The movie did especially well in Manhattan, grossing $606,610 and averaging six times more than its national average. The city attracts plenty of the awkward types—to borrow a phrase from Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli, etc.: “If you can’t get laid here, you can’t get laid anywhere.”—which it is safe to say form the movie’s core audience.

Nothing funny about Invasion’s opening. In a summer where any movie with a bankable star has been raking in the dough—even No Reservations grossed over $10 million in its first week!—the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig failed to crack double figures, grossing only $6 million on 2,776 screens. Both nationally and in Manhattan, the movie could not overtake either Rush Hour 3 or The Bourne Ultimatum. When was the last time she was in a movie that wasn’t either a critical or financial disappointment? Do they love her in France? What’s going on?

The one movie Invasion did better than? Stardust. The fantasy tale that coulda, shoulda woulda, did show some surprising grit over the weekend—better late than never?—maintaining an above-$10,000 average in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Frank Oz’s Death at a Funeral refused to die quietly, posting a respectable $11,800 average, outgrossing Becoming Jane in its third week and Miramax’s forgotten film The Last Legion. (Why bother to release Legion on so many screens—2,002, to be precise—if you’re just dumping it? Bad contract, perhaps?)

And Julie Delpy’s 2 Nights in Paris continues its strong New York City run, averaging over $30,000 on 2 screens. With close to half a million dollars in the bank, the film is poised to solidify Adam Goldberg’s status as the independent film world’s most bankable star. Someone get Ms. Kidman’s agent on the phone, I have an idea …

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

Mr. Hope couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “I was like, ‘WHAT? What do you mean?’” he said. “And he’s like, ‘No, no, it’s really good for everybody. We think this is a really good thing.’”

Mr. Hope thought otherwise. A screener ban, which would have halted the distribution of “For Your Consideration” DVD and VHS cassette tapes to award-giving bodies like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and various trade and critics organizations, was a direct threat to the word-of-mouth campaigns that had elevated specialized films from the 200-seat art house to the 1,000-seat suburban megaplex and dozens of Oscar nominations along the way. At the time, Mr. Hope had American Splendor in theaters and was readying the release of a second critically praised film, 21 Grams.

Two days later, Mr. Hope sent an e-mail with the subject head “This could kill us!” to HBO Films president Colin Callender, New Line executive vice president Mark Ordesky, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker and his former partners at Good Machine, James Schamus and David Linde, who were now running Universal’s art-film division, Focus Features.

“The proposed moratorium on Academy screeners is entirely absurd,” Mr. Hope wrote in the body of his e-mail. “It will hurt specialized film significantly and will make it virtually impossible for the best work to get the recognition it so deserves.” “Don’t let this happen!” he concluded. “Our future is in your hands. Sincerely, Ted.”

“What was amazing to me, right then [after the first e-mail], there was this dichotomy between New York and L.A. The L.A. producers, that had this same niche of a small film and big film as I did, or had difficult movies, wrote back to me, the ones that even took that time, and said, ‘Ted, what are you doing? They’ll retaliate against you. You won’t win. And no one’s going to listen. So, just stop.”

But Mr. Hope did not stop. And as he set into motion the events that, on Dec. 5, led a U.S. District court judge to declare the ban violated U.S. Anti-Trust laws, and even pushed MPAA leader Jack Valenti to the brink of retirement, an interesting thing happened to the outspoken 41-year-old producer. Mr. Hope, who seemed content to let his gregarious bow-tie wearing Good Machine partner James Schamus have the spotlight, emerged as the galvanizing national voice of the independent film industry.

“I really think this was Ted’s battle,” said Christine Vachon of Killer Films, who was on set with Mr. Hope, co-producing John Waters’ latest picture, when the screener ban hit the fan. “I also think a big thing was that he galvanized the IFP [Independent Film Project] into becoming an organization that was genuinely advocating for the rights of independent filmmakers.

“I feel like, the IFP to me, I’ve never quite understood what their role is--how they can impact positively on my life as an independent film producer--except, y’know, having to drag my ass to those Gotham awards every year and eat rubber chicken.”

“I’m not hired to agree with anybody, including the studio,” Mr. Hope said. “I’m hired to do whatever is necessary to take the film and make it as best as it can be, to be responsible for the money, to push as hard as I can to make sure that it’s seen by the widest audience.”

On the day the ban was announced, Mr. Hope called IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd and told her: “We’ve got to mobilize this.” The next day, Ms. Byrd released a statement condemning the ban. “This last minute policy change will seriously diminish the diversity and quality of independent films immediately, and the mainstream film industry in the long run,” she wrote. “Oscar consideration is a primary motivating factor behind the funding of riskier films, those of more serious content, films with ambitious narrative aspirations. Lacking Oscar potential these films will not be made.”

Ms. Byrd, who had worked with Mr. Hope when he was a member of the IFP/New York board from 1992 to 2002, said, “Essentially, Ted’s been the conscience of the organization, I’d say, probably the whole time I’ve been here. Whenever there are issues that come up, whether they impact him directly or impact the field in a wider sense, he’s always been very vocal in turning to the organization to challenge us, to see if we would be able to take something on. He’s always been very much in favor of the formation of an IFP unified presence.”

When the screener ban first took effect it made explicit the Mason-Dixon line of an East Coast–West Coast divide that has existed in the film industry for years, bubbling beneath the surface of every Oscar nod Miramax received. The seven major Hollywood studios implored the ‘dependents’--the tag that industry insiders half-jokingly give to their art-house subsidiaries--and the rest of the specialized film industry to consider the harms of piracy and to think of the future of the movie industry, lest it go the way of the music industry. As Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, wrote in a guest column in the Oct. 8 issue of Variety: “After all, if movies fall into the thievery morass now afflicting music, Chicken Little will be the voice of understatement.”

But the opposition immediately cried foul, perceiving a fatal threat to their films’ award chances and, perhaps, their box office. And out of this schism emerged a well-organized East Coast contingent of film executives, producers, directors, publicists and talent, galvanized not by Mr. Schamus or Mr. Weinstein, but by Mr. Hope.

On Oct. 15, a three-prong attack launched. Mr. Hope wrote a searing guest column in Variety, rebutting Mr. Rothman’s pro-ban piece, and making him the first producer to actually commit his anti-ban argument to print and sign his name to it. “This unilateral, undemocratic, self-serving and truly misguided action reeks of the same arrogance that encourages the head of the NYSE to bonus himself over a hundred million, or corporate leaders from Enron and others to line their pockets while swindling the general public and their stockholders,” Mr. Hope wrote. “The process utilized to enact The Ban speaks of a true restraint on trade, of a cartel plotting against competition, of the very things that lead to anti-trust suits.”

At that point, members of the Independent Working Group, an ad-hoc consortium of distributors such as Miramax, were functioning largely anonymously.

That same day, Mr. Hope released what was referred to in the industry as his “White Paper,” a detailed argument against the ban, with sections titled “Long Term Effect the Ban on Screeners Will Have on the Industry,” “Why the Process Implementing the Ban on Screeners Is Misguided,” “Why the Ban Does Not Seem to be Truly About Piracy” and “What Can One Do to Protest the Ban.” This manifesto was circulated throughout the industry to give potential protestors the appropriate arguments to combat the ban.

Also, on Oct. 15, the IFP placed one of two ads that would run in Variety: The first was signed by over 150 directors who opposed the ban, including Robert Altman, Barry Levinson, Sydney Pollack and Terry Zwigoff. The ad was funded by anonymous donors. Another, which ran soon afterward, was signed by a coalition of industry talent and funded explicitly by the IFP.

“Certainly nobody else had the wherewithal to really think the issues through and aggressively advocate for those positions,” said Thirteen producer Jeff Levy-Hinte, who would play an integral role in the trial which eventually saw the ban overturned. “Where Ted was unique was really laying down an intellectual framework for what we were doing and why we were doing it. He was very upfront and outspoken and wrote some very key letters to the media, too.”

Although Mr. Valenti conceded and allowed distributors to send out screeners to members of the Academy, by mid-November it became abundantly clear that no more changes were going to be made to the ban. At that point, the ad-hoc coalition led in part by Mr. Hope, Ms. Byrd and Mr. Levy-Hinte, played their final card and brought an anti-trust suit against the MPAA, alleging anti-competitive practices by the lobbyist group. “We tried to remain civil,” said Mr. Hope. “Which in fact later we were very civil: a civil suit.”

Ironically, the independent coalition’s victory was solidified by Mr. Valenti’s testimony. When expounding on his decision, the judge said, “Beyond [the] testimony [of Mr. Hope and Mr. Levy-Hinte] and [Mr. Weinstein’s] affidavit evidence, which I credit, convincing evidence that the plaintiffs have show potential injury from the MPAA’s screener ban comes from Mr. Valenti’s testimony that if the ban were not in effect, at least some studios would break ranks and send out the screeners because ‘these companies are hotly competitive against each other.’ If studio executives did not perceive that the risk of piracy were outweighed by the competitive advantages to them of sending out screeners, plainly they would not do so. To find otherwise, I would have to find that well paid and highly successful studio executives do not understand what is good for their company. I have no basis to find that.”

By this point, with all of the negative publicity that has surrounded the ban, it is possible that the judge’s admission did not even make Mr. Valenti blush. And while many agree that Mr. Valenti still has the confidence of the seven studios that comprise the board of the MPAA, Mr. Valenti has admitted that he will probably step down within the next two years. In order perhaps to save face, those involved in the case speculate that Mr. Valenti and the MPAA will seek an appeal.

“I’m optimistic that they will be wise enough not to [appeal],” said Mr. Hope. “I mean, it would just be embarrassing.”

In a profession dominated by nerds, intellectual property (I.P.) lawyers have long served the useful role of letting other lawyers feel that at least they're not the nerdiest. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that in recent years we've seen a number of prominent I.P. scholars aggressively reinvent themselves as more accessible public intellectuals. The most notable example of this is Stephen Carter, who went from soft-spoken I.P. professor to Presidential adviser (on bioethics), then on to highly paid best-selling novelist.

The Internet boom has provided a more obvious and systematic path for scholars to pull themselves out of the I.P. ghetto and contribute to a debate of interest and relevance to a broad audience: one day cocooned in the dry arcana of copyright, trademark and patent law, the next spreading your wings as a new breed of legal superhero, the cyber-lawyer. Lawrence Lessig, founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and chair of something called the Creative Commons project, is probably the most prolific and influential of the I.P. scholars newly blessed with Internet street cred. Free Culture, Mr. Lessig's latest book, is a provocative and engaging polemic against The Man for trying to keep down his peeps hanging on the Net.

Free Culture comes in two distinct parts. I will focus here on the longer first part, which is a highly entertaining but utterly unconvincing argument for a fundamental rethinking of how we regulate creative content in the Internet era. The second part, which seems like an afterthought, is a poignant chronicle of Mr. Lessig's unsuccessful effort to have the latest legislative extension of copyright protections declared unconstitutional.

Mr. Lessig weaves together a tapestry of charming anecdote, history, and economic and legal theory to lead us to his conclusion that copyright regulation must be scaled back dramatically. His core argument is that the combined impact of three factors-"changing law, concentrated markets, and changing technology"-cries out for what he euphemistically refers to as certain "adjustments" to the law that would, in his view, "restore the balance that has traditionally defined" the relationship between the legal protections of creative property and the ability of anyone to engage in unfettered creativity.

Mr. Lessig is on firmest ground with respect to the "changing law" element of his thesis. During the first 150 years of our history, the maximum copyright term was extended only twice (from 28 years to 42 to 56); since 1962, however, Congress has extended the terms of existing copyrights 11 times to the current 95 years-which does seem like an awfully long time. Particularly compelling is Mr. Lessig's argument that any retroactive extension of copyrights-as many of the recent extensions have been-serves no useful social purpose.

Mr. Lessig is on shakiest ground when he tries to demonstrate that element of his argument which he concedes is most critical to his overall thesis: "In my view, all of these [other] changes would not matter much if it weren't for … [t]he change in the concentration and integration of media [over] the past twenty years." Here, instead of any kind of systematic argument, Mr. Lessig offers random anecdotes and statistics, some of which actually undercut his position: "There are twenty major newspaper publishers in the United States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all film revenue. The ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of all cable revenues. This is a market far from the free press the framers sought to protect." That adds up to 40 major media voices (actually 38, since one studio is also a newspaper publisher and another studio is also a cable company), and that doesn't include radio (satellite and terrestrial) and television broadcasters, cable programmers, multichannel satellite services or Internet content providers. Ironically, Mr. Lessig repeatedly cites Intel, a company with a greater than 80 percent market share in its industry, as the paradigm of a forward-looking company sympathetic to "free culture."

Of course there's been consolidation. But fragmentation of media has occurred significantly faster, resulting in less market power, not more. The same is true with respect to copyright law and changes in technology: New technologies mean I.P. regulation covers things it did not before, but the realm of the free and unregulated-as Mr. Lessig himself documents well when he describes the explosion of "blogs"-has grown much more quickly.

Mr. Lessig ends his argument with this "astonishing conclusion": "Never in our history have fewer had a legal right to control more of the development of our culture than now. Never." If you think this statement accurately describes the world in which we now live, I'm not likely to change your mind. But if, like me, you think that we're living in a world where the barriers to "cultural" entry have never been lower, then you'll be curious to see how Mr. Lessig managed to end up somewhere so far from reality.

You'll have to read closely: His accessible style gives his polemic an air of reasonableness even when it is at its thinnest.

Extremists on the other side make Mr. Lessig seem downright sensible. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, claims that intellectual property should be treated like any other property under the law, whereas, in fact, the Constitution has a specific provision that allows Congress to secure intellectual property rights of "Author and Inventors" only for "limited Times." But Mr. Lessig's own arguments are similarly flawed: He suggests that the Constitution's free-speech provisions should somehow be read to require that the "limited Times" be very limited indeed. Again and again, Mr. Lessig subtly overstates his historic, practical or legal case-and, in the end, his credibility is undermined. To claim that Mr. Valenti's admittedly extreme position has "no reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition," for instance, ignores that the British common-law rule (which is arguably close to Mr. Valenti's position) was the law in this country until the first federal copyright statute was enacted in 1790.

At times, it seems that Mr. Lessig is using the advent of the Internet as a pretext to pursue a radical copyright-policy agenda. Many of the points he makes about the impact of new technology could have been made with the advent of the Xerox machine. Creativity survived the Xerox machine and will survive the Internet without the need for a fundamentally different legal regime. Indeed, the essential impact of the Internet is that it has dramatically lowered the barriers to both accessing and sharing all forms of creative output. That's why many of the examples Mr. Lessig cites to justify his proposals-restrictions on e-books or barriers to the creation of a digital archive-seem trivial in comparison with the explosion of new creative output that we experience all around us.

To be fair, some of Lawrence Lessig's policy proposals seem sensible, and might even be helpful at the margins. But the idea that they could have a meaningful impact on the ability of "Big Media" to "lock down culture and control creativity" is something only a nerdy I.P. lawyer would believe.

Jonathan A. Knee is a senior managing director at Evercore Partners and an adjunct professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School.

A Sad, True Novel About Haiti

The Dew Breaker , by Edwidge Danticat. Alfred A. Knopf, 244 pages, $22.

Only a few hours away by luxury jet lies an island paradise of palm trees and warm sand where the air itself feels forgiving. Lovely chocolate-skinned women wear pink nightgowns, jacarandas grow wild and the customary old-fashioned way to say "You're welcome" is to say "You're deserving." It's a charmed place where "the rain is sweeter, the dust is lighter," and the clouds in the sky are said to be caused by dear, departed relatives eating coconuts with God. Eating Coconuts with God , in fact, wouldn't be a bad title for a lighthearted book about such a quaintly blessed place. Except there's a hitch: Bloodshed is rampant.

And so the title of Edwidge Danticat's new novel about Haiti is not Eating Coconuts with God , but rather The Dew Breaker ; it's named for the central character, a professional government torturer whose M.O. was to "break into your house … before dawn, as the dew was settling on the leaves." He'd break the dew, then systematically break your bones.

Recent news photos from this island are notable mostly for the numbing sense of déjà vu they engender in the viewer. Chrome guns gleam in black hands, frenzied crowds jubilate in the streets by stomping the heads of political opponents, an air of grim festivity pervades, like a World Series victory celebration gone mad. Haiti is again aswirl with wide-smiling violence; the air that should reek of bougainvillea is once more perfumed with gunpowder.

In prose as supple and deadpan as the tropical landscape she describes, Ms. Danticat colors in the blanks behind the headlines. A pot-bellied police officer smells "like fried eggs and gasoline, like breakfast at the Amoco." Traumatized victims gibber in their sleep, wetting their beds "not with urine but with words." Innocent bystanders tend "to be silent a moment too long during an important conversation and then say too much." Others simply go bananas, like the father who manifests his insanity by "walking naked to the marketplace twice a week, clutching a rock in each fist." Yet life, perforce, goes on. Here's ordinary daily sexual yearning, as felt by a husband for a wife who has finally come from Haiti to join him in his rented American basement room after a separation of years: "She smelled good, a mixture of lavender and lime. He simply wanted to get her home, if home it was … and to reduce the space between them until there was no air for her to breathe that he was not breathing too."

Ms. Danticat has set herself a sacred mission: to give weight and dignity to those whose grainy faces we glimpse between sips of our morning coffee, "men and women whose tremendous agonies filled every blank space in their lives." She writes about them in a voice that's so surprisingly flat as to be almost inert, as though run through a wringer.

Each chapter features a different character, nearer to or farther from the heart of darkness-violence engulfs even those distant from the epicenter. The reader needs to be something of a locksmith to fit the pieces together. "It's like a puzzle, a weird-ass kind of puzzle, man," one of the characters remarks, and you won't master all the connections until the closing pages, when it clicks into place with the aha of satisfaction. But the satisfaction is a hurtful one, radiating as it does from the central character, the eponymous dew breaker, who claims the final chapter for himself.

"One of hundreds who had done their jobs so well that their victims were never able to speak of them again," this torturer is not a nice fellow. "He liked questioning the prisoners, teaching them to play zo and bezik, stapling clothespins to their ears as they lost and removing them as he let them win, convincing them that their false victories would save their lives. He liked to paddle them with braided cowhide, stand on their cracking backs and jump up and down like a drunk on a trampoline, pound a rock on the protruding bone behind their earlobes until they couldn't hear the orders he was shouting at them, tie blocks of concrete to the end of sisal ropes and balance them off their testicles if they were men or their breasts if they were women." Perhaps the ultimate unforgivable injustice he commits is this: "He'd wound you, then try to soothe you with words, then he'd wound you again. He thought he was God."

Yet it's the singular achievement of this novel to make us feel bad for the bad guy. Who can be privy to his rationalizations and guilt, his familial love and childhood dreams, without acknowledging that even he-especially he-has within him the seeds of redemption? "You and me, we save him," his wife tells his daughter, when she learns the truth. "When I meet him, it made him stop hurt the people. This how I see it. He a seed thrown in rock. You, me, we make him take root."

The wistful contends with the brutish. The ghastliest atrocities-facial scalping "where skin was removed from dead victims' faces to render them unidentifiable," whipping the soles of the feet till they bleed, making casual foes drink a gallon of gas and then lighting a match-are counterbalanced by paeans to human beauty: eyes that are "chartreuse" or "velvet-brown," skin that is "the color of sorrel" or "silken and very black, her few wrinkles … more like beauty marks than signs of old age." Or this: "Beatrice threw her head back and let out an earsplitting laugh, contorting her face in such a way that her skin, had it been cloth, would have taken hours to iron out."

These details are delivered languidly, leaf by leaf, as it were, like the leaves falling from the green ash trees, "shaking ever so slightly in the afternoon breeze … seemingly suspended in the air, then falling ever so slowly as if cushioned by air bubbles." As they accumulate-the details of beauty no less inexorably than the details of torture-they acquire the specific gravity of truth.

Here we learn exactly what it feels like to inhabit a body that is no longer your own: "The preacher was thrown in the back of a truck. A group of Miliciens piled on top of him. He raised his feet close to his chest as they shoved him from side to side, pounding rifle butts on random parts of his body. His face was now pressed against the metal undulations of the truck bed, boot soles and heels raining down on him, cigarette butts being put out in his hair, which sizzled and popped like tiny grains of rock salt in an open fire …. Someone dragged him by the legs, pulled him forward, removing his jacket, and then he felt himself falling from the back of the truck onto the concrete. He fell on his face, crushing his forehead. His blood quickly soaked the blindfold, a warm veil of red covering the darkness over his eyes. He was being dragged by the legs over the rise of a curb. With each yank forward, a little bit of him was bruised, peeled away. He felt as though he was shedding skin, shedding voice, shedding sight, shedding everything he'd tried so hard to make himself into, a well-dressed man, a well-spoken man, a well-read man. He was leaving all that behind now with bits of his flesh in the ground, morsel by morsel being scraped off by pebbles, rocks, tiny bottle shards and cracks in the concrete."

In one of those odd quirks of human convergence, Jackie Onassis, diminutively disembarking a queen-sized yacht one day back in the 1970's, apparently made a vivid impression on the natives of Haiti. They liked her style. They liked her pink Bermuda shorts and her wide-rimmed sunglasses. Most of all, they liked her grace: "She lost her husband and two babies, yet she remained so beautiful. She made sadness beautiful."

With her grace and her imperishable humanity, her devotion to lives lived like "a pendulum between forgiveness and regret," Edwidge Danticat is every bit Jackie's equal. About her, too, it can be said: She makes sadness beautiful.

Daniel Asa Rose reviews books regularly for The Observer .

Mr. Hope couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "I was like, 'WHAT? What do you mean?'" he said. "And he's like, 'No, no, it's really good for everybody. We think this is a really good thing.'"

Mr. Hope thought otherwise. A screener ban, which would have halted the distribution of "For Your Consideration" DVD and VHS cassette tapes to award-giving bodies like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and various trade and critics organizations was a direct threat to the word-of-mouth campaigns that had elevated specialized films from the 200-seat art house to the 1,000-seat suburban megaplex and dozens of Oscar nominations along the way. At the time, Mr. Hope had American Splendor in theaters and was readying the release of a second critically praised film, 21 Grams .

Two days later, Mr. Hope sent an e-mail with the subject head "This could kill us!" to HBO Films president Colin Callender, New Line executive vice president Mark Ordesky, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker and his former partners at Good Machine, James Schamus and David Linde, who were now running Universal's art-film division, Focus Features.

"The proposed moratorium on Academy screeners is entirely absurd," Mr. Hope wrote in the body of his e-mail. "It will hurt specialized film significantly and will make it virtually impossible for the best work to get the recognition it so deserves." "Don't let this happen!" he concluded. "Our future is in your hands. Sincerely, Ted."

"What was amazing to me, right then, [after the first e-mail], there was this dichotomy between New York and L.A. The L.A. producers, that had this same niche of a small film and big film as I did, or had difficult movies, wrote back to me, the ones that even took that time, and said, 'Ted, what are you doing? They'll retaliate against you. You won't win. And no one's going to listen. So, just stop."

But Mr. Hope did not stop. And as he set into motion the events that, on Dec. 5, led a U.S. District court judge to declare the ban violated U.S. Anti-Trust laws, and even pushed MPAA leader Jack Valenti to the brink of retirement, an interesting thing happened to the outspoken 41-year-old producer. Mr. Hope, who seemed content to let his gregarious bow-tie wearing Good Machine partner James Schamus have the spotlight, emerged as the galvanizing national voice of the independent film industry.

"I really think this was Ted's battle," said Christine Vachon of Killer Films, who was on set with Mr. Hope, co-producing John Waters' latest picture, when the screener ban hit the fan. "I also think a big thing was that he galvanized the IFP [Independent Film Project] into becoming an organization that was genuinely advocating for the rights of independent filmmakers.

"I feel like, the IFP to me, I've never quite understood what their role is-how they can impact positively on my life as an independent film producer-except, y'know, having to drag my ass to those Gotham awards every year and eat rubber chicken."

"I'm not hired to agree with anybody, including the studio," Mr. Hope said. "I'm hired to do whatever is necessary to take the film and make it as best as it can be, to be responsible for the money, to push as hard as I can to make sure that it's seen by the widest audience."

On the day the ban was announced, Mr. Hope called IFP/ New York executive director Michelle Byrd and told her: "We've got to mobilize this." The next day, Ms. Byrd released a statement condemning the ban. "This last minute policy change will seriously diminish the diversity and quality of independent films immediately, and the mainstream film industry in the long run," she wrote. "Oscar consideration is a primary motivating factor behind the funding of riskier films, those of more serious content, films with ambitious narrative aspirations. Lacking Oscar potential these films will not be made."

Ms. Byrd, who had worked with Mr. Hope when he was a member of the IFP/ New York board from 1992-2002, said, "Essentially, Ted's been the conscience of the organization, I'd say, probably the whole time I've been here. Whenever there are issues that come up, whether they impact him directly or impact the field in a wider sense, he's always been very vocal in turning to the organization to challenge us, to see if we would be able to take something on. He's always been very much in favor of the formation of an IFP unified presence."

When the screener ban first took effect it made explicit the Mason-Dixon line of an East Coast West Coast divide that has existed in the film industry for years, bubbling beneath the surface of every Oscar nod Miramax received. The seven major Hollywood studios implored the 'dependents'- the tag that industry insiders half-jokingly give to their art-house subsidiaries - and the rest of the specialized film industry to consider the harms of piracy and to think of the future of the movie industry, lest it go the way of the music Industry. As Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, wrote in a guest column in the Oct. 8 issue of Variety : "After all, if movies fall into the thievery morass now afflicting music, Chicken Little will be the voice of understatement."

But the opposition immediately cried foul, perceiving a fatal threat to their films' award chances and perhaps, their box office. And out of this schism emerged a well-organized East Coast contingent of film executives, producers, directors, publicists and talent, galvanized not by Mr. Schamus or Mr. Weinstein, but by Mr. Hope.

On Oct. 15, a three-prong attack launched. Mr. Hope wrote a searing guest column in Variety , rebutting Mr. Rothman's pro-ban piece, and making him the first producer to actually commit his anti-ban argument to print and sign his name to it. "This unilateral, undemocratic, self-serving and truly misguided action reeks of the same arrogance that encourages the head of the NYSE to bonus himself over a hundred million, or corporate leaders from Enron and others to line their pockets while swindling the general public and their stockholders," Mr. Hope wrote. "The process utilized to enact The Ban speaks of a true restraint on trade, of a cartel plotting against

competition, of the very things that lead to anti-trust suits."

At that point, members of the Independent Working Group, an ad-hoc consortium of distributors such as Miramax were functioning largely anonymously.

That same day, Mr. Hope released what was referred to in the industry as his "White Paper," a detailed argument against the ban, with sections titled "Long Term Effect the Ban on Screeners Will Have on the Industry," "Why the Process Implementing the Ban on Screeners is Misguided," "Why the Ban Does Not Seem to be Truly About Piracy" and "What Can One Do to Protest the Ban." This manifesto was circulated throughout the industry to give potential protestors the appropriate arguments to combat the ban.

Also, on Oct. 15, the IFP placed one of two ads that would run in Variety : The first was signed by over 150 directors who opposed the ban, including Robert Altman, Barry Levinson, Sydney Pollack and Terry Zwigoff. The ad was funded by anonymous donors. Another, which ran soon afterwards, was signed by a coalition of industry talent and funded explicitly by the IFP

"Certainly nobody else had the wherewithal to really think the issues through and aggressively advocate for those positions," said Thirteen producer Jeff Levy-Hinte, who would play an integral role in the trial which eventually saw the ban overturned. "Where Ted was unique was really laying down an intellectual framework for what we were doing and why we were doing it. He was very up front and outspoken and wrote some very key letters to the media, too."

Although Mr. Valenti conceded and allowed distributors to send out screeners to members of the Academy, by mid-November it became abundantly clear that no more changes were going to be made to the ban. At that point, the ad-hoc coalition led in part by Mr. Hope, Ms. Byrd and Mr. Levy-Hinte, played their final card and brought an anti-trust suit against the MPAA, alleging anti-competitive practices by the lobbyist group. "We tried to remain civil," said Mr. Hope. "Which in fact later we were very civil: a civil suit."

Ironically, the independent coalition's victory was solidified by Mr. Valenti's testimony. When expounding on his decision, the judge said, "Beyond [the] testimony [of Mr. Hope and Mr. Levy-Hinte] and [Mr. Weinstein's] affidavit evidence, which I credit, convincing evidence that the plaintiffs have show potential injury from the MPAA's screener ban comes from Mr. Valenti's testimony that if the ban were not in effect, at least some studios would break ranks and send out the screeners because 'these companies are hotly competitive against each other.' If studio executives did not perceive that the risk of piracy were outweighed by the competitive advantages to them of sending out screeners, plainly they would not do so. To find otherwise, I would have to find that well paid and highly successful studio executives do not understand what is good for their company. I have no basis to find that."

By this point, with all of the negative publicity that has surrounded the ban, it is possible that the judge's admission did not even make Mr. Valenti blush. And while many agree that Mr. Valenti still has the confidence of the seven studios that comprise the board of the MPAA, Mr. Valenti has admitted that he will probably step down within the next two years. In order perhaps to save face, those involved in the case speculate that Mr. Valenti and the MPAA will seek an appeal.

"I'm optimistic that they will be wise enough not to [appeal]," said Mr. Hope. "I mean, it would just be embarrassing."

When Bill Clinton stood in the Staples Center Monday night, surrounded by movie stars and union members, introduced by a wet video in the dry air of Los Angeles, while outside police and demonstrators created a pageant reminiscent of 1968 and 1972, it showed more than ever why the President had made Hollywood so happy. He was the very synthesis of all their story lines. "Isn't it great to be in California?" he asked. And then he went into the story in which he didn't exhort, in which he explained how we were to understand history.

Forty years ago, in the best-known piece of convention journalism after H.L. Mencken, Norman Mailer called John F. Kennedy's 1960 Los Angeles nominating convention "Superman Comes to the Supermarket." This convention, of course, belongs to Vice President Clark Kent, loping ever so slowly to the town that dreads his appearance like the science teacher you wish wouldn't come back from vacation; seeding it with his daughters, his former adversaries, his judges, and of course his predecessor who modeled himself on Mailer's 1960 Superman.

But Mailer had written of John Kennedy as a hero, and Bill Clinton was anything but. He was a protagonist perhaps, and magnificent, and amazingly, the synthesis of the past 70 years of American culture. For in his magnificent and self-loving address on Aug. 14, he seemed in turn reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elvis, L.B.J., J.F.K., Muhammad Ali- "this is a b-i-i-i-g election" he rasped into the microphone the way Ali did before a fight-and the Clutch Cargo parodies of him on Conan O'Brien's show. He waved and crooked his long priapic fingers, smiled and waved his big head, went off-road from his text endlessly, had the gall to indulge in a little self-pity with his majestic triumph, and generally sucked in the moment in the magnificently-lit Staples Center as though it was a big vanilla malted.

For that they loved him, and the depth of that love could be gauged in Hollywood's after-the-fact support for him: Cher's announcement on TV that she hadn't voted for him in 1992 or 1996, and she was really, really sorry. Barbra's mad embrace of him, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's and Les Moonves' and John Travolta's. They loved him desperately: he had created an era in which all bets were off, in which patriotism and sex and altruism and self-interest all merged, in which the past was not predictive, but there to be sculpted, rewritten, used for their purposes, and his.

He was not so much the hero as Mailer's description of John Kennedy: "The sexual and the sex-starved, the poor, the hard-working and the imaginative well-to-do could see themselves in the President, could believe him to be like themselves."

But Mr. Clinton was his own version. Most people couldn't see themselves as Bill Clinton...but they could imagine it. And Hollywood could imagine it most of all. He, like them, was a weaver of the happy moment, the teary smile, the sentimental narrative, and he, like they was prone to tantrums and temper at the corrupted message.

But this was the end of the affair.

And Hollywood, which prefers affairs to remember, seemed to be struggling to find something memorable about the man whom the Democratic party had chosen as Mr. Clinton's successor.

Director Rob Reiner tried. He really tried to make Mr. Gore look attractive when MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews buttonholed him just past the security check at the V.I.P. entrance to the Staples Center.

"Here's what's going to happen, I think," Mr. Reiner said to Mr. Matthews. "I was with the Vice President yesterday in Ohio, and he showed me a film that [ Being John Malkovich director] Spike Jonze did. And, and it's great, I mean..." Mr. Reiner stumbled some more then got traction. "Here's what's going to happen ," he said. "That film shows Al Gore with his family, his friends. It's the most real film I've ever seen. I'm not talking about the biography film," said the man who played Meathead on All in The Family . "He's very human, a family man, very funny with his kids, his wife. I think that's going to put us over the top."

Mr. Reiner's testimonial seemed rather, well, flaccid compared to the man with whom Hollywood had just had an eight-year fling. Mr. Clinton was the man who had E.T.'s electrifying touch and Warren Beatty's sex appeal, not to mention the warm personal friendships with Mr. Beatty, E.T .' s director Mr. Spielberg, and DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. Christophe cut his hair! He made Ms. Streisand sing and Democratic activist Patricia Duff swoon. And when he got in trouble with that woman, Monica Lewinsky, he asked one of Hollywood's own, television producer Harry Thomason, to hold his hand while he recorded his 1998 mea culpa to the nation.

And Mr. Gore? He was the guy who chose Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who, as the first Jew to be nominated for a national ticket, would have been celebrated in Jewish Hollywood, were it not for his association with conservative tight ass Bill Bennett and something called the Silver Sewer awards, which the two men used to denounce what they felt was Hollywood's raunchiest, most deplorable product.

And Mr. Bennett's chilly presence at the Staples Center media suites - sybarite Jack Nicholson's home away from home - wasn't exactly helping matters. "[The Hollywood establishment] loves Clinton," Mr. Bennett said. "He's their guy. I mean, they're not even sure he did anything wrong." He paused for a moment. "It's a mutual admiration society. Gore's just not their kind of guy. And Lieberman is really a problem with them."

Not that a consummate politician like Motion Picture Association of America chief Jack Valenti would ever admit to such a problem. A few minutes after Mr. Reiner entered the hall, the snowy-maned Mr. Valenti was allowed to circumvent the metal detectors. "The guy must have thought I had an innocent face," Mr. Valenti said, when the Observer asked him how he'd gotten a pass from security. "I was a little shocked by it myself." Before he got on the main escalator leading up the skyboxes, Mr. Valenti was asked whether the love affair between Hollywood and Washington would end when Mr. Clinton left office. A smile crept onto the M.P.A.A. chief's face and he became animated in a Yosemite Sam kind of way.

"Well, keep in mind the two issues that are most important to me," he said. "Protection of copyright and trade, allowing us to move around the world. We have massive bipartisan support, no matter who's in the White House. We had it under Bush. We had it under Clinton," Mr. Valenti continued. "We'll have it under Gore or Bush. We're in great shape. It doesn't make any difference!"

Mr. Valenti smiled and hopped on the escalator. He was followed by a trio of television actors, former L.A. Law star Harry Hamlin, former NYPD Blue star Sharon Lawrence, and former Ally McBeal star Gil Bellows, who were guests of the Creative Coalition.

Next up, was DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the Observer jumped on the escalator with him. Only Mr. Katzenberg wasn't interested in answering our question, which was whether he thought that Mr. Gore would be a President that Hollywood would adore. "No thank you," he said, smiling. "No thank you."

At the top of the escalator, Roger Clinton was being hustled through the hall, with a phalanx of Secret Service agents who actually made him look a bit like the rock star he longs to be.

James Carville poked his freshly shaved head out of the makeup room and took a good long look at the NBC News buffet. The Transom asked if Hollywood was going to go through withdrawal after the departure of his old boss.

"Naaah," Mr. Carville drawled. I mean, Ronald Reagan came from Hollywood. But, we're changing goverments here." Mr. Carville took three potato chips, shoved them in his mouth, and continued talking. "I got to deal with the fact that I'm not going to be a presidential advisor," he said, spewing crumbs. "Everybody's got to deal with something. I wouldn't worry about Hollywood …. [Clinton] seems to like movies you know, better than the Vice President does. But people out here who are politically active continue to be … and, ah, you know, Jack Valenti - he'll do his job."

Nearby, a woman walked up to actor Richard Dreyfuss and asked him how his mother was doing. "Not great," he said. There was dead silence between them, and then, without another word, the woman slipped away, leaving Mr. Dreyfuss to answer our question.

"I would argue that in Hollywood there's a greater love

affair for Clinton than there was even for Reagan. But, but, I don't think Hollywood has to wake up to that. It's a historical fact," he said. "As to the relationship between Hollywood and Gore, let's find out. Let's find out. Let's listen to him Thurday night."

And what about Mr. Lieberman. The consensus at the convention was that Mr. Gore's running mate was great for Jews but bad for Hollywood.

"Well if you're dealing with that one issue, I'd say that's not incorrect," Mr. Dreyfuss said. "But I'd also ask you to look at this. Of all the institutions in America now, the Hollywood creative community is the most altruistic -the one that

gives more to more issues, more causes, more charities, more ideas, more things in need that are not directly in their own benefit than any institution in America. They're not just looking for what is their home-court advantage."

Mr. Dreyfuss posted himself at the top of the escalator where he observed the arrival of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who was accompanied by Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy. "Senator," said Mr. Dreyfuss, thrusting out his hand and beaming like an Eagle Scout, "Keep up the good work!" .

Next, Andrew Cuomo hustled through. "Hollywood may have a deeper relationship with Clinton now, but he's also

been there for eight years," he said. "Give them 8 years with Gore you'll be in the same place." Mr. Cuomo continued gladhanding his way through the hall. "I mean, Bill Clinton was from Arkansas," he said. "He didn't come in as a friend to

Hollywood. There wasn't a lot of Hollywood in Arkansas. It was a relationship that developed. And you'll see the same thing with Al Gore."

Ten minutes before Hillary Clinton's speech, Gregg Bello, an actor who appeared in Jakob the Liar and The Thomas Crown Affair , was standing with some Creative Coalition people in the hall as a scowling Maria Shriver ran by with her NBC crew. "Some people are actually working," Mr. Bello said.

Then he added: "I'm excited about one thing. I'm excited about the unknown. I'm looking to be impressed. And I'm hoping that this guy" - he meant Mr. Gore - and Lieberman come in on Thursday morning and inspire people. Otherwise, it's not going to be a fun thing, and it's going to be tough to rally."

Two minutes before Ms. Clinton, Paul Begala was running upstairs to the second level of the skybox suites. He was shoving popcorn in his mouth as he talked. He said that Mr. Clinton was a movie fanatic and that his favorite was High Noon, starring Gary Cooper. "He liked the ambivalence that underlaid the courage that Cooper showed," Mr. Begala said. "It wasn't just marching out there and killing a bunch of people."

Was Mr. Gore a movie fanatic too?

"No I don't think so," Mr. Begala said. "Al Gore went bananas when he met [physicist] Stephen Hawking, though. He about fell over. Clinton likes meeting Steven Hawking too. He's just very comfortable with Nobel Prize-winning physicists, AND with the guys who made My Dog Skip , you know? He's got a lot of range. He blooms where he's planted. He's the smartest person I've ever known."

And like Hollywood's geniuses, Mr. Clinton was best at rewriting the past. For the great achievement of his speech Monday was not to set the table for Al Gore, not to heat up Hollywood for his successor, but to do what he so very much wants to do: rewrite the past. He talked about turning the economy and the country around. He put himself at the end of a long chain of Truman, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Lyndon B. Johnson. He talked about his presidency being "a joy, an honor, and a privilege," just what he said about it at the depth of the White House sex scandal, which he alluded to not at all except in the melodramatically accurate statement about his own birth: "Fifty-four years ago this week, I was born in a summer storm to a young widow in a small southern town."

And like an actor in a Robert Altman movie, he improvised upon the text, having a blast, meeting Los Angeles half-way in creating the kind of pleasure that can only happen here, where history is only made to be sold. He inflated with more and more self-confidence. He made love to the microphone, looking like he might suddenly explode with self-inflated happy gas, leaving only a huge, exultant YEEE-HAH!!! WA-HOOO!!! in his wake.

And then, as efficently as Frankie Avalon in a late-night ad for some Time-Life rock 'n roll retrospective of the 50's, he began amassing his own greatest hits: "Keep putting people first. Keep building those bridges. And don't stop thinking about tomorrow." The room rocked. No one wept. But the nitrous oxide of Clinton giddiness filled the air of the Staples Center, and crazy light rock dancing filled the room.

Outside, as he spoke, sweaty kids from the Rage Against The Machine concert were being billy-clubbed and pelted with rubber bullets, even as Bill Clinton reminded the convention that long, long ago, in the past he was retelling, "there were riots in the streets." And even as he said it, there were riots in the streets outside the Staples Center. Not big riots, but hundreds of police, and barbed wire, and mounted troops, even while Cesar Chavez and Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King stared down from a giant Apple Computer ad painted on the side of a dilapidated downtown warehouse.

When Bill Clinton stood in the Staples Center Monday night, surrounded by movie stars and union members, introduced by a wet video in the dry air of Los Angeles, while outside police and demonstrators created a pageant reminiscent of 1968 and 1972, it showed more than ever why the President had made Hollywood so happy. He was the very synthesis of all their story lines. "Isn't it great to be in California?" he asked. And then he went into the story in which he didn't exhort, in which he explained how we were to understand history.

Forty years ago, in the best-known piece of convention journalism after H.L. Mencken, Norman Mailer called John F. Kennedy's 1960 Los Angeles nominating convention "Superman Comes to the Supermarket." This convention, of course, belongs to Vice President Clark Kent, loping ever so slowly to the town that dreads his appearance like the science teacher you wish wouldn't come back from vacation; seeding it with his daughters, his former adversaries, his judges, and of course his predecessor who modeled himself on Mailer's 1960 Superman.

But Mailer had written of John Kennedy as a hero, and Bill Clinton was anything but. He was a protagonist perhaps, and magnificent, and amazingly, the synthesis of the past 70 years of American culture. For in his magnificent and self-loving address on Aug. 14, he seemed in turn reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elvis, L.B.J., J.F.K., Muhammad Ali- "this is a b-i-i-i-g election" he rasped into the microphone the way Ali did before a fight-and the Clutch Cargo parodies of him on Conan O'Brien's show. He waved and crooked his long priapic fingers, smiled and waved his big head, went off-road from his text endlessly, had the gall to indulge in a little self-pity with his majestic triumph, and generally sucked in the moment in the magnificently-lit Staples Center as though it was a big vanilla malted.

For that they loved him, and the depth of that love could be gauged in Hollywood's after-the-fact support for him: Cher's announcement on TV that she hadn't voted for him in 1992 or 1996, and she was really, really sorry. Barbra's mad embrace of him, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's and Les Moonves' and John Travolta's. They loved him desperately: he had created an era in which all bets were off, in which patriotism and sex and altruism and self-interest all merged, in which the past was not predictive, but there to be sculpted, rewritten, used for their purposes, and his.

He was not so much the hero as Mailer's description of John Kennedy: "The sexual and the sex-starved, the poor, the hard-working and the imaginative well-to-do could see themselves in the President, could believe him to be like themselves."

But Mr. Clinton was his own version. Most people couldn't see themselves as Bill Clinton...but they could imagine it. And Hollywood could imagine it most of all. He, like them, was a weaver of the happy moment, the teary smile, the sentimental narrative, and he, like they was prone to tantrums and temper at the corrupted message.

But this was the end of the affair.

And Hollywood, which prefers affairs to remember, seemed to be struggling to find something memorable about the man whom the Democratic party had chosen as Mr. Clinton's successor.

Director Rob Reiner tried. He really tried to make Mr. Gore look attractive when MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews buttonholed him just past the security check at the V.I.P. entrance to the Staples Center.

"Here's what's going to happen, I think," Mr. Reiner said to Mr. Matthews. "I was with the Vice President yesterday in Ohio, and he showed me a film that [ Being John Malkovich director] Spike Jonze did. And, and it's great, I mean..." Mr. Reiner stumbled some more then got traction. "Here's what's going to happen ," he said. "That film shows Al Gore with his family, his friends. It's the most real film I've ever seen. I'm not talking about the biography film," said the man who played Meathead on All in The Family . "He's very human, a family man, very funny with his kids, his wife. I think that's going to put us over the top."

Mr. Reiner's testimonial seemed rather, well, flaccid compared to the man with whom Hollywood had just had an eight-year fling. Mr. Clinton was the man who had E.T.'s electrifying touch and Warren Beatty's sex appeal, not to mention the warm personal friendships with Mr. Beatty, E.T .' s director Mr. Spielberg, and DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. Christophe cut his hair! He made Ms. Streisand sing and Democratic activist Patricia Duff swoon. And when he got in trouble with that woman, Monica Lewinsky, he asked one of Hollywood's own, television producer Harry Thomason, to hold his hand while he recorded his 1998 mea culpa to the nation.

And Mr. Gore? He was the guy who chose Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who, as the first Jew to be nominated for a national ticket, would have been celebrated in Jewish Hollywood, were it not for his association with conservative tight ass Bill Bennett and something called the Silver Sewer awards, which the two men used to denounce what they felt was Hollywood's raunchiest, most deplorable product.

And Mr. Bennett's chilly presence at the Staples Center media suites - sybarite Jack Nicholson's home away from home - wasn't exactly helping matters. "[The Hollywood establishment] loves Clinton," Mr. Bennett said. "He's their guy. I mean, they're not even sure he did anything wrong." He paused for a moment. "It's a mutual admiration society. Gore's just not their kind of guy. And Lieberman is really a problem with them."

Not that a consummate politician like Motion Picture Association of America chief Jack Valenti would ever admit to such a problem. A few minutes after Mr. Reiner entered the hall, the snowy-maned Mr. Valenti was allowed to circumvent the metal detectors. "The guy must have thought I had an innocent face," Mr. Valenti said, when the Observer asked him how he'd gotten a pass from security. "I was a little shocked by it myself." Before he got on the main escalator leading up the skyboxes, Mr. Valenti was asked whether the love affair between Hollywood and Washington would end when Mr. Clinton left office. A smile crept onto the M.P.A.A. chief's face and he became animated in a Yosemite Sam kind of way.

"Well, keep in mind the two issues that are most important to me," he said. "Protection of copyright and trade, allowing us to move around the world. We have massive bipartisan support, no matter who's in the White House. We had it under Bush. We had it under Clinton," Mr. Valenti continued. "We'll have it under Gore or Bush. We're in great shape. It doesn't make any difference!"

Mr. Valenti smiled and hopped on the escalator. He was followed by a trio of television actors, former L.A. Law star Harry Hamlin, former NYPD Blue star Sharon Lawrence, and former Ally McBeal star Gil Bellows, who were guests of the Creative Coalition.

Next up, was DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the Observer jumped on the escalator with him. Only Mr. Katzenberg wasn't interested in answering our question, which was whether he thought that Mr. Gore would be a President that Hollywood would adore. "No thank you," he said, smiling. "No thank you."

At the top of the escalator, Roger Clinton was being hustled through the hall, with a phalanx of Secret Service agents who actually made him look a bit like the rock star he longs to be.

James Carville poked his freshly shaved head out of the makeup room and took a good long look at the NBC News buffet. The Transom asked if Hollywood was going to go through withdrawal after the departure of his old boss.

"Naaah," Mr. Carville drawled. I mean, Ronald Reagan came from Hollywood. But, we're changing goverments here." Mr. Carville took three potato chips, shoved them in his mouth, and continued talking. "I got to deal with the fact that I'm not going to be a presidential advisor," he said, spewing crumbs. "Everybody's got to deal with something. I wouldn't worry about Hollywood …. [Clinton] seems to like movies you know, better than the Vice President does. But people out here who are politically active continue to be … and, ah, you know, Jack Valenti - he'll do his job."

Nearby, a woman walked up to actor Richard Dreyfuss and asked him how his mother was doing. "Not great," he said. There was dead silence between them, and then, without another word, the woman slipped away, leaving Mr. Dreyfuss to answer our question.

"I would argue that in Hollywood there's a greater love

affair for Clinton than there was even for Reagan. But, but, I don't think Hollywood has to wake up to that. It's a historical fact," he said. "As to the relationship between Hollywood and Gore, let's find out. Let's find out. Let's listen to him Thurday night."

And what about Mr. Lieberman. The consensus at the convention was that Mr. Gore's running mate was great for Jews but bad for Hollywood.

"Well if you're dealing with that one issue, I'd say that's not incorrect," Mr. Dreyfuss said. "But I'd also ask you to look at this. Of all the institutions in America now, the Hollywood creative community is the most altruistic -the one that

gives more to more issues, more causes, more charities, more ideas, more things in need that are not directly in their own benefit than any institution in America. They're not just looking for what is their home-court advantage."

Mr. Dreyfuss posted himself at the top of the escalator where he observed the arrival of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who was accompanied by Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy. "Senator," said Mr. Dreyfuss, thrusting out his hand and beaming like an Eagle Scout, "Keep up the good work!" .

Next, Andrew Cuomo hustled through. "Hollywood may have a deeper relationship with Clinton now, but he's also

been there for eight years," he said. "Give them 8 years with Gore you'll be in the same place." Mr. Cuomo continued gladhanding his way through the hall. "I mean, Bill Clinton was from Arkansas," he said. "He didn't come in as a friend to

Hollywood. There wasn't a lot of Hollywood in Arkansas. It was a relationship that developed. And you'll see the same thing with Al Gore."

Ten minutes before Hillary Clinton's speech, Gregg Bello, an actor who appeared in Jakob the Liar and The Thomas Crown Affair , was standing with some Creative Coalition people in the hall as a scowling Maria Shriver ran by with her NBC crew. "Some people are actually working," Mr. Bello said.

Then he added: "I'm excited about one thing. I'm excited about the unknown. I'm looking to be impressed. And I'm hoping that this guy" - he meant Mr. Gore - and Lieberman come in on Thursday morning and inspire people. Otherwise, it's not going to be a fun thing, and it's going to be tough to rally."

Two minutes before Ms. Clinton, Paul Begala was running upstairs to the second level of the skybox suites. He was shoving popcorn in his mouth as he talked. He said that Mr. Clinton was a movie fanatic and that his favorite was High Noon, starring Gary Cooper. "He liked the ambivalence that underlaid the courage that Cooper showed," Mr. Begala said. "It wasn't just marching out there and killing a bunch of people."

Was Mr. Gore a movie fanatic too?

"No I don't think so," Mr. Begala said. "Al Gore went bananas when he met [physicist] Stephen Hawking, though. He about fell over. Clinton likes meeting Steven Hawking too. He's just very comfortable with Nobel Prize-winning physicists, AND with the guys who made My Dog Skip , you know? He's got a lot of range. He blooms where he's planted. He's the smartest person I've ever known."

And like Hollywood's geniuses, Mr. Clinton was best at rewriting the past. For the great achievement of his speech Monday was not to set the table for Al Gore, not to heat up Hollywood for his successor, but to do what he so very much wants to do: rewrite the past. He talked about turning the economy and the country around. He put himself at the end of a long chain of Truman, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Lyndon B. Johnson. He talked about his presidency being "a joy, an honor, and a privilege," just what he said about it at the depth of the White House sex scandal, which he alluded to not at all except in the melodramatically accurate statement about his own birth: "Fifty-four years ago this week, I was born in a summer storm to a young widow in a small southern town."

And like an actor in a Robert Altman movie, he improvised upon the text, having a blast, meeting Los Angeles half-way in creating the kind of pleasure that can only happen here, where history is only made to be sold. He inflated with more and more self-confidence. He made love to the microphone, looking like he might suddenly explode with self-inflated happy gas, leaving only a huge, exultant YEEE-HAH!!! WA-HOOO!!! in his wake.

And then, as efficently as Frankie Avalon in a late-night ad for some Time-Life rock 'n roll retrospective of the 50's, he began amassing his own greatest hits: "Keep putting people first. Keep building those bridges. And don't stop thinking about tomorrow." The room rocked. No one wept. But the nitrous oxide of Clinton giddiness filled the air of the Staples Center, and crazy light rock dancing filled the room.

Outside, as he spoke, sweaty kids from the Rage Against The Machine concert were being billy-clubbed and pelted with rubber bullets, even as Bill Clinton reminded the convention that long, long ago, in the past he was retelling, "there were riots in the streets." And even as he said it, there were riots in the streets outside the Staples Center. Not big riots, but hundreds of police, and barbed wire, and mounted troops, even while Cesar Chavez and Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King stared down from a giant Apple Computer ad painted on the side of a dilapidated downtown warehouse.