world in nonexplicit poses-both clothed and sans wardrobe.

While there were plenty of overexcited men, the attire was less stained-sweatpants-and-five-day-old-beard than it was Chelsea-clone-meets-downtown-chic. Instead of housebound, overweight, socially retarded couch potatoes, the porn-starlet admirers were, for the most part, as attractive as the objects of their attention, albeit not as saucily dressed.

Chad Hunt, gay porno actor extraordinaire, was nattily attired in a tailored black button-down shirt over a green stone necklace, shaking hands and signing copies of his picture while young, middle-aged and older men tried getting face time with him. Mr. Hunt, known for the gargantuan dimensions of his genitalia, was gracious, extending a wide smile and warm handshake.

"It's a great experience," he told The Transom about posing for the book. "I'm not used to being posed while I'm dressed." Was there any difference between posing in flagrante delicto and a straightforward, non-pornographic nude? "These pictures are more revealing than in standard poses-a lot more real than the adult videos," he said.

Mr. Hunt gave a sex-positive endorsement of John Kerry, adding that after John Ashcroft leaves the Justice Department, "there will be a lot more dirtier and nastier things we can do on video."

Across the gallery, blond and curvy porn starlet Jesse Jane wandered around the gallery and pouted aggressively when approached. "I've only been in the business for two years, and its really wonderful to be part of this show," she said. Ms. Jane's photographic diptych shows her in college gear-a numbered T-shirt with blue jeans and pigtails, followed by the obligatory nude shot that attracted several enamored passers-by. Wearing a tight, plunging dress-what else?-Ms. Jane elucidated on her work schedule. "I've just finished shooting Island Fever 3. We shot it on Bora Bora, and it's the first porn delivered in H.D. [high definition]." What is it about, Ms. Jane? "Boy-girl, girl-girl-girl, boy-girl," Ms. Jane giggled. "Oh, and I just got back from the Venus Awards in Germany. I won best actress for Loaded. It was really exciting." The movie? "Yeah, that was hard work." What, too many sex scenes? "No, that part's easy. There was a lot of action scenes, and I did all my own stunts." Asked who she thought was kinkier in bed, Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry, Ms. Jane said, "I bet you Kerry's more kinky. He gives you that vibe, that he'd tie you up and twist you around. Bush seems like more of a missionary guy." Ms. Jane, a Texas native, said that she was, of course, voting for the straight-shooting missionary guy.

Later, at the after-party in the penthouse of the still-unfinished Rivington Hotel, the wine and liquor were flowing, loosing the lips of gawkers. John Waters, oddball filmmaker and éminence grise of the weird, was sitting on a sofa nearby, surrounded by a coterie of young men. "I think they're great-they have great dignity," he sighed, describing the photos. The Transom, feeling the effects of several glasses of red wine and sated on the foie gras, prosciutto and sushi hors d'oeuvres provided by Chanterelle, finally felt confident enough to approach a pretty woman and ask her about porn. Kelly, a stylish African-American woman casually dressed in a tight-fitting black blouse and slacks-who lives in Manhattan but preferred to not give out her last name-said that porn is really mainstream these days, but "we're all hiding it. We're afraid of the human body!" Asked if the acceptance of porn in the mainstream world bodes well for John Kerry on Election Day, she shook her ponytailed head. "Nobody thinks about voting when they're jerking off."

-Matthew Grace

You Can Call Me Al

Three days before Al Goldstein was fired from the Second Avenue Deli, the 68-year-old former publisher of Screw magazine was in the back room there, taking a break from his two-month-long stint as a "greeter."

Mr. Goldstein, wearing a Salvation Army pinstriped jacket ($6), a button-down shirt ($2) and a silk tie (50 cents), didn't have that naughty spark in his eyes, but he looked better than he has in the past, having lost 150 pounds after getting his stomach stapled.

"I'm starting to feel that there really is an Al Goldstein," he said. "I was suicidal, you know-I wanted to die. When you're making $4,000 a week and then you're down to $10 an hour? I was up high and I fell low."

For 34 years, Mr. Goldstein had a soapbox on his cable show Midnight Blue and wrote 1,800 editorials for his magazine.

"I never sold out," he said. "I tried to be honest. I made fun of myself, my weight, my cock, my grandiosity. I think what I am is the antithesis of Donald Trump. I am a human being who struggles, who feels pain, who cries easily, who has fought the urge to kill himself, who lives in a homeless shelter-in Florida, I lived in a car. And on a certain level, I survived."

He listed some recent lowlights: Screw magazine bankrupt. Sued for sexual harassment. Lost his townhouse on East 61st Street, then his $2.5 million house in Florida. No more chauffeured limousine and bodyguard. No more bylines in The New York Times and Forbes. His fifth wife sick with Crohn's disease. His teeth are falling out. Estranged from his lawyer son. And so on.

"Power is an aphrodisiac," he said. "People would suck up to me. They all dumped me when I became poor."

Except, that is, for a handful of people, including porn star Ron Jeremy.

"He'll be here in two weeks," Mr. Goldstein said. "He made me promise I'd give him a sandwich as tall as his dick. So we're talking an 11-inch sandwich. And the pig'll eat it-he likes anything. Her doesn't taste, he devours."

Recently Mr. Goldstein reread George Orwell's classic memoir Down and Out in Paris and London, "because I didn't think I'd wind up this pathetic," he said. "But it was good to know that when you hit the bottom, there's no lower to go and you can be resilient. I'm trying to bounce back. I'm trying to bounce back."

Mr. Goldstein looked on with disgust as The Transom slathered mayonnaise on his pastrami.

"You're a fucking retard," he said. "It's despicable. Before you eat pussy, do you put mayonnaise on the pubic hair?" He gave a lengthy tutorial on how to perform the best cunnilingus.

"Bottom line is, go slow," he concluded, as a buxom waitress named Marsha sat down next to him and took his hand.

On Oct. 25, Mr. Goldstein was let go from the deli, having spent the night in the laundry room one too many times.

"He's not here anymore," a manager told The Transom. "It just didn't work out."

"Now I have nothing," Mr. Goldstein told the New York Post's Page Six on Oct. 29 from the homeless shelter at Bellevue Hospital. But by the next day, he had a new gig at the Bellevue bar on 40th and Ninth. Owner Tracy Westmoreland paid him $100 to hang out there for an hour. Dressed in conservative hip-hop attire, Mr. Goldstein was a big hit.

Tears were in his eyes as patrons lined up to shake his hand. Mr. Westmoreland introduced him to 22-year-old girls and signed him up to perform comedy there in the future. ("I thought he was going to be an old, crusty scumbag," he said later. "He was a total gentleman.")

That weekend, there were more job offers for Mr. Goldstein. A friend in Florida said he'd take care of him if he promised "to turn to a world of spirituality," and another guy said he'd pay him $100,000 a year to run his strip club in Liberty, N.Y.

But he decided to take the third offer, to work as a greeter at J&R Cigars on 45th Street, the middle ground between the world of God and the world of flesh, he said on Nov. 1.

"It's the first day, I haven't been fired yet-I love this job!" Mr. Goldstein said.

"They gave me cigars! I have the only job where I can smoke. Smokers are hated more than if you were a leper-if my fingers were falling off, I'd be treated as badly. They're so civilized and nice here. And the best thing: In three months, if I don't get fired, I get health insurance. This is a real job. I'm so excited, I mean, I feel the way some porno guy would feel working at a topless club."

Did he have any "fuck you's" left in him?

"The only 'fuck you' is to you for wasting my time," he said as his co-workers laughed in the background. "Not buying me a meal and being basically a typical journalist-a useless parasite."

-George Gurley

Finding Johnny

"I don't want to alarm anybody, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to say," actor Johnny Depp told the crowd at the Actors' Fund of America gala. "Hopefully I won't pass out, vomit or soil myself. It's been done before." Fortunately-or perhaps unfortunately-Mr. Depp did nothing of the sort; however, he did pick up the Lee Strasberg Artistic Achievement Award, and raised a million dollars for the AFoA with the help of Whoopi Goldberg, Marty Richards, Bernadette Peters and other "nonorees" who crowded into Waldorf-Astoria's Grand Ballroom on the night of Saturday, Oct. 30. Mr. Depp, 41, had flown in from England, where he's on location shooting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When The Transom asked the soft-spoken actor what he considered his greatest achievement, the father of two replied, "Being involved in the creation of my children."

Fellow honoree Angela Lansbury took home a lifetime achievement award for her work in films like National Velvet and The Manchurian Candidate, plays like Sweeney Todd and Mame, and her long-running television series, Murder, She Wrote.

Mr. Depp drew laughs during his acceptance speech when he joked, "I'm admitting this for the first time in public, but when I did the film Sleepy Hollow a few years ago, Angela Lansbury was the main inspiration for my character of Ichabod Crane. So I thank her for that."

Retired Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti was on hand to present an award to J. Nicholas Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

He recalled one of his favorite stories from his tenure as head of the MPAA: "I wanted to let Russia see all the pictures that we had, and their government only wanted the pictures that made us look bad. For instance, they wanted Grapes of Wrath, which for years our State Department wouldn't allow to be shown because it's about poor people. Finally I said, 'By God, I'll raise a stink about this-let them have it!' And we did; we showed it there. The USIA had Russians doing some exit polling, and what impressed the Russians was not that Americans were poor, but that the poorest Americans had a pickup truck!"

Back onstage, Mr. Depp was coming to grips with his reputation. Holding his bulky glass award, the actor told the crowd, "You know, for years I've been listening to people say that the choices I've made in my career are weird and bizarre and strange, and I've never understood what they were talking about … until I saw THAT!" Mr. Depp gestured to the video montage showcasing his life's work. "And, yeah-apparently it is weird!"

-N.H.

Larry Gelbart, the author of Tootsie and the TV version of M*A*S*H , and co-author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, wrote a racy adaptation of Lysistrata -the Aristophanes play about Grecian sexual politics-with songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel.

On Feb. 5, it was precipitously dumped by the Harvard-funded Cambridge, Mass., American Repertory Theatre after its leading lady, Cherry Jones, refused to perform it.

And while the A.R.T.'s artistic director, Robert Brustein, rushes to get his own replacement adaptation in order by the play's May 10 opening, Mr. Gelbart's offending version, subtitled "Sex and the City-State," will get a reading at the Manhattan Theater Club on March 11.

"What is there to say, except for something probably unprintable?" said Mr. Gelbart by phone from Los Angeles.

The writer received news that his raucous adaptation was toast on Feb. 5, in an e-mail from Mr. Brustein, with whom he'd been corresponding about the project since August. Mr. Brustein, a founding member of the A.R.T. who is retiring at the end of this season, wanted to corral a group of seasoned colleagues for his valedictory production. Lysistrata was to star fellow founder Cherry Jones and to be directed by Mr. Brustein's frequent collaborator, Andrei Serban. Mr. Brustein asked his colleagues William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein to compose songs. Mr. Gelbart himself had worked with Mr. Brustein on 1989's Mastergate and 1991's Power Failure .

But Mr. Bolcom and Mr. Weinstein soon backed out because of other commitments, and Mr. Gelbart was joined by Disney composer Alan Menken and lyricist David Zippel, neither of whom had ever worked with Mr. Brustein. Messrs. Menken and Zippel had collaborated with Mr. Gelbart on City of Angels , as well as an in-progress musical about choreographer Busby Berkeley called Buzz!! Nothing Succeeds Like Excess!!

By December, Mr. Gelbart was having a blast adapting the 411 B.C. play about Athenian and Spartan women who stage a sex strike to get their husbands to stop warring. After briefly considering "Phallus Doesn't Live Here Anymore," he had settled on the "Sex and the City-State" subtitle and was working to strike the right tone in the script.

"It is just loaded with references to genitalia and intercourse as a weapon, or the denial of intercourse as a weapon," Mr. Gelbart said. "It took me a long while before I could get down and be as bawdy as the play eventually became."

His results included bits of dialogue like this line from Lysistrata, the play's heroine:

You will fly from the room at the mention of bush.

You will offer no pussy.

Nor one bit of tush.

For their part, Messrs. Menken and Zippel were working to keep the songs, in Mr. Zippel's words, "bawdy and funny-and because it was Larry Gelbart, smart." To that end, they were composing ditties along these lines:

We will not play till they lay down their spears

Till then our ankles won't visit our ears …

Hands off their phalluses

Let them get calluses

Don't let their chalices

Overflow.

According to Mr. Gelbart and Mr. Zippel, they were dutifully sending their work to Mr. Brustein in Boston and receiving, in Mr. Zippel's words, "reams of e-mail telling us how brilliant it was."

One, to Mr. Zippel on Jan. 15, read "CD arrived and it's glorious. Many thanks to you and Alan for a superb job of work. The songs are witty, lyrical and very moving."

Mr. Gelbart said, "I was constantly encouraged to keep going along the lines I was going …. [The e-mails] were quite enthusiastic expressions of delight, to use mild terms."

Mr. Gelbart remembered that "the first fly in this Grecian ointment" came when Mr. Serban sent his notes in mid-January.

"Serban thought that some of my material was a little repetitive, and he was right. I did tighten up a scene here and there," said Mr. Gelbart, adding that "he said that certain scenes needed structural simplification. I didn't know quite what that meant."

Mr. Gelbart said that he was especially understanding since he'd been told that Mr. Serban was "used to working with dead authors."

But on Feb. 5, Mr. Gelbart received a "Dear Larry e-mail" from Mr. Brustein.

According to Mr. Gelbart, Mr. Brustein apologetically explained that the production designer, Michael Yeargan, "had refused to design the production based on my adaptation, that Cherry Jones hated my adaptation and that, inasmuch as the leading lady and the production designer were not going to do the play, that Mr. Serban did not see how he could."

Mr. Brustein explained in his e-mail that he himself would now "pound out" an adaptation of Lysistrata by May.

Mr. Gelbart declined to read the message to The Transom, but he said that the phrase "'political correctness' was never used-but I think if we dusted the e-mail, we might see those fingerprints." A subsequent e-mail from Mr. Brustein, Mr. Gelbart said, told him that "Ms. Jones and Mr. Serban had a rather low tolerance for obscene humor, whereas [Mr. Brustein] shared my [sensibility]."

A spokeswoman for the A.R.T. confirmed that "neither Ms. Jones nor Mr. Serban nor Mr. Yeargan were pleased with the adaptation …. They didn't like it, they didn't want to work with it-so, much to his chagrin, because he's a good friend of Larry Gelbart's, Bob Brustein decided to tackle it on his own."

The spokeswoman said that new songs were being composed by Hair composer Galt MacDermot, with lyrics by Matty Selman. Though she couldn't point to the offending problems in Mr. Gelbart's script, it was her understanding that the company found it too bawdy.

"I refuse to call it 'obscene,'" said Mr. Gelbart, who pointed to the Lawrence Durrell quotation he'd chosen to preface his adaptation: "It's only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness."

Mr. Brustein never contacted Mr. Menken or Mr. Zippel, leaving Mr. Gelbart to pass along the news of their termination.

They didn't take it too badly.

"We were stunned by the ungracious way in which it unfolded, but we all laughed a lot," said Mr. Zippel. For his part, Mr. Gelbart remembered, "I forwarded Brustein's 'Dear Larry' letter to David and Alan … Alan called me, and after we said hello we never stopped laughing. It was bizarre, but so healthy I can't tell you."

What's not as funny to Mr. Gelbart was the implication that his work may have been lacking. "When a production is dropped, what is one to think except that the writer's work wasn't deemed fit for production, so another one has to be substituted?"

The sting of rejection didn't last long. An adaptation of Aristophanes which boasts "a bawdy script with some social merit is like chum in the water," Mr. Gelbart said.

The Manhattan Theater Club, which proved it wasn't prudish in 1998 with its controversial staging of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, bit first. M.T.C. artistic director Lynne Meadow heard about the Lysistrata script and asked Mr. Gelbart if she could read it. She "loved it," and confirmed that on March 11, M.T.C. will stage an unrehearsed, "extremely private" reading of the Gelbart-Menken-Zippel version of the play.

Ms. Meadow said that she has asked her friend Christine Baranski to read Ms. Jones' part, and that Ms. Baranski has agreed, provided that she can make it to New York from Toronto, where she is shooting a film.

Mr. Gelbart added with a chuckle that he'd heard that Ms. Baranski and Ms. Jones are scheduled to share a stage "in some other part of the asylum playground" later this year. It has been reported that in December, Ms. Baranski will play Lillian Hellman to Ms. Jones' Mary McCarthy in the utterly surreal, Nora Ephron–penned musical Imaginary Friends , with music by Marvin Hamlisch.

He also said that he's "curious" to see Mr. Brustein's Lysistrata, "to see what is acceptable to these people."

Although he won't be able to make the Manhattan Theater Club reading because of a pilot he's shooting for ABC in Los Angeles, Mr. Gelbart said he was pleased about the Broadway turn the project took and was working on the script "as we speak." On his way to a root canal, Mr. Gelbart said, "I'd rather do it this way the first time out than have to prove it's worth doing to people who aren't especially enthusiastic about it."

Proof = Paltrow

Back in 1999, actress Gwyneth Paltrow complained that Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein had pressured her to pose in an S&M get-up on the cover of Talk magazine. Now she seems to be cracking the whip.

According to a source close to the situation, Ms. Paltrow is "the natural front-runner" to appear in a Miramax-produced film version of the Pulitzer-winning play Proof , adapted by its author, David Auburn. Beginning in May, Ms. Paltrow will star in the London production of the play as Catherine, the insane math-genius daughter of an insane math genius. That production's director, John Madden, is the apparent choice to direct the movie. In 1998, he directed Ms. Paltrow in Miramax's Shakespeare in Love , for which she won a Best Actress Oscar.

At the time, Ms. Paltrow and Mr. Weinstein seemed to be members of a mutual-admiration society, but their enthusiasm for each other eventually waned.

But after a period during which Ms. Paltrow starred in more fashion shoots than films, Mr. Weinstein seems to once again be opening doors for the actress. In November, Ms. Paltrow told Harper's Bazaar that she wanted the film rights to Donna Tartt's book, The Secret History , for her younger brother Jake to direct. Poof! A week later, Miramax owned the film, Ms. Paltrow was producing, and Mr. Paltrow was directing.

Now it seems that what Ms. Paltrow wants is Proof . "Harvey drove a truck full of money up to [the producers'] houses," said one source close to the situation. "What choice did they have? He wants Gwyneth."

It doesn't hurt that Mr. Weinstein has made friends with Mr. Auburn. The playwright is adapting Paul Watkins' 2000 novel, The Forger , for an upcoming Miramax film.

-Ian Blecher

Pay Me, Sidney

Press agents just can't seem to get respect when it comes to Sweet Smell of Success . First, actor Tony Curtis, who played flack Sidney Falco in the film version, put the producers on his personal drop-dead list. Now one of the last of the old-time New York press agents says he's been spurned by, of all things, the Broadway adaptation's publicists. After reading about himself in Kurt Andersen's "Only Gossip" feature in the Mar. 3 issue of The New York Times Magazine , which was pegged to the musical's opening, publicist Sy Presten thought he might qualify for press tickets. After all, Mr. Presten not only fed items to Walter Winchell, he represented Sherman Billingsley, owner of Winchell's haunt, the Stork Club, as well as Jules Podell, who represented the Copacabana during its glory years. (In Sweet Smell , Winchell's doppelgänger frequents "21.")

So Mr. Presten called up the production's publicists, Barlow Hartman, to see if he could get tickets for March 14. That's the seventh anniversary of his marriage to Joanne Binder, who works the phones with him. The answer came back: No. Well, Mr. Presten said, "I'd rather be in The New York Times than see Sweet Smell of Success ."

But Barlow Hartman partner Michael Hartman said that Mr. Presten shouldn't give up just yet. "We certainly don't want to alienate him on any level," Mr. Hartman said. "We can talk to him about getting him in at some point. We have a certain amount of tickets allotted for working members of the press. We have to methodically work the best way we know how."

-Frank DiGiacomo

Naked in New York

Soho looked more like an art destination than a shopping mall on March 1, when dealer Jeffrey Deitch held twin simultaneous openings for Singapore-born Su-en Wong and Italian performance artist Vanessa Beecroft at his two Soho galleries.

The crowds spilled onto the sidewalks, Damian Loeb dropped by both, and outside the Beecroft show, two women had a violent verbal argument about a dog.

Ms. Wong's show, Good Girls , was at Mr. Deitch's Grand Street gallery. It was her first solo showing in New York. Near the gallery's entrance, Asian women dressed in pink latex passed out pieces of chocolate cake that had been carved from a gigantic pink-coated mound near the door. On top of the cake sat an Asian blow-up doll and, from her paintings, more images of Asian girls depicted in sexually stereotypical situations. Dressed in a woolly blue cheongsam dress, a tattoo peeking from under her sleeves, Ms. Wong ran around looking for garbage bags and said she was too frazzled to talk to The Transom.

Ms. Beecroft's exhibit, VB 45/VB 48 , took place at Mr. Deitch's Wooster Street gallery and featured giant photographs of women, clad only in Helmut Lang boots, staring emptily back at viewers. The photos had been taken at two performance-art projects by Ms. Beecroft in Vienna and Genoa, and the experience of seeing them again was unnerving for the artist.

"I almost don't even recognize it myself," Ms. Beecroft said. "It's embarrassing. It's so physical."

After Mr. Loeb, who was wearing stubble and tinted glasses, had taken a gander at each exhibit, The Transom asked him for his assessment before he headed off to dinner with his dealer, Mary Boone.

"I understand they're both women," Mr. Loeb said. "I'm coming from an outsider's perspective, having never been a woman." He paused, then added: "The connection between the two? Nudity sells … magazines and clothing and perfume and artwork."

-Elisabeth Franck

Too Close, No Comfort

If you ever want to know what it feels like for an artist to watch his own work get sold at an auction house, ask Chuck Close. On March 4, Mr. Close was on hand when his Self-Portrait (1995) was put on the block at Sotheby's for an auction to benefit the Spinal Cord Injury Project of Rutgers University. As the time for his painting to be sold drew near, Mr. Close looked visibly uncomfortable as he sat in his wheelchair in front of the artwork. "I don't like to do that," Mr. Close said. "For an artist to go to an auction house is a little bit like taking a cow on a guided tour of a slaughterhouse."

-E.F.

The Transom Also Hears …

Actor Bill (Independence Day ) Pullman showed up at the March 4 benefit that artist James Wyeth hosted for the Savannah College of Art and Design at the Soho art gallery The Time Is Always Now. At one point, Mr. Pullman, who is in town rehearsing for Edward Albee's The Goat , was introduced to actor Matthew Modine, who told his fellow thespian that he had auditioned for the part that Mr. Pullman had won.

"I went in there on The Goat ," Mr. Modine told him enthusiastically. "They didn't tell you about my run with them?" Mr. Modine looked suddenly crestfallen when he realized that The Transom was interviewing Mr. Pullman. After making a halfhearted attempt to grab our tape record, he hurried away.

"This is very awkward," Mr. Pullman whispered. "He auditioned for it. It's a little awkward, but, uhm, he's a good actor and I'm sure he could do a good job with that." He paused and thought about it some more.

"He offered that information. I don't think I would have offered that information. Just shows you he's more secure than I am."

-E.F.

On Feb. 19, the New York Post sent reporter Denise Buffa to Brooklyn Criminal Court to cover the trial of Mr. Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine, who's been indicted on 12 counts of aggravated harassment.

For those who haven't been reading the tabloids, Mr. Goldstein stands accused of harassing his former personal assistant, Jennifer Lozinski. Ms. Lozinski claimed she quit her job after Mr. Goldstein yelled at her because he had to wait in line for a rental car that she had arranged for him. After Ms. Lozinski left Screw 's offices, Mr. Goldstein allegedly continued to berate her by phone, all the while accusing her of stealing thousands of dollars.

Given Mr. Goldstein's legendary lack of reserve, the trial was practically guaranteed to be entertaining–Mr. Goldstein has already had one courtroom freakout–but after the first day, the Post 's Ms. Buffa decided she'd had enough. On Feb. 20, the paper sent reporter William Gorta, who's written about it ever since.

The reason? According to one Post source: "Basically, Al Goldstein grabbed her ass and said a bunch of lewd things. She was uncomfortable doing the story. She asked for somebody else to do it."

Ms. Buffa did not return a call for comment, but according to a spokesman for the Post , "Al Goldstein was rude and offensive. When we found out about the incident, we took Denise off the story."

Mr. Goldstein could not be reached for comment, but Chip Maloney, an editor at Screw , told The Transom: "Al has never conducted himself inappropriately with any females, just me."

–Sridhar Pappu

Just Remember This On Feb. 21, 79-year-old fashion designer Pierre Cardin presided over the present and the past at Maxim's, his Art Deco time capsule of a nightclub on Madison Avenue.

The party was ostensibly to fête the launch of a music compilation called Maxim's de Paris as well as to celebrate Mr. Cardin's 50 years in fashion, though not everyone seemed to be with the program. "Is Pierre Cardin alive or dead?" Alice Sykes, 29, the youngest of the trendy Sykes sisters, was overhead saying at the event.

Such are the vagaries of the time. Or is it fashion? Anyway, inspired by Ms. Sykes' question and the evening's hermetic environment–Maxim's has been closed for some time now–The Transom decided to ask the evening's revelers what they hoped the historians of the future would recall about them.

"It's a really difficult question," Ms. Sykes said. She was drinking vodka with a splash of cranberry juice. "I need other people to tell me that kind of stuff. I work for Lulu Guinness, that's what I do. She's an English handbag designer. And I moved here to, like, bring Lulu Guinness to the masses!"

Earlier in the evening, Ms. Sykes had met novelist Jay McInerney, but the encounter had left her in another quandary.

At issue was not whether Mr. McInerney was breathing, but rather whether he was working. Ms. Sykes had no idea what Mr. McInerney did for a living.

A friend told Ms. Sykes that Mr. McInerney had written Bright Lights, Big City , but the author had complicated the issue by, she said, introducing himself as a "pedophile."

"And then he told a really bad joke," Ms. Sykes recounted. "He said, 'Well, you only look about 13.' I was just really confused. I was like, 'That's not a very funny joke for a really clever guy.'"

Mr. McInerney was sitting at a table with two blondes, both of whom looked of age and seemed very focused on him. One of the women was a model, Daniela Novak.

"I'm a very deep guy, but I like being [at] superficial parties like this," Mr. McInerney told The Transom.

The sultry Daniela took a drag off her cigarette. The Transom stopped paying attention to Mr. McInerney.

"See why I feel life is still worth living, even if you have writer's block?" the author said. "Writing a good sentence and having two girls like that bat their eyes at me are two very different things that I live for."

By the bar but not drinking was David Patrick Columbia, who runs the society Web site newyorksocialdiary.com. He said he's considered a social chronicler and social historian of this time in New York. "But the operative word is 'considered,'" he said. "It remains to be seen–not by me or you or anybody who's alive today–whether or not that's really true."

What did he make of the scene at Maxim's? "It's a promotional event; it does not have historic virtue," Mr. Columbia said. "Nor does it have gravity. Or brevity. But it does have levity.

Mr. Columbia checked out the crowd, which included Salman Rushdie, Lauren DuPont, Nicky Hilton, Alex Von Furstenberg and designer Zac Posen. "I would call this the working Eurotrash with a little American salt and pepper," he said. "Eurotrash means rich mommy and/or daddy or a gilded sycophant. It means they're jazzy and they drink a lot, do drugs, have sex a lot, sleep late and go to lunch."

"The reality is, come to a place like this, this confronts you with the question what life is all about," Mr. Columbia said. "What's it all about, Alfie? Nothing. It's all about nothing."

Mr. Columbia was starting to frighten us, so we moved on to financier Steven Greenberg and his young Asian date.

One hundred years from now, what should people know about him? "A hundred years from now, they're going to be able to ask me that same question–about the following hundred years," said Mr. Greenberg, who bears a resemblance to the more-than-200-year-old founding father, Benjamin Franklin.

The Transom asked Mr. Greenberg how he was planning to live that long.

"Plastics," he replied.

–George Gurley

Elvish: Live in N.Y.C.

"No one knows this yet," said Lord of the Rings screenwriter Fran Walsh. "But we need to get it out, because the fans are going to be really upset by it."

Ms. Walsh stood in the back room of Michael's restaurant on Feb. 22. Around her milled other members of the creative team that had produced Oscar's most nominated movie. The film's director and Ms. Walsh's companion, Peter Jackson, was padding about, as were the musical composer, Howard Shore; actor Christopher Lee, who plays Saruman the White; New Line co-chairman Bob Shaye; and LOTR 's executive producer and the head of Fine Line Features, Mark Ordesky.

Ms. Walsh, Mr. Jackson and Mr. Shore each glowed with Oscar's kiss, but seeing that Ms. Walsh was itching to spill her guts, The Transom stuck with her.

So what exactly was burning a hole in the screenwriter's hard drive?

"Shelob is not going to be in part two," she said.

For Tolkien neophytes, this may sound like news from a different dimension. But for pale-skinned Lord of the Rings nuts who have spent an estimated $700 million on tickets to the first film, it's big news.

"I checked [the fan site] One Ring, and there's a poll about what they're most looking forward to in the second film," Ms. Walsh said. "They all say Shelob!"

Shelob is the evil spider-like creature that plays a pivotal role at the end of The Two Towers, the second part of Tolkien's trilogy.

"Of course Shelob is a major villain, and once Sam and Frodo get past her it's basically one plot … we needed to add something, so we simply moved the Shelob bit to the third film," Ms. Walsh said.

Mr. Jackson loped by with actor Matthew Modine in tow, and Ms. Walsh sighed. "I call him 'shaggy chic' because he has no style," she said of her companion. "And he has the most unruly hair."

Although Mr. Jackson is known for his propensity to go barefoot and wear the same shorts and T-shirt for days on end, he had dressed for the luncheon in a button-down shirt that strained against his prodigious gut. The diminutive director wore weathered sneakers and walked on the balls of his feet. His brown hair was long and scraggly.

Ms. Walsh said that Donatella Versace has offered to make Mr. Jackson an Oscar suit, but that his initial response was " Aaaaaaah !"

"He was screaming in terror," she said. But Ms. Walsh added that her partner will "grudgingly acquiesce."

"Oh, wait," the screenwriter said. "Better not say 'grudgingly.' Just 'acquiesce.' No, no, not 'acquiesce'–'embrace'! He'll embrace it!"

Mr. Jackson was going to be doing a lot of embracing in the next 12 hours. Later in the evening, the crowd was headed to a swanky dinner hosted by directors Barry Levinson and Martin Scorsese and writers William Styron and Norman Mailer. The dinner had been arranged by publicist Peggy Siegal to introduce the contingent of New Zealanders and Brits to an eclectic group of New York's cultural cognoscenti, albeit one that could also double as the cast for an It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World remake. Guests at the dinner included actress Kyra Sedgwick, comedian Billy Crystal, essayist Stanley Crouch, director John Sayles, actress Sigourney Weaver, journalist Lally Weymouth, germ-warfare expert and anthrax target Judith Miller, writer Gay Talese, publisher Nan Talese, author Salman Rushdie, and Early Show host Bryant Gumbel.

But first there was lunch. "This is worse than the Carnegie Deli. How am I supposed to eat all this food?" said Mr. Lee when his salad was put in front of him at Michael's.

Mr. Lee looked more like Sherlock Holmes than Saruman. He was dressed impeccably in a checked jacket, olive vest, bright green tie and mustard corduroys. A red silk handkerchief poked from his jacket pocket.

In an earlier chapter of his life, Mr. Lee had been a military sleuth, searching for Nazi war criminals as part of Britain's Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects. "I have seen man's inhumanity to man," he said softly.

The actor, who said he'll "be 80 in May–hopefully," seemed miles from Michael's as he described meeting Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien in an Oxford pub.

"He was a devout man, no question about that," said Mr. Lee, who has reread The Lord of the Rings every year since its publication.

Suddenly he erupted in what sounded like gibberish.

" Ash nazg durbatulúk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulúk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul !" he said, in an accent that was heavy on the rolled R's.

Mr. Lee was merely reciting–in ancient Elvish–the inscription found on the ring that's at the center of Tolkien's trilogy.

"I'm not very good at these things," said Mr. Lee of the event. "People misunderstand what I'm saying. "

–Rebecca Traister

Referring to press reports that Infinity Broadcasting (which employs both Mr. Stern, on WXRK-FM, and Opie and Anthony, on WNEW-FM) has prohibited the duo from referring to Mr. Stern on-air, Mr. Cooper accused the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" of hypocrisy: using his air time to get personal about celebrities and his radio competition, but bristling when the tables are turned.

"Howard screams at the F.C.C., saying they're anti-First Amendment," said Mr. Cooper, who's been a regular guest on Mr. Stern's show in the past. "[But] only he can say things. Only he can turn around and say, 'I'll talk about anybody I want to, but the minute you talk about me, I'll cry like a baby. I'll call up my company, Infinity, and threaten to go off the air if the First Amendment has to be observed here.'

"The First Amendment is only for Howard Stern," Mr. Cooper added, his voice growing louder on the phone. "It isn't for anybody else. You know what? That's how fuckin' Hitler started. So Howard should start growing a little mustache under his nose. And say, 'Sieg heil !'"

Mr. Cooper originally took up his cause on Chauncé Hayden's Internet talk show on eyada.com, an excerpt of which was picked up by the New York Post 's Page Six column.

But Mr. Cooper said he was surprised that his remarks, as well as the alleged silencing of Opie and Anthony, have not been bigger news. Last fall, after Opie and Anthony and Mr. Stern took turns making fun of each other, reports surfaced that the WNEW twosome had been instructed to lay off Mr. Stern.

"That rat bastard. How dare he? How fuckin' dare he?" Mr. Cooper said. "There are paralyzed veterans in fuckin' hospitals who fought for the right, and this guy turns around and says, 'You can't talk about me.'"

How angry was Mr. Cooper? "I may–I don't know yet–but I may handcuff myself to his studio," he said. "And maybe get some paralyzed veterans to come down there. I mean, am I wrong or right?"

The comedian, who has both built a career and lost work because of his penchant for speaking his mind, said that he found it "un-American" that the sponsors of Mr. Stern's show were allowing him to silence potential competition. "By sponsoring him they're saying, 'You can be un-American, Howard, anytime you want to–as long as you get us ratings,' which goes to show you why our country's going totally in the toilet," Mr. Cooper said, adding: "We can tell the President he's full of shit. We can [say] the President got a blowjob. That we can talk about. But we're not allowed to talk about Howard or his family. What's that tell you?" Then Mr. Cooper added a variation on his last refrain: " Sieg Howard! Sieg Howard!" he chanted.

Not that Mr. Cooper has much empathy for Opie and Anthony, whose real names are Gregg Hughes and Anthony Cumia. "Those two little wimps.... They ain't got the balls to stand up to this man. If they'da stood up to him, they'd be giants today," Mr. Cooper said. "They succumbed." The comedian said he realized that Mr. Hughes and Mr. Cumia, whose drive-time show airs weekdays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., would probably lose their jobs if they violated such an edict from their parent company. But given their good ratings, he said, "There have got to be a lot of stations here that would hire them in a minute." Mr. Cooper said that the two should "stand up to Howard and say, 'You can't do this to me. I got a right to make a living. Who are you, you piece of shit?!'" Then Mr. Cooper called Mr. Stern what sounded like "You mother-mustache bastard."

Rick Delgado, the producer of The Opie & Anthony Show , chose not to follow Mr. Cooper into the breach. "We can't comment on anything," he said. He then referred us to WNEW's program director, who also declined to comment.

Calls to Mr. Stern's producer, Gary Dell'Abate, were referred to Mr. Stern's agent, Don Buchwald. At press time, Mr. Buchwald had not returned The Transom's call.

–Frank DiGiacomo

Snack Daddy's Soiree

"If you're looking to get laid tonight, go home," Al Goldstein growled at The Transom. It was 8 o'clock on Jan. 15, and Mr. Goldstein, the porn-mag magnate, was welcoming guests to his 65th birthday party at the 2nd Avenue Deli. And except for his old pal Robin Byrd, there was nary a porn star to be found. For the most part, Mr. Goldstein's guests were elderly Jewish professionals–lawyers, professors, politicians and an erotic cake manufacturer.

The urbane crowd didn't stop Mr. Goldstein from talking dirty. "How you doin'?" he asked a grizzled friend. "I wanna sell your wife … in my whorehouse." Recently, Mr. Goldstein announced that he is opening a chain of legal brothels beginning this year in St. Maarten. And now that he's going to be a prostitution mogul, Mr. Goldstein has even adopted a pimp handle: "Snack Daddy." He looked pleased when he said this, and a little bedraggled in his billowy snakeskin pants and jacket with "Goldstein" spelled in rhinestones on the back. He wore a watch on each wrist. "Why? Because I like watches," he said.

After almost an hour of Mr. Goldstein propositioning his pals' wives and hugging former and present girlfriends, dinner was served. Guests were given their choice of a pastrami, corned-beef or turkey sandwich. Mr. Goldstein dined across from Josh Hadar, co-owner of the current reincarnation of Studio 54, and his crimson-haired girlfriend. "We met at a wine-tasting," Mr. Hadar said, thumbing through the complimentary Screw that featured Mr. Goldstein naked and hog-tied on the cover. "At the W Hotel. Can you believe it?"

Meanwhile, a wild-haired Al ("Grandpa") Lewis skulked in the corner, munching on mini-knishes. When The Transom told him it was nice to meet him, Mr. Lewis replied: "I wish I could say the same." Nevertheless, Mr. Lewis took the opportunity to say that he is planning to run for Public Advocate this year. (He has already failed to be elected Governor and Senator.) "I'm going to try," he said. "But you know, it's hard to do it without the party machinery."

How did Mr. Lewis know Mr. Goldstein? "We've known each other for 40 years," the former co-star of The Munsters said. "Al was driving a cab. You know he used to be a cab driver. And he had a fast meter–he cheated me. He cheated me out of four dollars! We got into a big argument."

And you became friends with this guy? The Transom asked.

"We're not friends!" Mr. Lewis snapped back. "I'm just trying to get my four dollars! Why do you think I come to all these things? Why don't you do me a favor and get me the four dollars? I'll give you a dollar if you can collect."

But Mr. Goldstein wasn't paying up. "Yeah, I owe him four dollars. For the blowjob," he said.

Finally, a small and decidedly unerotic cake was served: chocolate topped with frosted roses and two candles. After Ms. Byrd led the crowd in a rousing chorus of "Snack Daddy! Snack Daddy!", Mr. Goldstein made a speech. "As a Jew, it's a pleasure to be in a room with so many people who owe me so much," he said. "So much money! So many ex-wives! So many girlfriends I've destroyed with my dysfunctional dating patterns." The East Coast's Aging Prince of Porn thanked them all, but then offered a trademark "fuck you" to all the women who had not indulged his satyriasis.

Mr. Goldstein then took the opportunity to hype his latest project. "Now that I'm 65 … we're going to open a chain of whorehouses," he told the boisterous crowd. Yes, beneath that tough exterior beats the heart of an indefatigable self-promoter. When he was done speaking, Mr. Goldstein told his cameraman, "Talk about impromptu. I hope you got that on camera. 'Cause that was good."

–Ian Blecher

Brian Williams, Eunuch?

We finally understand why NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw has never seemed threatened by heir-apparent Brian Williams. The answer popped up, so to speak, in a rather unlikely place: the "Answer Fella" column in the February issue of Esquire magazine, a forum in which deep questions that plague men are answered in detail. The question in this case was, "What's the deal with my morning erections?" After explaining the science behind the phenomenon, Answer Fella (whose real name is not used) broached the subject of Mr. Williams: "In short, all men of normal function wake up with wood, save for MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, whose johnson was severed by a clipboard during oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court and now resides, bottled in brine, on Tom Brokaw's desk."

Mr. Williams, who has shown he can be a cut-up on The Late Show with David Letterman , did not shrink from the chance to respond to Answer Fella's allegation. Through his spokesman, Mark O'Connor, Mr. Williams said that "Envy is the root of all evil."

Meanwhile, Answer Fella's editor, A.J. Jacobs–a former Observer writer–declined to divulge the identity of the columnist, but did relay what he said was a message from him. Mr. Jacobs said that, according to Answer Fella, Mr. Williams' you-know-what is not the only item "in the Brokaw collection. He's also in possession of Harry Reasoner's left kidney and Dan Rather's frontal lobe."

–F.D.

The Transom Also Hears ….

So there was Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, supporting filmmaking at the Sarasota Film Festival and finding that the liberal celebrity types who make movies were just a tad reluctant to be photographed with her. At the festival's keynote event, a black-tie gala at the Crosley Mansion honoring Alan Alda, sources familiar with the situation said that the M*A*S*H star initially declined to be photographed with Ms. Harris because, he said, he doesn't like to be photographed with any politicians. But Mr. Alda did eventually pose with Ms. Harris, who is on the festival board, and some suspect it had something to do with the flattering speech about the actor that Ms. Harris delivered before Mr. Alda got his award. One festival-goer who ran into Ms. Harris around that time said she seemed "shocked" by Mr. Alda's foot-dragging. But then that same festival-goer ran into another young actor at the event who confessed that "he was afraid that if he had his picture taken with [Harris], he'd never work in movies again." By the way, The Transom's festival-going source said that Ms. Harris looked "radiant" at the Alda event.

–F.D.

Columbia Tristar Television is finally getting close to creating a show for Bette Midler. The diva recently signed a deal with the studio, but coming up with an appropriate vehicle has been slow going. "It's almost impossible," said one writer. "It's like, what do you do? This is Bette Midler! You can't come up with a traditional sitcom for her."

Ms. Midler is said to be aware of the problems the writers have been having but reportedly has been unhappy with various potential plot lines pitched to her–like one that would have made her the mayor of a small town and another that would have made her a former big-time actress who left Hollywood to run a community theater.

We hear, though, that Columbia Tristar executives were planning to catch Ms. Midler's show in Anaheim, Calif., the week of Dec. 13, then meet her later to toss around some new ideas.

A spokesman for Columbia Tristar said a decision should be made soon. Whatever the concept is, it will likely wind up on CBS, possibly next fall.

Tonight, catch Ms. Midler in Beaches . [Cinemax, 33, 6 P.M.]

Thursday, Dec. 23

Sponsors are beginning to request givebacks from CBS for delivering lower-than-expected ratings with its new Early Show , starring Bryant Gumbel and Jane Clayson, NYTV has learned.

When CBS ad sales people were selling Early Show time slots last spring, they promised the show would be up to some 2.7 million households each morning by now (that's a "2.7 rating" in TV talk). So far, it has averaged about 2.4 million, the same as its lousy predecessor, CBS This Morning .

Tom DeCabia, head ad buyer for the media firm Schulman-Advanswers NY, said CBS has already given "a handful" of his corporate clients free ads to make up the difference. He wouldn't discuss how much the 30-second spots went for–the estimate is less than $40,000 each–or which clients were involved.

The givebacks are the latest bad news for the show, which launched Nov. 2 with lots of hype but too few viewers.

Still, Madison Avenue executives said it's only six weeks–too soon to tell whether the show will catch on. And Mr. DeCabia said while he wants his clients to get their money's worth in ad time, he's not about to pull clients from the show or advise against it as a buy. "If it was a stock, you wouldn't sell it. You'd hang in there," he said. "I think it's going to be fine. These shows take a long time to develop, and these are shows that you have to be patient with; you just can't pull the trigger on it too quickly."

The belief is that morning audiences are habit-driven, and they haven't gotten used to tuning to CBS just yet. After all, the network has been in last place in the morning time slot for 25 years. CBS executives are so confident that Mr. Gumbel's Early Show will change that they built a $30 million glass studio for it on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. It took the Today show nine months to grow its audience after it moved to its glass studios in 1994.

Meanwhile, the show's executive producer, Steve Friedman, said all he wants is a fair shake. "We thought we'd be doing a 2.5 or 2.6 going into the new year," Mr. Friedman said. "Now we're doing a 2.4. If you want to kill the show for a tenth of a point or two, go right ahead. We said when we started, this would be a long, hard struggle, that the most important thing for us is to go into the field … If a year from now we're getting a 2.3, then O.K."

Right. Fair is fair. Give these guys a break. Come back around in March.

Anyway, to nudge things along, Mr. Friedman said he's making a few small internal changes, and he'll push for more big bookings–like the two-part interview with Muammar Qaddafi that aired first on Dec. 21.

This morning on the Early Show , Bobby Flay teaches about salmon, and fast-food chain Wendy's chief executive, Dave Thomas, will talk about adoption. (He's adopted; Wendy isn't.) [WCBS, 2, 7 A.M.]

Friday, Dec. 24

They bring you the Knicks and the Rangers and now … The Yule Log ! Ever since Channel 11 stopped airing footage of a burning log every Dec. 24, Christmas hasn't been the same in this town. So the Madison Square Garden network called WPIX up a few weeks ago to see if it would be O.K. to borrow the concept. Channel 11 said no problem. And tonight, between 11 P.M. and midnight, you can catch the Yule log on MSG.

Now showing a seven-second video loop of a burning log for an hour might seem like a simple enough concept to pull off. Ha! MSG executives had asked their at-home audience to send in pictures of their fireplaces as nominees for the Yule log setting. But all those New York apartment dwellers had no idea what the heck they were talking about. On Friday, Dec. 17, one week before the big date, MSG still had no Yule log host. "We're certainly not going to have any problem finding an attractive fireplace," said MSG executive producer Mike McCarthy, obviously trying to reassure himself. And voilà! He was right! On Dec. 20, the Yule log producers finally settled on a 260-year-old house on Long Island. So curl up with that cup of spiced eggnog, draw the old blankie around the neck–and commence snoring.

By the way, if you are glued to some cybersex site tonight, switch over to www.WPIX.com. They've kept the old log tradition alive on the Internet. [MSG, 27, 11 P.M.]

Saturday, Dec. 25

Check out the plot lines for the first two programs in tonight's CBS prime-time lineup:

Early Edition : A bomber targets a skating rink.

Martial Law : Sammo wakes up with a bomb and learns that if he stops moving, it will explode and blast him to bits.

On Christmas, no less! For heaven's sake, what about the children? [WCBS, 2, 8 P.M.]

Today on TBS, the Superstation: Planet of the Apes , all day. They don't call it the Superstation for nothin'. [TBS, 8, 9:30 A.M.]

Sunday, Dec. 26

& Thought you'd never see David Kelley fail? Well, we point you to Snoops , his female private detective show, starring Gina Gershon (who, in one episode, goes undercover as a country singer to lure a serial killer with an affinity for amateur performers). Had it not been canceled, it would have been on tonight, at 9 P.M. Instead, we get Flirting With Disaster , a comedy where a character played by Ben Stiller goes looking for his birth parents.

What about Jerry? [WABC, 7, 9 P.M.]

Monday, Dec. 27

Al Goldstein, the Screw magazine publisher, went on Late Night With Conan O'Brien in August. He spent most of his visit insulting Mr. O'Brien. "He pretty much told Conan he was an Irish scumbag who never gets laid," explained Mr. Goldstein's managing editor, Philippe Kane.

Well, that's Mr. Goldstein's shtick. But then Mr. Goldstein was on his Midnight Blue public access show the other night, listing Mr. O'Brien in his "Fuck You" segment.

Why, Al, why? What's not to like about Conan O'Brien?

Mr. Goldstein explained: Since he is a member of the television actors union–Aftra–he was entitled to $600 for appearing on the show. But, "We never got the fucking check." Mr. Goldstein said he filed suit against the show in small-claims court in early December. "It's nothing personal," he said. "I did the show, I should get the money. It's my money."

Determined to get to the bottom of all this, NYTV called up Mr. O'Brien's representatives, who told us a check was cut in October and apparently sent out. Mr. Goldstein's people could find no record of it. But he said if that's the case, and he finds out it was sent, he'll do the right thing by Mr. O'Brien. "I'll apologize," he said. "I'm a wild man, but I'm not going to lie."

Hey, you do what you gotta do, pal.

Tonight it will be a Conan repeat. But even those are funnier than most other stuff on TV. [WNBC, 4, 12:35 A.M.]

Tuesday, Dec. 28

This spring, Comedy Central will launch its second prime-time sitcom. The first one was Strangers With Candy . The new one is called Strip Mall , which is a Melrose Place sendup. It was created by comedian Julie Brown and her partner Charles Coffey. "It's really extreme. Julie plays a former child star who went on a PCP rampage and killed her co-stars and is trying to claw her way back into the spotlight," Mr. Coffey told NYTV. "The most normal characters on the show is this really cranky lesbian Chinese food restaurant owner who refuses to serve, and instead they put on country-western karaoke strip shows."

The show will also star Amy Hill, from All-American Girl , and Jennifer Coolidge from American Pie . Victoria Jackson, the old Saturday Night Live cast member, will also star.

Strip Mall will start airing in June. "We are writing our asses off," Mr. Coffey said, then added, "Actually, no, we're not. We're starting Jan. 2." Whatever.

Tonight on Comedy Central, catch the Daily Show , starring John Stewart. [Comedy Central, 45, 11 P.M.]

Wednesday, Dec. 29

Tonight, it's the war of the Roswells. On Channel 11, the WB has the Roswell series, about teenage alien survivors of the 1947 Roswell U.F.O. crash just trying to fit in as best they can at their New Mexico high school. Over on the UPN, we have Roswell: The Aliens Attack , about survivors of the 1947 Roswell U.F.O. crash who want to destroy the Earth, until one of them falls in love. We have to go with the WB series, just because the guy who created it, Jason Katims, is a damned nice guy. [WPIX, 11, 9 P.M.]

Thursday, Dec. 30

This is the world in which we now live: The United Paramount Network, which made professional wrestling a prime-time smash on Thursday nights, is doing even more to hook the guns 'n' ammo crowd. During the February ratings sweeps period, the UPN will air an hour-long, monster-truck racing special, in which giant, building-size trucks will race across an auditorium. But there's a catch. The network plans to make the sport more like wrestling. So, whereas in a normal monster truck event you just have a couple of a big old trucks knocking around, now you'll have plot-driven characters behind the wheel. And if it draws good ratings and gets a good response from viewers, then the UPN will likely turn it into a regular, weekly series next fall.

"What we're trying to do is reinvent a sport that's been kind of dormant on cable and the arenas," explained Tom Nunan, the UPN entertainment head. "We're trying to build up the interpersonal relationships, rather than seeing how fast one of these huge trucks can move. I haven't seen the characters yet, but it won't be as much about 'My truck's faster than yours.' It will be more about, 'I can't believe you went out with my sister.'" From there, we assume the line will go, "So, let's race across this arena floor and see who's got the faster truck!"

The problem, though, is that the guys who own the trucks and take these arena races seriously are only willing to go so far. "They still want to protect the integrity of the quote-unquote sport, which isn't something we're too concerned with. I mean, it isn't exactly the World Series," Mr. Nunan said.

Basically, the truck people have been told to put on a good show and get a shot at regular stardom or this is a one-shot deal.

Tonight, catch WWF Smackdown! [WWOR, 9, 8 P.M.]

Friday, Dec. 31

Millennium madness! Peter Jennings goes more than 24 straight hours on ABC 2000 . CNN starts five days of millennium coverage! Tom Brokaw to anchor the ball drop on NBC! Oh, yeah: Dick Clark to ring it in on ABC at midnight! The William Shatner-Patrick Stewart Star Trek movie on Fox, to precede millennium coverage anchored by Brit Hume and Paula Zahn! Ooooh! The excitement!

Start your New Year's viewing with Mr. Jennings. [WABC, 7, 5 A.M .]

Saturday, Jan. 1

If the doomsayers are correct, then there will be no television today. So NYTV will list nothing for this day lest we get anybody's hopes up for something that will never air–ever.

Sunday, Jan. 2

We're assuming by now television has been restored. Phew! (Then again, the Second Coming could have happened, in which case there would be no television for about half the population. No. Wait. Actually, in hell, wouldn't they make you watch reruns of Encore! Encore! for eternity? And what about that whole thing about the Jews getting a second chance to accept Jesus? We could go on and on. The bottom line is, we can't tailor NYTV around all of these crazy theories.) Today, watch The Real World to convince yourself you're still here. [MTV, 20, starting at noon, all day.]

Monday, Jan. 3

Everybody's going game-show crazy!

First, you have Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on ABC. Then you have Greed over on Fox. Then you have TwentyOne coming to NBC. And of course, there's Winning Lines coming to CBS and starring Dick Clark as host. Now MTV is adding yet another game show to its crowded roster of dreck. This one has some promise, though. It's being created by Jamie Greenberg, who hosts the public-access show Media Shower , a weekly collection of pirated videotape that is taped in his Upper West Side apartment. He couldn't tell us too much about it since it's still being developed. But, he said, it will basically test people's video and rock knowledge and there will be some sort of physical component as well, like they'll have to run around a bit while answering questions. Mr. Greenberg said it's still unclear what winners will get, but it won't be anywhere near the $1 million handed out on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire . In fact, it could wind up being just plain old promotional stuff.

For good, old-fashioned game-show fun tonight, catch Wheel of Fortune , one of New York's most highly rated shows. [WABC, 7, 7:30 P.M.]

Tuesday, Jan. 4

So now ABC, CBS and the Fox News Channel are going to pool their resources on news stories–meaning whoever gets to a scene first will share footage with whatever network in the group didn't make it there, and its affiliates. Notice there are two major news names not in this list: NBC and CNN. NBC executives said they were caught flatfooted by the announcement and aren't too pleased about it. But it doesn't hurt them as much as it hurts CNN. CNN makes millions of dollars supplying footage–CNN logo and all–to network-affiliated stations with few resources. Now those little guys affiliated with the three partners get a lot of the same stuff for free.

The deal also gives Fox News a leg up in its competition with CNN.

Tonight, on Fox News, catch Mr. Tough Guy himself, Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor . [Fox News Channel, 46, 8 P.M.]

The Living Edens is a nature show that amazingly doesn't make you feel guilty. Amazing! The producers travel to exotic lands and film nature for three months, that's it. Absent are the depressing sidebars about loggers wiping out rain forests or the slow painful death of an indigenous tribe. Executive producer Alex Gregory said, "We don't deal with conservation. We just want to celebrate what exists."

The show airs quarterly. This segment is about the tropical island of Borneo.

"We start filming at the top of Mt. Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, and the story follows the water down from the mountain into the rain forest and then into the coral reefs that surround the island," said Mr. Gregory. "There are a lot of exotic creatures on Borneo–lizards that fly and snakes that fly from tree to tree. Also the world's largest bat caves, caves you could fly a 747 through."

So how many bats are there, Mr. Gregory?

"There are so many bats, they start to form these cones and spirals as they come out at night. They eat hundreds of tons of insects every day." [WNET, 13, 8 P.M.]

Thursday, April 29

There's nothing like a Fox stunt special to reduce entertainment to the big issues: life or death. Tonight, Robbie Knievel, son of Evel, jumps across the Grand Canyon (or, perhaps, to his death) live. Robbie Knievel: Grand Canyon Jump is Fox's third broadcast of the cyclist's jumps. Executive producer Jeff Androsky, head of Tri Crown Productions, which specializes on location swimsuit shows, fought long and hard to get his vision on air. "I had been pitching the Robbie Knievel jumps for almost 10 years, but nobody had the balls to do it live," he said. "They were scared. Finally, there was a guy at Fox who said, 'All right!'"

To this critic's mind, the first two televised jumps, particularly the second one, which was between two buildings in Las Vegas, relied too much on finesse. Distance was not an issue. The Grand Canyon jump promises to be more balls-out daring. "They were more like a chip shot in golf," Mr. Androsky said. "This one is more like a long drive."

Would a bloody death scene be good for ratings? "Not really, because if he falls up short and dies, there wouldn't be any more shows."

Good point. Mr. Androsky, however, could envision a scenario that'd work out just fine for ratings and Mr. Knievel: "If he crashed and then healed." Now there's a 'tude that's just right for Fox. [WNYW, 5, 8 P.M.]

Friday, April 30

Fox treat, part 2. Eric Schotz, executive producer of Guinness World Records: Prime Time , said he listened to his fans for this installment of the occasional series. "We had a bunch of guys write us who said they could eat more live worms than anyone else," he said. So Mr. Schotz set up a competition. Guinness officials monitored the set to make sure everything was done by the rules. "There's an official on every shoot we do. These are legit people," Mr. Schotz insisted. "Our job is not to say if it's good or bad–we just make sure the playing field is the same."

Mr. Schotz is also working on another show, this one for CBS, called Surprise, Surprise, Surprise! , which will be hosted by Kathie Lee Gifford and is scheduled for a May 14 debut.

"The idea is everything is a surprise, but the level of surprise is much greater than a normal surprise show," he said. "There's always another surprise just around the corner. Some are emotional, some are comedic, and some are heartwarming. For example, we put together two best friends who had lost touch. Then we flew them and their husbands to Europe for a vacation. We also taught a woman how to wrestle and she surprised her husband. We flew her and her husband down to Florida separately. They both thought they were going away on business and, in the end, the husband finds his wife wrestling a guy in a mask. And then it turns out that the guy in the mask is his twin brother."

Of host Kathie Lee Gifford, Mr. Schotz said, "It's critical that the host be popular and accessible." But what about her

K-Mart clothing scandals? "She was hired to be the host," Mr. Schotz replied. [WNYW, 5, 8 P.M.]

Al Goldstein's popular "Fuck You" segment on his Midnight Blue program–which features Mr. Goldstein, the publisher of Screw magazine, ranting and wheezing about everything from Ted Turner to an overcooked steak–has amused and entertained viewers for years. So when Craig Kilborn came up with a tepid imitation called "Screw You" for his Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn, you'd expect Mr. Goldstein to be pissed off. And he was.

On the April 23 Midnight Blue , Mr. Goldstein ran a "Fuck You" segment dedicated to Mr. Kilborn. We called him up to learn more. "He's a piece of shit," said Mr. Goldstein.

Anything else?

"He's a sleazy piece of shit. It shows you that I'm 24 years ahead of my time. I've been doing my show for 24 years and only now do they get it on commercial TV."

Although he had not seen the anti-Kilborn bit on Midnight Blue , Billy Kimball, Late Show 's executive producer, did not deny the relationship.

"Anyone who grew up in New York would consider Midnight Blue as a prime influence. This was a deeply felt homage to Mr. Goldstein, to the program, to the idea of him. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. We no more ripped off Al Goldstein than Shakespeare ripped off Plotinus or Plotinus ripped off Aristophanes."

Mr. Goldstein knew Mr. Kilborn from his time on The Daily Show . "He's one more pretty face with lacquer in his hair," said Mr. Goldstein. "He's of no consequence. He looks like he was made in Disney World. He's not a real person. Do you honestly think he's a real person? At least Tom Snyder was human. This guy is derivative of something very low on the food chain."

But Mr. Goldstein, how do you really feel? [Leased Access, 35, midnight.]

Saturday, May 1

The Daily Racing Form 's national handicapper Mike Watchmaker has a few pet peeves about the TV coverage of the Kentucky Derby . "They continuously cut from one angle to another that really bothers me," he said. "The general pan shot is the long-distance shot where you see the horses out of the gate into the first turn and continues to the end of the race in one shot–that's the way they show 99.99 percent of races in America. In the Kentucky Derby, they make so many different cuts from shot to shot that it's jarring to anybody with experience. I wish they would never do that. But they won't stop–they have to justify having so many cameras on site. What kills me is the head-on shot in the first turn. That really kills me. You can't see who's in the lead. This makes it very hard for people to cover their horses."

Guess what, ABC. The man is right. [WABC, 7, 4:30 P.M.]

Sunday, May 2

Only NBC, with its new miniseries, Noah's Ark , complete with a wisecracking God, could make you long for the overwrought biblical epics they show on TNT. Tonight, see Jon Voight (sans white scarf) get started with the big boat; Mary Steenburgen plays his wife. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Monday, May 3

For the past month, C-Span has devoted several hours each week to a different U.S. President as part of its American Presidents: Life Portraits series. You know the deal: snippets of John Philip Sousa march music and tweedy academics talking, with the centerpiece of a two-hour live show from a President's birthplace or library. Sounds great. But what happens the week of June 11, with Millard Fillmore? Or Chester A. Arthur on Aug. 6? "In a way, I think those are going to be the fun ones, like Franklin Pierce," said C-Span spokesman John Maynard. "You never see The American Experience on PBS doing documentaries on those guys." No, you sure don't.

This morning's program gives us Martin Van Buren, he of the hefty chops, who according to C-Span was known as a "dandy" and "liked exquisite wines and fine foods." From Kinderhook, N.Y. [C-Span, 38, 9 A.M.]

Tuesday, May 4

Those with sharp eyes and sharper memories may have spotted 81-year-old Allan Arbus (a.k.a. Dr. Sidney Freedman, the recurring Freudian analyst character on M.A.S.H. ) on Tuesday, April 27, doing a guest turn on N.Y.P.D. Blue as a lawyer.

"I admire the show, but it's not a subject matter that I like," Mr. Arbus said. "Because of the violence and that's a whole society level that doesn't hold a glow for me."

He was good in the episode, playing a Jamesian guy who never declared his love for a murdered woman. After all these years in the business, Mr. Arbus still knows what to say about his co-stars. "I was told that Dennis Franz is the sweetest guy in the world. Now everyone says that, but in his case it's absolutely true. I really enjoyed him." Sure, Dennis is a sweetheart (love ya, Den-O!), but Mr. Arbus could do without the shooting style over at Steven Bochco's cop drama.

"I wasn't enthusiastic about my performance," he said. "They work with a schedule that drives me crazy. They give you the lines right before you go on. It's very nerve-racking and I've always been a slow study."

Looking back on it all, Mr. Arbus fondly recalls The Electric Horseman and those guest spots on M.A.S.H. –especially when the script was written by his pal Alan Alda.

"He's sensitive and intelligent," he said of Mr. Alda. But we already knew that! Of Mr. Alda's scripts, he said: "They were very well written and they were multilayered. There was more going on in them than in the others."

Meanwhile, Mr. Arbus waits for the occasional call for a role and relaxes at the piano with his favorite composers, Bach, Beethoven and Schumann. Which reminds me–time for my piano lesson. See you next week, everybody … that is, if the world don't 'splode! [WABC, 7, 10 P.M.]

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

If Audrey Hepburn was the last virgin goddess of American films, Lillian Gish was the first. Sometimes referred to as "the First Lady of the Silent Screen," she was the movies' first truly great actress. From her debut at age 19 in D.W. Griffith's two-reel An Unseen Enemy (1912) in the first year of film's golden age to her final starring masterpiece, at age 35, in Victor Sjöström's The Wind (1928), Lillian Gish was the central player in many of the enduring treasures of cinema's first flowering, that cornerstone of the art in its purest form. She is the key figure in most of Griffith's major work, from The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Broken Blossoms (1919) to Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922). Besides Griffith and Sjöström–who acted the old professor in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) and with whom Gish also did the first version of The Scarlet Letter (1926)–the other classic director she chose was the brilliant King Vidor. Together they made one of her most popular films, and among the most moving, their 1926 adaptation of the same novel (Henry Murger's Scènes de la Vie de Bohème ) Puccini had used for his immortal opera, and with the same title, La Bohème [Sunday, May 2, Turner Classic Movies, 82, midnight; also on videocassette] .

One of the Gish trademarks was the ease with which she could break your heart. By the end of La Bohème –a tale of starving artists in 19th-century Paris–she and Vidor manage to achieve silently what Puccini did with voices and orchestra. There is no more devastatingly poignant note in music history than the lover Rodolphe's final cry of "Mimi!" and no more deeply touching death scene than Gish's here. Unless your heart is made of stone, 75 years after she and Vidor did the movie, you'll still need plenty of Kleenex.

Rodolphe is played by dashing John Gilbert, who was then the biggest male star in pictures, and who had also just inherited (upon Valentino's death that same year) the mantle of film's most romantic lover. The year before, Vidor and Gilbert had released a towering landmark with the World War I epic The Big Parade (1925), co-starring Renée Adorée, who appears with considerable charm as Musette in La Bohème . The following year, Gilbert was to star opposite Greta Garbo for the first ( Flesh and the Devil ) of three silents that made them movies' most passionate couple; ironically, Garbo's extraordinarily popular worldliness helped to date and make unfashionable the Victorian innocence personified by Lillian Gish. Within two years, despite the huge success of La Bohème , her career as a star was over, and so was the glorious silent era.

There is a dreamlike intensity to good silent pictures that has never been equaled by talkies, which are by their nature too realistic to become transcendent in the way the silents could, with their hypnotic focus undistracted by irrelevant sounds or color. Also, the best silent work has a special integrity, which was expressed most eloquently by Lillian Gish when I saw her speak briefly (in 1958) to a small audience at the Museum of the City of New York after a running of Way Down East . She concluded her remarks about the making of the film by saying that when they all worked together in those days, it wasn't for fame or for money, and they "weren't even making them for Mr. Griffith," she said. "We were making them for that–" and she turned slightly, sweeping her arm toward the screen behind her. For the art itself, she was saying–with a comment and gesture that seemed to sum up the fervent idealism of pictures' early days–for that wondrous illusion created by projecting shadows and light.