Rave reviews or not (and these are definitely expected), no one presumes this violent, beautifully composed, 19th Century period drama will generate a big rumble at the box-office. Not to mention the old saw about no Scorsese film except CAPE FEAR having made any real money.

Nonetheless, there exists now a better-than-decent chance that THE AVIATOR will get off the ground. Initial Entertainment Group (IEG) is the financial force behind THE AVIATOR right now, and the latest talk has either Warner Bros. and Miramax discussing the sharing of domestic distribution, or Warner Bros. going it alone. IEG (which also financed ALI and GANGS OF NEW YORK) would handle foreign territories. The film had been expected to roll in March '03, but the latest talk is that it will start around April 15. Others are saying the summer. (This will push back Baz Luhrman's ALEXANDER project a touch more, since Leo has agreed to play the title role sometime in the fall.)

Still, there's some skepticism out there about the wisdom of giving Scorsese and DiCaprio the run of another multi-million-dollar venture. As one talent manager has explained, what's going on now is "a Hollywood wait-and-see."

Wait and see about what, I asked. "About GANGS," she answered. "If it gets great reviews and makes some money and seems to be doing okay, this will go away...but right now, they're scared. They're afraid of artistic indulgence, of a filmmaker who might wind up spending too much." In short, political and artistic loyalties aside, would-be financiers don't want to appear foolish or imprudent, so until the smoke clears they're holding their cards against their chest.

The German-based Intermedia was an AVIATOR backer earlier this year, but they're currently hurting for funds. Charlie Evans, Jr., who's been with the Hughes project since the early '90s, will be one of four producers on the project, along with Michael Mann, who developed it while it was at New Line Cinema in the late '90s. Although Leonardo DiCaprio is listed on the IMDB as a producer, I'm hearing the more likely scenario is that his production company, Appian Way, will have a "presents" credit.

THE AVIATOR is expected to shoot in and around Los Angeles. It's easy to see where the money will go. Period this, period that -- cars, wardrobe, knick-knacks. Lots of CGI landscapes and cityscapes. A full-scale flying replica of the massive Spruce Goose will have to be built. Dog fights between World War I biplanes (the selling point of Hughes' HELL'S ANGELS) will have to be staged in the clouds, along with Hughes' infamous 1946 plane crash on a residential street in Beverly Hills.

"There's no one standing in line for a picture about Howard Hughes except movie aficionados," a marketing veteran commented. "It's not a movie about Jack Kennedy. GANGS is not going to make any money, and DiCaprio isn't a star any more. Doing nothing over the last five years except for THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK and THE BEACH nearly killed his career. The pubescent teens have left him and moved on to the next guy."

An AVIATOR insider disputes this assessment. "Leo is a much bigger force than [just that of an ex-teen magnet]," he says. "He has a special quality that the best director want to ally themselves with...he's high pedigree, and audiences know it."

The rap on Scorsese among producers, the marketing exec contends, is that "he doesn't give a shit about anyone else's money. Nobody wants to touch him because he's notorious for saying 'yes' to a certain figure and then going over budget...and you're left with the tab. I'm talking about GANGS, AGE OF INNOCENCE, CASINO...a very expensive film that he went way over budget on. He's an undisciplined director who [works] under the shield of an artist. His rationale is that he's delivering art and it's a bunch of crap, so why would you do it?"

That's not fair either, argues the AVIATOR insider. "Didn't Scorsese and DiCaprio put up their own money to cover overages on GANGS when it was shooting in Rome? A willingness to shoulder such a burden obviously speaks to their wish to keep to a schedule."

"I wouldn't greenlight any Scorsese film over, say, $40 million these days," a male talent manager in his 30s commented on Monday. "His films don't make money. I liked KUNDUN, but he's better on a smaller scale anyway...the urban stuff...AFTER HOURS, TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS."

The Hughes story "has a name-recognition factor," he admits, "unlike the GANGS story, which is is just a fictional account...and having Leo playing Hughes helps...but this is a period that's not very interesting to people these days." Not to his thirty-something Hollywood peers, he meant.

A Los Angeles-based Hughes expert says "there's some concerns about the script...I have some problems with it [and] with things about Hughes that have been invented or left out." Okay, fine, but then what Hollywood period piece hasn't had historical purists taking potshots about this and that? This is an opportunity, in any event, to get into Logan's screenplay...

Machine Freak

It's clear from reading THE AVIATOR that screenwriter John Logan (GLADIATOR, STAR TREK NEMESIS) believes that Howard Hughes' greatest passion in life was for machines. Hughes certainly liked taking to the skies, but he was an absolute fool for the inner mechanistic workings of just about anything. He was the kind of guy who loved to take machines apart and put them back together again, and then wipe his grease-stained fingers on his pleated trousers.

He was into power and beautiful women and making the occasional movie (SCARFACE, THE OUTLAW), yes, but he was first and foremost a technological adventurer who was determined to always be first, and always whip the competition.

There are hints of the phobic shut-in who kept himself holed up in a Las Vegas hotel in the '60s and '70s and became known for walking around with his feet inside Kleenex boxes, but only in brief behavioral spurts. Although Hughes suffered from what was later diagnosed as obsessive compulsive disorder, Logan curiously dramatizes this by suggesting he suffered from hallucinations ("Sometimes I see things...that may or may not be there," he admits to lover Katherine Hepburn on page 61). This is apparently a total invention.

"Part One" of the story begins in 1928 with the 22 year-old Hughes, having inherited his father's tool manufacturing company, overseeing the shooting of HELL'S ANGELS, which began as a silent film and ended up as one of the first big talkies. (He would up spending around $4 million on the film, although it eventually turned a handsome profit.) This section, which also covers Hughes' hiring of key employees (accountant Noah Dietrich, mechanic Glenn Odekirk, and a fictitious meteorologist named "Professor Fitz"), ends on Page 33.

"Part Two" covers Hughes' building of the H-1 Racer plane, which he crashed into a beet field during a test flight; his romantic relationship with Katharine Hepburn; Hughes' decision to buy a controlling interest in TWA Airlines for $15 million and turn it into an international competitor of Pan American, which enjoyed a monopoly on overseas air travel at the time; Hughes squiring the teenaged Faith Domergue and also Ava Gardner; his battling the MPAA's censorship board in order to have Jane Russell's breasts seen by the paying public in THE OUTLAW; and his crash- landing of his experimental XF-11 on a Beverly Hills street. This section ends on page 118.

"Part Three" is about Hughes' recovery from the XF-11 crash; his battles with Pan American chief Juan Trippe in trying to compete against Pan Am's monopoly in the international flight arena; more encounters with Ava Gardner; Hughes' confrontation with a U.S. Senator Brewster, a Trippe flunky who tries to embarrass and otherwise threaten Hughes for this and that irregular practice as a way of making him retreat in his battle against Pan Am; and his triumphant test flying of the Spruce Goose. It ends on page 171.

For some strange reason, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer is referred to throughout the script as Louis B. "Meyer."

A Hughes specialist I spoke to shared the script with said it's "fraught with factual errors," adding, "I don't know what this film is." He says he doesn't find the Hughes character "very likable" and the notion of his having suffered from occasional hallucinations "is insulting. Hughes didn't 'see things.' If anything, he saw too much."

He also points out there's no mention in Logan's script of Hughes' actress girlfriends Billie Dove, Terry Moore, Lana Turner, Yvonne de Carlo and especially Jean Peters, who married Hughes and "was the love of his life."

He maintains that Hughes and Hepburn, being intensely private types, never went anywhere in public. Logan has them going to premieres and posing for press photographers. Ditto Hughes' relationship with Domergue, which was also conducted in private, given she was a piece of 15 year-old jailbait.

The authority also complains that "there's nothing in this film about [Hughes'] boyhood, which is when he really became Howard Hughes. His father gave him a chance to go up in a seaplane at age 14, and it changed his life. And there's nothing about the genesis of his love for planes or movies, and nothing about his uncle being a celebrated screenwriter, Rupert Hughes, who wrote a definitive biography of George Washington."

Anyway, it's a good start.

The Hospital ('71, d: Arthur Hiller, w/ Scott, Rigg, Hughes). One of the most acerbic, best-written social satires ever made. Needs re-mastering; color on laser disc has faded, flirting-with-monochromatic color. Stockard Channing has a memorable two-line appearance in opening act that's fascinating for the enormous promise it conveys. The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer ('47, d: Irving Reis, w/ Grant Loy, Temple, Vallee, Collins). Again -- on laser disc but no DVD. Waiter to distraught Grant, who's just been dissed by everyone and had wine thrown in his face: "Is there anything I can do, sir?" Grant to waiter, fuming: "For instance?" Also: "Mellow greetings, yukey-dukey!" The Wrong Man (1957; d: Alfred Hitchcock, w/ Fonda, Miles, Quayle). Far from tip-top Hitchcock, but that third-act moment when the detective steals a glance at the Fonda look-alike culprit as he's being brought into the police station but doesn't put it together until he's outside on the street...I've sat through the whole plodding thing just to enjoy that moment. Le Mans (1971, d: Lee H. Katzin, w/ McQueen) "One of the few Steve McQueen movies that hasn't been released on DVD and the best movie about car racing ever. So far only Days of Thunder (watchable) and Driven (utter garbage from both a filmic and racing perspective) are on DVD. -- Owen Greenwell, Plug & Play Technology "P.S. - the second best film about racing, ironically, is Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (1966) which is also AWOL on DVD" - O.G. Year Of The Dragon ('85, dir: Michael Cimino; written by Oliver Stone). "It's probably Mickey Rourke's best film (okay, besides Barfly), and one of those movies that absolutely needs audio commentary from the main guys; I can't believe Cimino's Heaven's Gate was released with out Cimino supplying a commentary." -- Christopher Hasler, Manager, Business and Legal Affairs, Scholastic Entertainment Inc. Wells to Hasler: Cimino is too much of an elf-sized control-freak weenie to supply audio commentary about his pivotal role in the most repugnant and catastrophic episodes in Hollywood history, ie., the making of Heaven's Gate. Forget it -- he hasn't the balls. Also wanted by Hasler: Greetings ('68, d: Brian De Palma), "Dated or not, this is still a pretty funny movie," he says. "De Palma is one of those highly particular and fascinating direct- ors who is deserving of having his entire oeuvre getting the deluxe treatment -- even his lesser movies like Body Double." Electra Guide In Blue ('73; dir: James William Guercio, w/ Blake, Bush, Ryan, Riley) "Blake playing a uniformed cop long before he started working the other side of the law; very 70's, very strikingly photographed. All Mann, all the time: Man of the West (1958, d: Anthony Mann, w/ Cary Cooper); The Naked Spur (1953, d: Anthony Mann, w/ James Stewart); The Far Country (1954, d: Anthony Mann, w/ James Stewart); The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964, d: Anthony Mann, w/ James Mason, Alec Guinness); El Cid (1961, d: Anthony Mann, w/ Heston, Loren) -- Patrick Dailey, Springfield, MO Also suggested by Dailey: Secret Honor (1984, d: Robert Altman, w/ Philip Baker Hall); Anna Karenina (1997, d: Bernard Rose, w/ Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean, James Fox); New York, New York (1977, d: Martin Scorsese, w/ De Niro); The Trojan Women (1971, d: Michael Cacoyannis, w/ Hepburn, Redgrave); Hamlet (1996, d: Kenneth Branagh, w/ Branagh, Winslet, Heston, Jacobi); Surviving Picasso (1996, d : James Ivory, w/ Hopkins); The Sugarland Express (1974, d: Steven Spielberg, w/ Goldie Hawn); Julia (1977, d: Fred Zinnemann, w/ Fonda, Redgrave); Short Cuts (1993, d: Robert Altman, w/ Moore, Downey Jr.). Two Japanese movies that reader Jon Mochizuki would desperately would like to see on DVD: Ikiru (1952, dir. Akira Kurosawa, with Takashi Shimura) and Shall We Dance? (1996, dir. Masayuki Suo). "Ikiru is my favorite Kurosawa movie," Mochizuki writes. "A tremendously intense, transcendently emotional experience. The only DVD I could find is a Hong Kong-produced release, with an awful English translation. Dance was a big hit for Miramax, so I've always been puzzled as to why it never got a DVD release. The closest I've come to a digital-quality copy is an Asian-produced VCD (which still contains the 20 minutes cut out by Miramax for the American release)." -- Jon Mochizuki, Irvine CA "What about Whit Stillman's best screenplay-nominated Metropolitan"? - William Couper Samuelson "John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday and Grand Prix should definitely be on DVD, as should William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA. Frankenheimer was one of the best directors at providing insightful commentary on his DVD's as opposed to self-congratulatory pats on the back. Sadly, we won't have the opportunity to hear any more of Frankenheimer's commentaries, but we should at least get the opportunity to see a couple of the enjoyable action films he made. -- Steven R. Silver

Afterlife

This is what I love about the internet. Three or four years ago I tapped out an early-childhood recollection about seeing a cocker spaniel puppy get squashed by a truck. I remember standing over the little guy's remains, transfixed by the absolute flatness of what was left. And listening to the piercing screams of Sue Ellen, a four year-old whose parents had just given her the puppy for her birthday, from inside her home.

Anyway, I wrote what I wrote, not thinking very much of it at the time. And then a couple of years later, someone from the University of Pennsylvania took the quote and made this little object d'art.

I wonder where the spirit of that little puppy is now. Or was it just a simple "lights out" and no residue after that truck driver shifted into reverse and forever settled his situation? Is there such a thing as a canine cosmic stream? Or a human one, for that matter? If non-humans don't go to Heaven, why should we? Because our species is able to conceive of its own mortality and has built churches and museums and produced books like The Denial of Death and Steve Martin's Shopgirl?

Where will New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell go when he dies? Will he stay among us on some basis, floating around like dandelion pollen, or will he just...move on? I'd like to think of him running into that puppy somewhere, and the two of them becoming inseparable.

Luck of the Draw

I got on the phone last weekend with the great Campbell Scott, the actor-director who surprised everyone last week (and was himself surprised) by winning the Best Actor prize from the National Board of Review for his performance as a diseased womanizer in Dylan Kidd's ROGER DODGER, one of the better films of the year.

Scott says that "being told you're the best actor in the world, or that you've given the year's best performance, so to speak, is pretty surprising." He acknowledges that those who comprise the Manhattan-based National Board of Review "seem to be regarded as slightly bizarre people...no one seems to know who they are. But I know they've been around forever and are...uh, presumed to be folks of some taste and erudition."

The 41 year-old Scott was home at his apartment in New York's Chelsea district when he heard the news. He was working on OFF THE MAP, a TENDER MERCIES or DESERT BLOOM-like movie he's directed that will make its bow at January's Sundance Film Festival as one of the "premiere" selections. It co-stars Joan Allen, Sam Elliot, J.K. Simmons, Amy Brenneman and a wet-behind- the-ears discovery named Valentina d'Angelis.

Scott has directed three films previously -- the highly regarded BIG NIGHT ('96), a made for TV movie of HAMLET ('00), with Scott in the title role, and FINAL ('01), with Denis Leary and Hope Davis. His latest, he says, is "a different type of film....for me, at least." "

Set in northern New Mexico in 1974, OFF THE MAP is about a young girl and her parents in a small town -- "people in the middle of nowhere." An IRS guy arrives to audit them "and, for lack of a less ridiculous phrase, he begins to change their lives forever," Scott describes. "But it's better than that. It's moody but very funny. It's got a kind of natural, organic quality."

The script by Joan Ackermann, whom Scott describes as "a female Sam Shepard," is an adaptation of her own play.

The son of George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, Scott has been acting since 1987, when he made his debut with a walk-on role in FIVE CORNERS. His early scores came from roles in LONGTIME COMPANION ('90), THE SHELTERING SKY (ditto), and the drop-dead terrible DYING YOUNG ('91). My personal favorite is his role as the intelligent but unwitting victim in David Mamet's THE SPANISH PRISONER ('97), which costarred Steve Martin and Ricky Jay.

The films that Scott personally prefers above all others are Alan Rudolph's MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE ('94), in which he played satirist Robert Benchley, which he says "was pretty great," and Gregg Mottola's DAY TRIPPERS ('96), in which he played a kind of early version of the womanizer he bring to life in ROGER DODGER

As everyone has heard over and over by now, Scott and Kidd first met when Kidd handed him the ROGER DODGER script after spotting him in a café.

"Sometimes you read read something, and say to yourself, 'This is just a pile of steaming shit,'" Scott says, "but not this time. I exist in a New York indie film world and I'll take roles wherever they come from. Obviously you assess people as you talk to them, and I liked Dylan immediately... he really stepped up and did the job.

"To be brutally honest, I think I'm relatively respected as an actor, but I'm no box-office thing. Very honestly, ROGER DODGER was just a beautiful surprise...very quickly made and it all came together. I've been in ten of these films that sucked, and just didn't amount to anything, Since it opened people have really been talking about it, and you don't get this often."

Last Saturday Night

...began with a drink with Susan Orlean, the NEW YORKER staff writer and the real-life version of Meryl Streep in ADAPTATION. Orlean's "The Orchid Thief" (Ballantine), a wonderfully written book about a Florida obsessive named John Laroche and a major case of orchid-worship, is the roundabout basis of ADAPTATION, the Spike Jonze movie with Streep, Nicolas Cage and Chris Cooper, which you absolutely must see.

I rang Orlean a couple of years ago after reading and loving Charlie Kaufman's script, mainly to tell her how delighted I was with it and to tap her for any fresh info she might have. Then I ran into her at the ADAPTATION press junket a few weeks ago, and we agreed we'd sit down when she returned to Los Angeles in December. So last weekend I met her at 5:30 pm at the Four Seasons bar with Dave Poland, another admirer who briefly worked with her at Salon a few years ago, in tow.

Orlean is smaller and more athletic-looking than Meryl Streep, and her hair is thick and red, not fair and blonde. But she's a superb writer and razor-sharp and loads of fun to play mental ping-pong with.

The only thing I regret is having volunteered to pay for her glass of champagne, along with my glass of Pinot Grigio and Poland's cup of tea. Thirty-five dollars. People aren't supposed to dig into their wallets to pay drink bills of this size, are they? Don't corporations usually do that? Besides, Orlean was here doing book promotion appearances for the reissue of Ballantine's trade paperback of "The Orchid Thief" and...y'know? When the check came Poland pulled out a twenty but I already had cash in hand, and so I said to him, "I'll get it." Orlean immediately said, "Oh, thank you." I took this to mean she might not have had an expense arrangement with Ballantine, so fine. Except it borders on the criminal for an establishment, any establishment, to change $18 for a glass of bubbly.

An hour or so later Orlean and her husband left for a party with some L.A. WEEKLY people, and Poland and I drove to a party given for Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN director Alfonso Cuaron at producer Mark Johnson's home in Brentwood. Cuaron had been making appearances here and there around town to try and further interest in Y TU MAMA being handed a Best Foreign Film award by the L.A. Film Critics, or in eventually landing Academy nominations for Best Director or Best Screenplay (written by Alfonso and his brother, Carlos Cuaron), since Y TU MAMA hadn't been submitted by Mexico as a Best Foreign Film contender.

Johnson's home is warm and clapboard-y and feels like a crib you might find in a toney section of Connecticut or Massachucetts. The aroma inside was very Christmas-y, a mix of apple cider and cloves and mistletoe and cinammon. Mark is a longtime friend of Cuaron's (he produced 1995's A LITTLE PRINCESS) and was trying to give his pal a boost. Steven Soderbergh and Stephen Gaghan showed up to lend support. Cameron Crowe was supposed to be there but wasn't; ditto screenwriters Scott Frank and Steven Zallian. A few journalists were there, but the place wasn't crawling with them.

I felt kind of bad when I spoke to Soderbergh, and at the same time filled with affection. Over the last few months I had panned OCEAN'S 11, FULL FRONTAL and SOLARIS, and wrote on a couple of occasions about how his winning streak is over. I even ran a mocking visual at one point of a Soderbergh dog sitting in front of a FULL FRONTAL dog house. But Soderbergh didn't refer to any of this in the slightest. He was just friendly, polite, sincere, etc. He may be negotiating a stretch of bumpy road right now, but the guy himself is nothing but class.

Cuaron and I spoke mostly about his pre-production work on HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, which he'll begin shooting early next year. I said I saw a disconnect in his having a directed a sexually risqué film like Y TU MAMA, only to segue into the heavily corporatized world of Harry Potter. I told him it seemed analogous to Stanley Kubrick directing SPARTACUS after making PATHS OF GLORY, which Cuaron found enormously flattering.

I asked whether growth and hormonal development issues will be affecting the appearances of Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ronald (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson). No, he said -- the really big changes will be evident in the Potter flick after AZKABAN. Grint, he acknowledged, has grown the most of the trio, and Emma is getting slightly breasty and acting more and more precociously teenaged. I don't know about this. In the one-sheet for the current HARRY POTTER, Radcliffe looks like a 29 year-old attorney.

I also had nice chats with Gaghan, director Dean Parisot (GALAXY QUEST, MY DOG SKIP) and screenwriter Michael Tolkin, whose CHANGING LANES screenplay (written with Chap Taylor) is easily one of the year's finest. I read afterwards that Rose McGowan was there, but I didn't see her. Robin Tunney showed up with a couple of cute girlfriends, including a friendly blonde who was sort-of half-dressed. The food was great, Mark was a gracious host, there were fires going in both fireplaces, and the vibe was pure pleasure.

Role Playing

Mike Walker, a longtime reader from Long Beach's Belmont Shore district, was first to identify Friday's cast. They're currently appearing in the just-released EMPIRE.

Today's cast: Blanche Baker, Carrie Nye, Alan Alda, Michael Higgins, Melvyn Douglas, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Chris Arnold.

What's That Line?

Sean Whiteman of Monmouth, Oregon, was first to identify Friday's dialogue. It's from Mary Harron's AMERICAN PSYCHO ('00). Directed by Harron and and co-written by she and Gui nevere Turner, based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel by the same name. Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman, or Guy #3.

A man and a woman face each other. There's another guy standing next to them. They've been through a lot and now it's time to move forward. [Note: This is from a June 1999 script; the dialogue never made it into the film itself. Not that this should make it terribly hard to figure out.] And the woman says to the man:

Woman: You're coming with me? You're giving up on this place then?
Man: Coming with you, yeah, but not giving up. I just wanted to go where we can find something else, what you always said was there. [to the guy] You're staying?
Guy: No need to do anything but. Maybe there'll be changes.
Man: All that changes in this city is the names of the streets and the people who own them. [He hands the guy a broken knife.] But this will still take an edge if you work it.
Woman: [As she puts her arm around man] So how far we going, then?
Man: As far as there is, to begin with.