Clockwise from top: Franco, Dangeruss and Riff Raff

Since the beginning, rapper Riff Raff has been promoting the film, saying the Franco character was based on him. And the similarities are evident: the gold grill, the dreadlocks, the fact that one of his albums was called The Golden Alien and he and Korine appeared on a Sneeze magazine's cover together.

All was kosher. That is, until James Franco got upset over the idea that his performance could have been done by the From Gs to Gents contestant himself.

It all started with a baiting question from GQ's Matthew Sebra:

GQ Eye: With regards to your character in the movie, the rapper Riff Raff has said the role you are playing was originally meant for him. Is that true?
James Franco: None of that's true. I'll tell you why he could have never been offered the role. Harmony (Korine, the movie's writer and director) and I were talking about doing a movie together before Spring Breakers was even conceived. I had been a fan of his work and he wanted to do something and I said, "I'll do anything with you." We started discussing ideas and one day he sent me a treatment, which he said he's never done before, just to run it by me. And it was this idea of these girls going on spring break and then they meet up with this guy who leads them into the dark side. And then he wrote the script. So there's no chance Riff Raff could have been offered the role. Of course Harmony and I looked at some of Riff Raff's videos as inspiration, but he was one of a number of people we looked at. I would say the biggest influence on the role was this local Florida rapper named Dangerous. (editor's note: actually, Dangeruss). He's fairly unknown, but he was down there in the place, living the life, and he became the biggest model for me and he's in the movie.

He also told MTV a similar story, noting how Dangerous is actually rapping on stage with him during a scene in the film.
Let's compare and contrast, shall we?
Riff Raff:

Dangeruss:

Franco in Spring Breakers:

Hmm...it really is too close to call!

Complex seized on the story and interviewed the "I knew him before he was cool" Dangeruss about inspiring Franco, leading Riff Raff to wig out over email to the publication (and MTV), calling Franco a LIAR:

To put salt in the wound, Dangeruss gave an interview to the Tampa Bay Times today in which he talked about Franco's "real" friendship:

He actually flew me out to L.A. after we did the movie just on the personal strength that he felt like he liked me, and that I had a talent for music. And that was a separate project from the movie! So I love James. I just talked to him the other day. He says he got other stuff in store for me, so we'll see what happens, where that goes.

Well, good luck with that, Dangeruss. Let us know when that collaborative project comes out. Hope your name is still on the finished project, and what it was like to work with Marina Abramović and/or bondage slaves.

Update: It does look like Franco used Dangeruss for a second of footage in a weird music video he made back in July for the short film he did for 7 For All Mankind jeans:

“Poetry in motion” is how Franco’s drug-dealing rapper Alien describes the crowd at a beach beer blast. “Bikinis and big booties, y’all. That’s what life is about.”

James Franco. Art. (Photo via Patrick McMullan)

Look, we all love Harmony Korine here. Well, not all of us, but some of us think that Julien Donkey-Boy was pretty good, all things considering. Trash Humpers we didn't like. And we certainly aren't fans of Mr. Korine enabling James Franco's artitude by making a movie starring him getting pounded on by female bikers for the Venice Biennale where the actor carved Brad Renfro into his arm. What? What.

But even if we allow Mr. Korine and Mr. Franco some leeway into their ideas on what constitutes "art," we would appreciate it if they didn't try to work it out using all the Disney princesses.
From Variety:

Harmony Korine has set his next project with "Spring Breakers," the story of four college girls who rob a restaurant to pay for their trip to the beach, with James Franco attached and Emma Roberts, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez in talks to star.

Roberts would play a Southerner who feeds off danger, while Gomez would play a religious girl. The rest of the group would include Hudgens. Franco will co-star as a drug and arms dealer who bails them out of jail.

If it was any other director attached, we'd think that Franco's attachment in the project would be a goofy, loveable cameo...like in Date Night. But considering his previous work with the director, we're forced to assume that this will only end with blood, botched abortions, and possibly one of the actors terribly portraying a deaf character.

Arty Party

Most creative types have ambivalent memories of recess. While a respite from the strictures of the classroom were nice, the humiliations of dodgeball and other childrens' "games" were for many the anvil on which a future of creative genius was hammered. But, hey, we're past that now! Recess Activities is an organization formed two years ago to support emerging artists by giving them a space to play (in Soho, which used to be crawling with them). The group's annual benefit is tonight. Cinematic delinquent Harmony Korine will be on hand, as well punk provocateur Terence Koh and resin virtuoso Dustin Yellin.

Tribeca Grand Hotel, 2 Avenue of the Americas, 9pm, visit recessart.org for tickets.

Thursday, May 19

Knicker in a Twist

Here's hoping the Public Theater's new LAB production, Knickerbocker, which opens tonight, is less of a tragedy than the show put on last season by the basketball-playing Knickerbockers (they don't make enough Kleenex for that). Expected attendees include Sarah Jessica Parker (the director's her brother--not that she wouldn't drop by anyway!), the indefatigable Angela Lansbury, Julianna Margulies and pencil-mustachioed Darren Aronofsky, no doubt contemplating a terrifying, psychologically tense film adaptation of the play, which is about a man's adjustment to fatherhood... We're always down for a media party--language barrier or no! People en Espanol fêtes its fifty most beautiful people tonight in one of those cavernous event spaces in Midtown East. Interesting side-note: Somehow the mag didn't find space for Jennifer Lopez, who graces the cover of sister mag People en Ingles's most-beautiful issue! So, who is the hottest Latina? Alejandra Guzmán. (¿Quién es?)

Knickerbocker opening night, The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, begins at 8pm, party to follow at Knickerbocker Bar and Grill at 9:30pm, private event; People en Espanol party, Guastavino's, 409 East 59th Street, private event

Friday, May 20

French Roast

Woody Allen's latest movie, Midnight in Paris, premiered in Cannes this month to respectful, if not exactly rapturous, reviews. But die-hard Woody fans (we know who we are) have been programmed by years of Pavlovian training to show up at the art-house year after year no matter what those silly critics say. (And we thought his last trip to the City of Lights, Everyone Says I Love You, was just charming.) In this flick, Owen Wilson falls down a rabbit hole into Jazz Age Paris, when the city was romantic and spellbinding, just like it is in the movies! The cast also includes Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Carla Bruni, taking a break from her day job as the hottest piece of diplomatic arm candy this side of the Seine.

Midnight in Paris, check theater listings for showtimes.

Saturday, May 21

Cirque-us of the Stars

How to Make It in America may not be making much of an impact for HBO, but star Bryan Greenberg isn't letting that deter him from putting his newly minted star power to use. Today, he hosts a brunch at Le Cirque on behalf of Olevolos Project, an organization that recently founded a school and other institutions in an impoverished village in Tanzania. He roped in HBO, as well as actress Lake Bell, former Drew Barrymore paramour Justin Long and the ageless Gina Gershon. Good for him! A silent auction will include such goodies as a visit to the set of, yes, How to Make It in America (though if you're a resident of the Lower East Side, you've already been there, done that).

Le Cirque, 150 East 58th Street, 1pm, visit theolevolosproject.org for tickets.

Sunday, May 22

Dine Out on Art

Jim Dine is best known for pop art--sculptures of big black valentine-hearts, paintings of hippie-colored robes. His work even inspired the title of the musical Hair! (Mr. Dine's Hair is a painting of hair--and it's at the Met.) Mr. Dine's later work, though, took a turn for the Classical, as the artist fell under the influence of the Greek and Roman sculpture he encountered at the Glyptothek Museum in Munich. His 1980s drawings inspired by the ancient masters are currently on display at the Morgan Library, and today, Mr. Dine meets National Gallery curator Ruth Fine for a discussion of his work. The Fine-Dine tete-a-tete promises to reveal just how the Papa of Neo-Dada got interested in old, dusty stuff--and whether he's still interested in it! Mr. Dine's more recent work includes wooden sculptures of Pinocchio--no doubt, he studied the Greeks to get the contrapposto just right.

Morgan Library, 225 Madison Avenue, 3pm, visit themorgan.org for information

Monday, May 23

Gross Indecency

NPR's Terry Gross, who's interviewed just about everyone but never in person (it's her thing!) is emerging from her Philadelphia studio for some "fresh air" (get it?) tonight, as guest of honor at the Authors Guild Dinner, where John Lithgow will present her with a trophy for her years of work but mostly for making Gene Simmons look like a putz. It will be interesting to see how she handles being out in pubic! If you must congratulate her, use extreme caution.... Also tonight, the New York Public Library holds its Centennial Gala, celebrating 100 years of providing New Yorkers with free porn and other literary materials. The site is the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (yes, that's what they're now calling the Fifth Avenue branch with the big columns and Winnie the Pooh), and the event will be cocharied by the Schwarzmans themselves--which isn't nearly as self-serving a move as it sounds.

Authors Guild Dinner, Edison Ballroom, 240 West 47th Street, cocktails at 6:30, dinner and award presentation begin at 7:30, private event; NYPL Centennial Gala, private reception for trustees and "special friends" at 6:30, rededication ceremony in Adam Raphael Rose Main Reading Room at 7pm, dinner and dancing to follow, sold out.

Tuesday, May 24

Outsider Art

It's a tale as old as time: An athlete comes to New York, and is transformed overnight into a divo metrosexual. Call it "pulling a Namath." Following in the well-shod footsteps of Sean Avery, hockey player and part-time Vogue intern (hope he got academic credit!) is Amar'e Stoudemire, the New York Knick who in the off-season now rolls with Anna Wintour. Tonight, along with jewelry designer Eddie Borgo and art-world Zelig-ette Shala Monroque, Mr. Stoudemire presents a glitzy auction at the Whitney Art Party. The host committee includes a rogues' gallery of New York society, from Lisa Airan to Fabiola Beracasa to, later in the alphabet, Rachel Roy and Lauren Santo Domingo. There are far worse ways for Mr. Stoudemire to get acclimated to New York, but we'll avoid asking any of his new best friends what they thought of the Knicks' last season or what position Mr. Stoudemire plays.

Highline Stages, 440 West 15th Street, auction preview and reception, 8pm-9pm, party from 9pm-1am, visit whitneyartparty.org for tickets.

Wednesday, May 25

Bookish Breakfast

The NYPL centennial is all well and good, but here come the booksellers, who'd rather we buy than borrow! This morning's BookExpo America festivities include a breakfast featuring Diane Keaton, discussing her forthcoming memoir (forget the years with Woody--we hope she writes about where she buys her suits). Other speakers hyping their new tomes at today's breakfast are Pulitzer laureate Jeffrey Eugenides (who finally has another book out--drop everything!) and Charlaine Harris, who wrote about vampires before they were cool. The master of ceremonies is the comedian and Office star Mindy Kaling, who's promoting a book of her own (something more like Tina Fey's Bossypants, we hope, than Snooki's A Shore Thing). The event is open to conference attendees only, so if you don't have credentials, you might want to open a bookstore immediately.

Javits Center, 655 West 34th Street, Special Events Hall, 8am-9:30am.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

So, what's the relation between celebrity impersonators and sky-diving nuns?

The nuns were first. I just started imagining nuns jumping out of airplanes without parachutes and riding bicycles in the sky and doing tricks in the clouds. Then I started imagining that they would survive, like it was a test of faith or something, that if they believed strongly enough, then they could survive. Then I thought that was similar to the impersonators who kind of build their own society.

Why celebrity impersonators?

I thought they were interesting-looking and I just liked the idea of characters, people who try to create their own reality and their own language. Like the nuns that kind of just brought these obsessive characters.

Is there a celebrity impersonator you saw in real life that stands out?

I saw this Michael Jackson impersonator who had one leg and was German on the streets of Paris, and I just thought it was an interesting way to live.

How did you decide to give the role of Little Red Riding Hood to your wife?

I did a little research and I found out that there was an abnormal amount of Little Red Riding Hoods. I guess maybe doing children’s parties or something. So it just made sense—my wife: Little Red Riding Hood. It was a fetish thing. I’m joking! It just made sense somehow.

What was the film set like?

It was like waking up and seeing James Dean tending the sheep or seeing Sammy Davis Jr. smoking a joint or the Three Stooges riding a pig. Every day I had that to look forward to. It was something beautiful.

Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, from a screenplay by Mr. Korine and his brother, Avi, is a more benign if comparatively overlong avant-garde enterprise than we have recently been accustomed to getting from Mr. Korine. That is to say, no blow jobs, no cat-killing, no pissing, no asphyxia-induced orgasms, no teenage violence. When he was 22, Mr. Korine wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), with its malignantly depressing 24-hour tour of New York City’s AIDS-infected, sex-crazed, booze-belting teens. He went on to write and direct Gummo (1997) and Julien Donkey Boy (1999), the former described by some mainline critics as the worst movie ever made, and the latter becoming the first American movie to officially adopt the Danish Dogma 95. Nonetheless, Mr. Korine can be credited with launching the careers of two new screen personalities, Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson.

By now you may have gathered that I am not about to write a rave review for Mister Lonely, Mr. Korine’s first film since his self-imposed, near-decade-long exile in Paris. Nor am I going to dismiss it out of hand simply because, as Hermann Göring might have said, whenever I hear the term “avant-garde” applied to the cinema, I want to reach for my revolver. Yet, as the recent Abel Gance revival on Turner Classics demonstrates, there is nothing new under the sun on either side of the movie camera.

In his Director’s Notes, Mr. Korine traces the genesis of Mister Lonely to his “Thinking Images”: “I basically started thinking in terms of images that really have nothing to do with anything. Just single images. I started dreaming about nuns flying out of airplanes and praying all the way down and surviving. Then I started to fixate upon specific images and characters. One of them was the idea of a Michael Jackson impersonator walking the streets of Paris. I had these different images although they didn’t have anything to do with one another. But I knew there was something I was trying to get out, a unified idea, but I wasn’t sure how to say it.”

Mr. Korine and his brother finally found a way to translate the director’s random images into a semi-coherent narrative about a colony of impersonators forming a commune in a castle in the Scottish highlands, and somehow performing their specialties in a poorly attended concert in an empty theater near the commune. But hope springs eternal for even the most habitually impoverished entertainers.

The picture is flooded with semi-celebrities impersonating more famous celebrities. The Mexican actor Diego Luna impersonates Michael Jackson, and is actually seen strutting his stuff on a Paris street where he runs into a Marilyn Monroe impersonator played by Samantha Morton. Her husband turns out to be Charlie Chaplin impersonated by Denis Lavant. “Marilyn” persuades “Michael” to fly to Scotland with her to join the other members of the commune.

The other impersonators in the commune, with their celebrity models, are James Fox (the Pope); Melita Morgan (Madonna); Anita Pallenberg (the Queen); Rachel Korine (Little Red Riding Hood); Richard Strange (Abe Lincoln); Michael Joel Stuart (Buckwheat); Esme Creed-Miles (Shirley Temple); Mal Whiteley, Daniel Rovai, and Nigel Cooper as the Three Stooges (Larry, Moe, Curly); Joseph Morgan (James Dean); Jason Pennycooke (Sammy Davis Jr.); and, finally, Werner Herzog as Father Umbrillo, who flies the nuns (Camille De Pazzis and Britta Gartner) to their sky-diving destinations. David Blaine plays Father Umbrillo’s priestly subordinate. Lalid Afkir plays someone called Habid in the credits, and I am not sure if either is a celebrity.

The high point of the film, I suppose, is the spectacle of all the impersonators dancing sequentially to the strains of Irving Berlin’s Astaire-Rogers classic “Dancing Cheek to Cheek.” Needless to say, I much preferred Astaire-Rogers, but that is just the hopeless classicist in me. Anyway, I didn’t mind Mr. Korine’s conceits, but I thought that at 112 minutes the movie dragged somewhat, whereas Mr. Korine’s earlier projects never ran longer than 90-plus minutes. The only memorable line for me was Marilyn Monroe’s suggestion that her husband, the foul-mouthed Chaplin figure, was closer to Hitler than to Chaplin.

I will admit that Mr. Korine knows more than his share of interesting people, notably Werner Herzog and Leos Carax, a firebrand film director, who plays the psychiatrist of “Michael Jackson.”

And, oops, I almost overlooked Mr. Korine’s screenwriting gig for Larry Clark’s Ken Park in 2002. The story is that Mr. Korine wrote the screenplay back around the time of Kids, but then Mr. Clark and Mr. Korine had a falling-out, leading to Mr. Korine’s seizing the directorial reins for Gummo. Anyway, from what I’ve read, Mr. Korine’s life is more engrossing than any of his films.

I will end with the faint praise of Mister Lonely as the least offensive of the works in the Korine canon.

Tiffany Limos was sipping lemonade at a café in Tribeca, talking about the movie she stars in, which is called Ken Park and which will be released in the fall. Sitting next to her was the film's director, Larry Clark, who shocked audiences with his brutal portrayal of sexually irresponsible New York teens in the 1995 film Kids . That movie helped make actress Chloë Sevigny a big name, and he thinks Ken Park will do the same for Ms. Limos, who is 22 but plays a 16-year-old named Peaches in the movie.

"Tiffany is incredible," Mr. Clark said. "Nobody looks like her. I think people are going to take notice and think she's going to be a movie star." She's not only starring in his movie-Ms. Limos is also the 59-year-old director's girlfriend.

"The world better be ready for Ken Park !" she said. "It's real-it's like shit that happens in your fucking household that no one talks about." She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt that read "Bitch" and "Hoe," and seven beaded necklaces. Even when she curses she has a sweet Texas accent.

Earlier, Ms. Limos had told me about a scene in the movie in which she has sex with two young men. She said that one young actor accidentally ejaculated in his shorts while she was on top of him. "You know what?" she said. "Larry was pretty lucky to have me there. They were like 18 or 19, and so immature. One of them kept leaking. I wish we were having real sex, though. But I think if I did, I'd regret it, because those guys were so stupid, they don't deserve me. Those kids Larry picked up off the street."

In another scene, she said a man performs autoerotic asphyxiation while watching tennis, getting turned on by the groans made after serves and groundstrokes.

Mr. Clark wasn't eager to discuss the plot "because it kind of spoils the movie," he said. But he did hint at controversy to come.

"In my other films, I show full frontal female nudity, and you can still get an R rating," he said. "But as soon as you have full frontal male nudity, forget it. You're never going to get the film shown widely, and you're not going get a rating. And women I know have said, 'You know, that's sexist-we want to see penises. You show women naked, why can't you show men?' And they have a point. So in this movie, I'm showing everything. For every vagina, there's a penis."

Ken Park is the story of four dysfunctional families in Visalia, Calif., an inland suburban town situated between Bakersfield and Fresno. Visalia is a hotbed of skateboarding, a lifestyle which Mr. Clark said he was fascinated with. Unlike his previous films, the parents get as much attention as the kids. He hired trained actors for the adult roles, among them Amanda Plummer; but he also hired real teens he came across and turned them into actors. The original draft of the screenplay was written by Harmony Korine, who also wrote Kids . Mr. Clark said he hasn't seen Mr. Korine in several years. The movie cost $1.2 million, said Mr. Clark.

He said he had thought about hiring an established young actress, but couldn't find one that he was satisfied with. Ms. Limos got the part. "She's refreshing and totally charming and totally seductive and totally believable," said the director. "She's able to really let the inner life of a character shine through."

"I look really innocent," said Ms. Limos. "I'm 22 and people think I'm 14. When I don't have makeup on at all, I really look young. I'm the same height, the same weight as when I was 12. I look exactly the same. And all my, like, little boyfriends, when they see me, they say, 'You haven't even grown a chest, and your voice is the same, too.'"

Ms. Limos met Mr. Clark when she was 19, at an exhibit of his photographs held at an art bookstore downtown called Printed Matter. Her eyes had fallen on a photo of two women having sex. She wasn't impressed. "I was like, 'Oh, fuck that shit,'" she said. "That girl looked like she was drugged up, and when I was 12 years old I had a girlfriend and a boyfriend and I used to have sex, and I used to take pictures like that. When I saw that someone else was doing it, I was like, 'Who the fuck is that? Who's, like, Larry Clark?'"

So she introduced herself. "I realized it's the same guy who did Kids ," she said. "I was like, 'Oh my God, it's the same guy!'"

They got to know each other. "It's such a long story, I don't know where to start," she said. "He says I'm his muse." On their first date, they attended the premiere of Mr. Korine's 1999 film Julien Donkey Boy at Alice Tully Hall.

Mr. Clark persuaded her to write the screenplay of her life, and in 2001 he cast her in a remake of the 1958 B-movie horror film, Teenage Caveman , which aired on HBO. It takes place at the end of the world, and Ms. Limos' character is one of the only people left.

"I'm like a bombshell in that movie," she said. "My boobs are like gigantic; they're like under my chin."

"It was so amazing," Ms. Limos said. "People saw it in my family, and my aunt was like, 'You look fat.' And they were so negative: 'You're doing porn!' And I was like, 'You motherfuckers don't get it-you know how fucking hard I worked on it? You don't fucking get it, so shut the fuck up!'"

Ms. Limos' mother, on the phone from Dallas, told me she saw parts of Teenage Caveman . "I didn't like it," she said. She said she doesn't know much about Ken Park . "Is it gonna be out in the movies?" she asked.

'Tickle, Tickle'

When Mr. Clark showed Ms. Limos the script for Ken Park , she was less than enthusiastic. "I thought it was a piece of shit," she said. "I was like, 'What the fuck is this shit? You always have guys that are sexist, and you have racist stupid shit here about Hispanic people and ethnic people, and the guys in films always get the upper hand.'"

"You need to understand the world's fucking changed ," she told him. "It's different now. Women work and they run their own businesses and they're more independent. You can fuck a guy and leave him!"

Ms. Limos thought she could bring to life the character of Peaches in Ken Park . She lost 20 pounds for the role. Mr. Clark said Ms. Limos did well with the "really dramatic, heavy-duty emotional scenes," which involve Peaches' fanatic father. He's obsessed with his dead wife and begins to see her in his daughter, whom he beats, possibly molests and eventually marries.

"My God, she was amazing-her ability to go these ranges of emotions," Mr. Clark said, adding that several times during the filming her performance brought him to tears.

Ms. Limos said she is part Filipino, Spanish, Hawaiian, French, African and Chinese. She was born in Mesquite, Tex., outside of Dallas. Her father grew up selling fruit on the street in the Philippines and her mother was from a wealthy Filipino family.

"She comes from the same place as Imelda Marcos," Ms. Limos said.

In Texas, Tiffany lived in an "awesome" house, with a large-screen TV and a red carpet. In the backyard was a pool and a Jacuzzi; in the driveway, a Mercedes and a Lexus. "It's weird, because we were like above middle class, I don't know why," Ms. Limos said. "I think something weird was going on when I was younger."

She said she started watching pornography at age 5; she said her father left the tapes in the VCR. Which made going to a strict Catholic school a little confusing, she said, even though her knowledge of porn stars endeared her to her male teen buddies when she was older.

Ms. Limos' mother didn't like it when 6-year-old Tiffany wrote letters to modeling agencies in New York and her father mailed them. (Tiffany's parents recently divorced.)

Tiffany was, her mother recalled, "quite a handful. She always did what she wanted to do. And I couldn't stop her."

She was a good student and performed in school plays. But on the night of her 13th birthday, she sort of lost her mind when she found out that her boyfriend, who forgot to call her that day, had also slow-danced with another girl.

He came over later that night to watch the Super Bowl. She was drinking beer and crying. He made the mistake of saying "Tickle, tickle" after he noticed she was crying.

"'He doesn't call me, and it's a big deal when you're 13," she said. The "tickle, tickle" comment pushed her over the edge. At some point after the Cowboys won, Ms. Limos went berserk and kicked him with her steel-toed Doc Martens.

"I was kicking the motherfucker-I kicked him in the face and I beat him up and he was bleeding. I kicked him to pieces. He's like missing a tooth, that motherfucker-I couldn't believe it. 'Tickle, tickle?' Is that the best you can do, you motherfucker? He was such a dork, such an idiot," she said. Her mother came in with a tray of cookies, tossed them in the air and started screaming.

She said she started modeling for real at 12, after being discovered in a mall. She did ads for fast-food joints and in department-store catalogs.

At 15, against her parents' wishes, she moved to Queens to live with her godmother.

"All I did was pray," her mother said.

At 16, Ms. Limos began modeling for the Ford agency and appeared in teen magazines like Sassy and YM . Then she quit and worked as a hostess at the Coffee Shop on Union Square. She went to New York University for two years, made good grades, but left school and got a job at Visionaire magazine as a "creative consultant."

"They always asked me for phone numbers, 'cause I knew everyone's cell phone," she said. She helped put together an interview with Lou Reed, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, photographer Bruce Weber, Mr. Clark and literary agent Andrew Wylie.

Currently she lives with Mr. Clark and her dog, Snapple, in Tribeca. She said her friends in the city include model Devon Aoki, pop star Michael Stipe, actress Tara Subkoff and alums from Mr. Clark's movies, such as Rosario Dawson, who was in Kids and is now in Men In Black II . "She's such a big star now, it's hard to get an appointment," she said. "I'm really excited for Rosario to get all these big movies."

Ms. Limos has dreams of movie stardom, too.

"You know what's cool about me? If I become really famous, it's like, for me, with my hair, my skin, my eyes, my lips-that says something about the world and the generation and how it's changed. I look like a Gauguin painting. I don't know if that's unique. You can say I'm a modern Gauguin. People call me that all the time. I didn't even know who Gauguin was. I was like, 'Who the fuck is that? A guy-I look like a fucking guy ?'"

She said she's also been doing some sculpting. "I'm gonna do Larry's penis," she said. "Everyone thinks because he's, like, older that it's like a prune. It's exactly the same as when he was younger, and when I get to be a millionaire, if I ever do-or billionaire one day-I'm going to make it into, like, gold.

Ms. Maslin was the newspaper's second-string critic from 1977-1993, playing the wisecracking kid sister to the poker-faced Vincent Canby in those years. Now, after six years in the No. 1 job, she sounded a little burned out. "I just turned 50," she said. "That may have had some-thing to do with it. Ever heard of the phrase `midlife crisis'?"

As a critic, Ms. Maslin was generous and tart and rarely mean. She often writes as someone in love with the whole experience of moviegoing. Over the years she has fallen hard for big Hollywood presences like Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Julia Roberts. Of Titanic , a movie dismissed as sentimental trash by her more monastic colleagues, Ms. Maslin wrote, in naming it the best film of 1997: "Here are state-of-the-art showmanship in the service of bold storytelling, and glamour, tragedy, action and romance that fully capture the imagination. Here, too, is the lovely old hokum on which Hollywood's mystique was founded." One of the few movies to get her ire up in recent years was Gummo , a grainy 1997 film by independent upstart Harmony Korine: "October is early, but not too early to acknowledge Harmony Korine's Gummo as the worst film of the year," she wrote. "No conceivable competition will match the sourness, cynicism and pretension of Mr. Korine's debut feature."

Ms. Maslin said she'll continue to write reviews for The Times until the end of the year. After that, she'll be spending more time with her husband, the novelist and literary scion, Benjamin Cheever, and their two sons, at their home in upstate New York. "I have no plans to write a book," she said. "I have no plans to write a screenplay. I want to see what it's like when the dust settles."

She said the death of her father last year may have had something to do with her decision. "I have felt not my best in the last year," she said. "And I have felt very different about workaholism since my father died."

Ms. Maslin is the fourth veteran Times baby boomer with star quality to opt out of a high-visibility job in recent years. She follows in the footsteps of ex-restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, who left earlier this year to be editor of Condé Nast Publications' Gourmet magazine; Anna Quindlen, who left the Times Op-ed page in 1995 to write best-selling literary novels from her Hoboken brownstone; and Frank Rich, who quit as Times drama critic in 1993 before stopping in for a cup of coffee at the Op-ed page on his way toward becoming an at-home memoirist and occasional Times essayist.

"We've talked a lot in recent years about how difficult it is to have a life and have the kind of jobs we had," said Ms. Quindlen. "And it's not always easy to have kids, too: The Cannes festival was a nightmare. It almost always fell on Mother's Day. Her husband and two kids would come to our house. That was horrible for her."

Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld said, "I'm very sad about it. I can understand it, because I know what a stressful job it is. I'm a Janet Maslin fan." He added that he hasn't given up hope of talking her into staying at the paper in some capacity. He has already offered her a job writing about books, which didn't seem to excite her.

Mr. Lelyveld added that he spent the weekend of Sept. 17 reading "a lot of movie reviews" but "so far we haven't contacted anybody." He said there are candidates both inside and outside the paper. Times sources put forth Stephen Holden, the second-string movie reviewer, as well as TV critic and sometime-novelist Caryn James as inside contenders.

Recently, Ms. Maslin had dropped the ingenue act and allowed a bit of grumpiness to creep into her voice. "When the movie's mission is defined in terms of corporate goals and tie-in opportunities, the audience's role is reduced to simply showing up," she wrote back in May. But despite her distaste for hype and marketing, she still went to bat for George Lucas and his Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace : "Mr. Lucas still champions wondrous visions over bleak ones and sustains his love of escapist fun," she wrote. "There's no better tour guide for a trip to other worlds. Bon voyage."

"People like to read slams," Ms. Maslin said. "The more I knew about it, the more I knew all the work that went into it–even something like Jar Jar Binks–the harder it was to blow off. I didn't have the mean gene anymore. So I guess that puts me pretty out of step."

This past summer, Ms. Maslin also found herself virtually alone among New York critics in hailing Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut as a great film. "There is consolation for having to read the words `The End' on the posthumous work of Mr. Kubrick: This astonishing last film is a spellbinding addition to the Kubrick canon," she wrote.

Ms. Maslin was unapologetic about that. She respects a movie that is a self-conscious work of art, rather than part of a corporate marketing plan. "The movie business is changing in a way that I'm not sure I would have enjoyed," she said. "I'm still somebody who would rather watch Eyes Wide Shut than The Thomas Crown Affair … Something like Austin Powers , you didn't even need a movie. A movie's an option."

Before she got into the business of writing about film, Ms. Maslin was a math major at the University of Rochester, and then a rock critic for the Boston Phoenix . In the early 70's, she ran around with Mr. Spielberg–"That was a fluky situation," she said of her brief romance or friendship or whatever it was–and fell in love with such movies as David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver . "Most of the movies I loved then would have a hard time getting released now," she said. Her first job as a regular film critic was at Newsweek , where she lasted a couple years before moving on to The Times . She leaves sounding a bit fed up. "I do think that movies are less interesting to write about than they used to be," Ms. Maslin said. "Movies are made for people who are ready for commercials in the middle of them."

Since The Times freed up its writers from the bonds of print and allowed them to make spectacles of themselves on TV, Ms. Maslin has been a charming guest on Charlie Rose from time to time. While she was firm in saying she had no plans, there is a certain film critic, a bit on the hefty side, a critic who also loved Eyes Wide Shut and is looking for a permanent partner …

Maslin & Ebert , anyone?

It's denouement time for Story . The literary magazine is owned by F&W Publications, a Cincinnati-based trade publisher, and F&W is about to be sold–so farewell, Story .

The magazine was founded in 1931 and published J.D. Salinger, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers and Joseph Heller in its glory days. It went out of business in the early 60's and was revived by editor Lois Rosenthal in 1989. Recently, Story launched the careers of short-story hotshots Nathan Englander and Junot Díaz. The last issue is scheduled for December.

"Doing a literary magazine was not the way to make money," said Ms. Rosenthal. "I was calling myself the love child of the company." It leeched off the circulation and art departments of the larger company, which publishes such magazines as Writer's Digest , I.D . and Popular Woodworking .

"Lois did a remarkably good job of looking for and publishing new talent," said former Esquire fiction editor Will Blythe, who was on the Story editorial board until it was disbanded last year. For the most part, with its Joyce Carol Oates and Barry Lopez stories, it was solid, non-outré stuff. "I don't think people thought of it as Between C and D ," he added. "It didn't reek of heroin."

But what it did have was money and Ms. Rosenthal's somewhat eccentric commitment. "She was kind of the Mabel Dodge of the literary magazine scene," said Mr. Blythe. "She wanted to be a star maker, and she was pretty good at it."

F&W Publications itself is run by Ms. Rosenthal's husband, Richard. "We considered doing it on our own outside the company. But Story receives 20,000 manuscripts a year," Ms. Rosenthal said. She didn't have the energy to do it without the company's resources. "My husband is 66, and I'm just 60," she added.

There will be a party at Gotham Book Mart for the 10th anniversary issue of the magazine on Sept. 27.

Actually, Mr. Korine is just joining the crowd. The Julien Chronicles is one of many upcoming projects intended to be a "Dogma" film, produced according to the strict rules of a mysterious code of filmmaker's conduct called the "Dogma Vow of Chastity." In this case, he's following the bandwagon, not leading it.

A small group of Danish filmmakers–chief among them Lars von Trier, who had an American art house hit with Breaking the Waves –came up with the Dogma Vow in 1995. A manifesto for moviemaking–a modern Ten Commandments for directors–the vow demanded a return to simplicity, stating that films must use hand-held cameras; all shooting must be done on location; off-camera music is prohibited; and any superficial action in the plot, such as murders, must be avoided. Most perplexing at all for an industry where egotism is a prized asset, the director of a Dogma film cannot be credited.

Surely, this was a joke, a kind of intellectual prank dreamed up by arrogant Europeans. But four years later, Dogma 95, as it's also known, may be viable after all. Dogma No. 1, Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration , won the Cannes Special Jury Prize, earned a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign-language film and grossed more than $10 million worldwide. Dogma No. 2, Mr. von Trier's The Idiots , played at the Cannes Film Festival last year and will be released here by October Films in the fall. Dogma No. 3, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen's Mifune , received the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and will be released here by Sony Picture Classics. Kristian Levring, the fourth Danish director in the so-called Dogma Brotherhood, is prepping the Dogma pic The King Is Alive , which will be the first shot in English and which will be co-produced by Mr. von Trier's Zentropa Entertainment and the New York indie outfit Good Machine.

(Note: Kevin Smith's upcoming Miramax film Dogma , whose religious content has scared the bejesus out of parent Walt Disney Company, has nothing to do with Dogma 95. But it does star Alanis Morissette as God.)

Non-Danes are catching on, too: Strand Releasing recently acquired a Swedish teen-romance Dogma pic, Fucking Amal , whose title will undoubtedly be altered for American consumption, and the French actor Jean-Marc Barr ( The Big Blue ) is currently completing Lovers , a Dogma-style interracial love story. Several Brazilian productions are aiming for Dogma status as well.

According to the Hollywood Reporter , Mr. von Trier and Mr. Vinterberg have set up an association, Dogme Brothers (the Danish spelling of dogma), to train hopeful Dogma directors. Films can have the official Dogma seal of approval only if the final product has been vetted by the Brotherhood.

Now, like Ace of Base and laddie magazines, the movement is leaping across the Atlantic, but not to Hollywood. Instead, two New York independent filmmakers, enfant terrible Mr. Korine and Andy Warhol chum Paul Morrissey, are making their own Dogma films.

"I think it's wonderful," said Mr. Morrissey, now working out the financing details for his comedy, The House of Klang . "I've advocated [the Dogma style] for years, and no one's listened."

Which raises a question: Is the Dogma movement truly original, or just a codified declaration of what low-budget filmmakers, especially in America, have always practiced? Or is it, as Variety suggested, "more a clever marketing gimmick than a genuine film movement"? That is, would The Celebration have been as successful if it were not attached to Dogma?

In America, dozens of lesser-known independent filmmakers are also working on so-called Dogma films, but without the support of the Danes. The rise of Dogma coincides with a revolution in independent filmmaking brought about by the availability of low-cost digital video cameras and desktop editing systems–and the two separate movements are being conflated and manipulated. The Dogma filmmakers claim innovation by avoiding the use of staged lighting–but only digital video makes this possible, since regular 35-millimeter film usually demands more than natural light to make a shot visible. Meanwhile, since the Dogma films have been artistic successes, any Joe Indie with a digital video camera can claim to be a Dogma filmmaker, latching onto the label for instant credibility.

Adding to the confusion, Daily Variety published a story April 7 that began: "The Gotham indie film scene has officially gone to the Dogma." The story described the production of Sam the Man , a low-budget film shot on digital video. But the film's co-producer, Michael Kafka, told The Observer that Sam the Man is not intended to be a Dogma film. It will contain a musical score, Steadicam shots, stage lighting and props–all antithetical to the strict Danish rules.

"It's not a Dogma film," admitted Oliver Jones, the reporter who hyped it as such in Daily Variety . "That was just our news peg–a way to write a juicy lede."

Mr. Korine's film, though, is definitely shooting for Dogma status. Mr. Korine finished shooting The Julien Chronicles last month, starring his muse Chloë Sevigny ( The Last Days of Disco ). A publicist for Independent Pictures, the production company for the film, said Mr. Korine will not know if his film is strict enough to be sanctioned by the Brotherhood until after postproduction. The film is about a teacher who finds redemption through his interactions with the students in a comically surreal school for the blind. Mr. Korine, a scruffy Friend of Leo (DiCaprio, of course), recently told the London Guardian about his search for a blind figure skater he saw on television, in order to cast her in the movie: "I thought she was 14, but it turns out she's only 10, so I've had to cut out the anal intercourse scene between her and Ewen Bremner, who plays her hard-core schizophrenic teacher."

Mr. Korine's Gummo , a nonlinear film about grotesque Midwestern adolescents, won several festival awards but was also labeled the worst film of 1997 by Janet Maslin in The New York Times . Still, Mr. Korine, who would not return calls from The Observer , has a strong following that includes Harvard academics and directors such as Gus Van Sant and Werner Herzog, who appears in The Julien Chronicles . His proponents paint him as a new Warhol, a savior of avant-garde cinema. According to them, it's fitting that Mr. Korine–who is building a crazy-genius image for himself with disjointed appearances on Late Show With David Letterman –is the first major American filmmaker brave enough to attempt a Dogma film.

Producer Cary Woods got Mr. Korine interested in Dogma by introducing him to Mr. Vinterberg, the director of The Celebration . In 1995, Mr. Vinterberg and his older colleague Mr. von Trier wrote the Dogma Vow to, in their words, "counter certain tendencies in cinema today." Both graduates of the state-run National Film School of Denmark, the directors were used to working on art films with budget constraints. "They wanted to have more freedom, but eventually learned there was a lot to gain from constraints," said Lars Rahbek, a producer at Nimbus Films, the Copenhagen company behind The Celebration and Mifune . "Dogma 95 allows you to cleanse yourself, to cleanse your system."

The Vow of Chastity supposedly allows for more raw, realistic filmmaking and pure storytelling. A reaction to overstylized multiplex fare, it states that films must be made without special effects, artificial sounds or special lighting. Even props are not allowed, unless they happen to be found at the location. Films must be screened in 35-millimeter format (transferred from video). Also, the film must take place in the here and now, and genre movies "are not acceptable."

However, breaking the rules seems to be as much a part of Dogma as sticking to them. "Søren [Kragh-Jacobsen] shot Mifune on a local countryside farmhouse, but confessed to having deliberately chased chickens from a neighboring farm onto his farm to get more life into picture," said Mr. Rahbek.

The Brotherhood let this heresy slide–and they also allowed Mr. Kragh-Jacobsen to use off-screen music. In other words, the Dogma filmmakers pick and choose from the commandments as they see fit, and much of the Dogma manifesto is not intended to be taken seriously–specifically the part of the vow that demands the director "refrain from personal taste." The director may keep his name off the actual film, but studio publicists make sure audiences know whose vision it is.

"There is an implicit duplicity in the Dogme 95 Manifesto," writes Mr. Vinterberg in stilted English on the official Dogma Web site (www.dogme95.dk). "On one hand it contains a deep irony and on the other it is most serious meant.… In this sense it is a kind of play, a game called 'rule-making.' Seriousness and play goes hand in hand.… [The manifesto] was actually written in only 25 minutes and under continuous bursts of merry laughter.… Still, we maintain that we are in earnest. Dogme is not for fun. It is, however, both liberating, merry and almost fun to work under such a strict set of rules. It is this duplicity which is the magic of 'dogme.'"

The Dogma rules have so far inspired filmmakers to contemplate dark subjects, involving incest, suicide, mental retardation, prostitution and schizophrenia. The Idiots concerns a group of men pretending to be mentally handicapped; Mifune focuses on a yuppie, a hooker and the yuppie's retarded brother; The King Is Alive is about tourists stranded in the African desert who stage King Lear . Unlike these, Mr. Morrissey's The House of Klang will be a light comedy. The film, which he hopes to begin shooting this summer, is set to star Udo Kier as an outsider on the fringe of the garment business trying to enter the teen fashion world in Germany; it will likely be produced by Mr. von Trier's Cologne-based producer, Vibeke Windelov. Mr. Morrissey, whose last feature credit was Spike of Bensonhurst in 1988, said he has no problem with the Dogma requirement of relinquishing his directorial credit; after all, many of the films he directed in the 70's had titles such as Andy Warhol's Trash and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein .

For Mr. Morrissey, Dogma is nothing new. "The idea is to limit the technical things and stay with the characters. I did that 30 years ago. The only difference between Dogma and my old films is that I used a tripod."

Because of the productions' simplicity, all three of the completed Danish Dogma films cost close to $1 million each. But that is only slightly below the average cost for feature films in Denmark. In America, Dogma is perceived as solely a shoestring-budget, independent method of filmmaking. That's why the American filmmakers tackling Dogma are fringe figures like Mr. Morrissey and Mr. Korine, not establishment artists like Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese–who both were encouraged to try Dogma by Mr. von Trier and Mr. Vinterberg. But even the American independent scene, as emblemized by the schmoozefest that is Sundance, will probably not embrace Dogma. As Mr. Vinterberg has said, Dogma is very much a product of Danish film culture.

"In the U.S. the context is different," said Robert Sklar, a professor of cinema studies at New York University. "There's not a visible American avant-garde; the independent group is just a junior varsity Hollywood, scrambling to get visibility. There's no ideological context. To say, 'We'll piggyback on the Danes' seems a kind of publicity stroke."

When the vow was written, the Denmark newspapers reported the first theoretical debate over cinema in decades. In their manifesto, the creators situate themselves in film history, raising up the torch from the failed French New Wave: "In 1960 enough was enough! … The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck … The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby … false!"

"I don't get the sense that the manifesto is anything but anti-Hollywood, as opposed to something arising out of Danish society or European culture," said Mr. Sklar. As such, the movement does not have the historical resonance of, say, Italian neo-realism.

" The Idiots and The Celebration , as interesting as they are, don't speak about contemporary society the way The Bicycle Thief did," the professor continued. "Both those films are about a middle-class malaise, a crisis of spirit that doesn't have the immediacy of political struggle."

But to the Dogma filmmakers, Hollywood–and conventional European cinema– are regimes worth fighting against. "I hate all the emphasis on spending money–in order to give films a self-importance, they disguise the absence of interesting characters with special lighting, camera movements and effects," said Mr. Morrissey.

For K. Louise Middleton, an aspiring actress, writer and director in Los Angeles who is hoping to make a Dogma film, watching The Celebration "was like drinking a cool glass of water after eating too much candy." Her script, The Outside Man , concerns religion and race, and she believes it needs to be shot Dogma-style to be most effective. "I don't want to manipulate or threaten the viewer," she e-mailed The Observer . "The vow of chastity is actually the most un -restricting thing. What a relief to be able to let the story fly free without the burden of forcing it into a look or style."

Regardless of the merits of The Julien Chronicles and The House of Klang , the Dogma movement will probably run out of steam. The next films by the members of the Brotherhood will not be Dogma productions: Mr. von Trier is breaking most of the Vow rules by directing an epic musical with Björk, called Dancer in the Dark , which is being shot in Sweden but set in the American Northwest and features dance sequences filmed by 100 digital video cameras.

When Mr. Rahbek calls directing a Dogma film "a great experience," he implies that it's a way to recharge, a lark akin to a weekend at a spa resort.

"Søren [Kragh-Jacobsen, the director of Mifune ] was also a rock musician in the 70's," said Mr. Rahbek. "He said, in every musician's life, there's a time you want to play unplugged."

As for Mr. Vinterberg? He has hooked up with International Creative Management and is looking at English-language scripts from–gasp!–Hollywood.