I put this last attribute down to the fact that she handles directors -- Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, John Stockwell, Bobby and Peter Farrelly -- and not celebrities. If she were to suddenly switch hats and start flacking for Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, sooner or later she'd be come a Conniving Attitude Queen with a Samurai Sword, like several personal publicists I could mention without breaking stride.

Lying goes with being a publicist. Extremely skilled lying, of course -- artful, shrewd, seductive, Marlon Brando-level. For years I've been waiting for an opportunity to describe publicists in print with words that say it straight and plain -- paid liars -- but now that the opportunity is here, I realize this isn't it. What they really do is dance. Tappety-tap-tap, tee-tappety-tap-tap, tee-bop, tee-bop ... tappety-tap-tap, tappety-tap-tap.

"A journalist who calls a publicist hoping for five minutes of a star's time quickly learns that 'she's spending time with her family / shooting in Europe / scouting in Japan,'" the 22nd paragraph of Friend's piece reads. "They all mean the same thing: [the star] was just chatting on the cell phone for an hour with me, but she sure doesn't want to talk to you. 'He's transitioning' means he got fired, and 'He's suffering from exhaustion' means he was found wandering naked in the street, waving a gun.

"Likewise, 'It's in turnaround' means a project is dead; 'It's a work in progress' or 'They're doing a few pickup shots' or 'The print isn't finished yet' means the movie is a disaster. And 'The film is not for everybody' means it's not for anybody. Outright lies have their place, too. One well-known publicist told me, 'If a newspaper calls to check a negative story about my client and it's true, my first response is flat-out denial. Then I have the attorneys send a 'we'll sue' letter.'"

Much of the piece explains how Ward performs her job, the hurdles she's had to leap over or go around, who she is deep inside ("The truth is I'd rather be doing something else," she says at one point), and so on. It reviews one of her astute moves, which was when and how to break the news that Oscar-winning TRAFFIC screenwriter Steve Gaghan had written some of the script based not on research, per se, but personal experience.

Most of Ward's clients are men, the article notes. "I have this ridiculous need to help people," she remarks, "particularly very difficult, troubled, artistic men. I don't know why." A pause, and then, "I do know, actually. It's because of my old man. He was all the things you imagine an Englishman to be -- so very awkward about expressing any emotion or vulnerability."

The real star of the piece, for my money, is director John Stockwell (BLUE CRUSH, CRAZY/ BEAUTIFUL), who expresses opinions I could've articulated myself:

"It's terrifying that if a journalist writes something negative the top three or four publicists will blacklist him," Stockwell laments. "Publicists are the death of interesting journalism about entertainment." After this last statement, Friend writes, "Ward laughed and pretended to strangle herself."

Stockwell later speaks about a NEW YORK TIMES article about himself and CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL that Ward set up, the effects from which he found immensely satisfying.

"More people in hiring positions saw the TIMES piece about me than saw the movie," he says. "In a strange way, that kind of exposure allows you to express yourself almost more than the actual movie does." He pauses and adds, "You just have to avoid turning into Michael Bay," i.e., another client of Ward's who was described at one point in an ESQUIRE magazine profile as having parked his Ferrari in a handicapped spot.

"Michael is refreshingly unashamed of his Ferrari," Ward playfully replies to Stockwell, adding that "you have to remember that journalists are not your friend."

"They're not your enemy," Stockwell counters.

At which point Bebe Lerner, described by Friend early in the piece as having toenails painted "very blue," exclaims, "They're your media friends!"

Incidentally, if any of the topical references seem dated (i.e., why was Stockwell plugging CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL instead of his latest film, BLUE CRUSH?), the answer is that the information for Friend's piece was gathered 14 months ago, give or take. The NEW YORKER editors decided to hold the finished piece after September 11th, apparently having decided it didn't fit the new national mood of austerity and zero irony. Anyway, that didn't last long, and now the article's finally out.

Mo' Money

A friend passed along a story yesterday about MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING he heard at a Hollywood party a couple of weeks ago. He says that a group of actors who appeared in WEDDING recently appealed to the producers, Gold Circle Films, through the Screen Actors Guild for some kind of modest, force majeure profit-sharing.

Their thinking, apparently, was that since this little ethnic comedy has been so hugely profitable (it cost $5 million to make, and has earned $109 million thus far), that perhaps the folks holding the pursestrings might be persuaded to share a tiny bit of the windfall. They were turned down, my friend reports. Which isn't all that surprising, assuming their appeal was actually put forward.

Was it? Perhaps not. A publicist representing Gold Circle said no one has ever heard of such an appeal. Gold Circle president Paul Brooks was in London and didn't return my call. SAG'S acting national director of communications, Ilian Kichaven, said the guild never officially comments about contracts. Steve Shereshian of Tom Hanks' Playtone Company, which produced the film, wouldn't pick up the phone.

GREEK WEDDING costars Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan or Louis Mandylor probably weren't among any group of actors asking for thank-you cash, since it was announced a couple of days ago in VARIETY that they'll be costarring in the upcoming CBS series based on the film, which will also star the film's lead actress and screenwriter Nia Vardalos.

I wish this story could be confirmed as true, because it conveys a fundamental lesson of capitalism, which is never ask for anything. Earn it, negotiate it, steal it ... but never ask for it. Asking is for losers.

On the other hand, sharing some of the wealth with the "little people" isn't unheard of. George Lucas, as I recall, bestowed a small profit participation option to some of the below-the-line people who worked on the original STAR WARS, and 20TH Century Fox decided to give Jim Cameron some of his profit-sharing points back on TITANIC, even though he'd surrendered them by going over-budget, because the film had become such a huge breadwinner.

I know if I were the GREEK WEDDING honcho and they'd come to me, I would have said fine. When you hit a gusher and you're suddenly filthy rich, only a skinflint would balk at taking a few of his more deserving employees to dinner and treating them to a few bottles of Dom Perignon. But then I've never been much of a capitalist.

I couldn't be bothered to see MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING when it was being screened six or seven months ago. No one I know has bothered to see it, except for the older people who've been trooping down to their local plex since it opened about five months ago (April 19th). WEDDING is one of the biggest indie success stories of all time, and it hasn't even hit Europe yet.

The reason I haven't seen it yet, and am frankly still reluctant to, is an opinion I've been hearing and reading that it isn't really a movie (comparisons to sitcoms keep coming up), or, for that matter, very good.

The story, as everyone knows, is about how the sweetly lovable Toula (Vardalos) outrages her Greek family by falling in love with and then insisting upon marrying a non-Greek named Ian (John Corbett), and about the discord this creates.

Its charm is supposed to lie in its cheerful, pro-family emotionalism, but in his late-arriving review in the current issue of THE NEW YORKER, David Denby describes its appeal more succinctly.

"The story is a cross between 'The Ugly Duckling' and 'Cinderella,' with a patsy prince for a hero," he writes, adding that "Vardalos may be more Greek than she realizes. The men in Toula's family are portrayed as pompous or infantile or both, and the women are the ones who really run everything, while letting the men take the credit. It's no wonder [GREEK WEDDING] is a hit with my friends' mothers -- the comic folk wisdom flatters the hell out of them. But Vardalos, in her own way, repeats the syndrome that she's satirizing. She makes her lover so utterly pliable that, perhaps unconsciously, she puts him in his place."

I've always hated big family get-togethers, with everyone always sitting around looking drugged from all the food and wine that's always being shoved in your face, hour after hour. And I hate drinking in the pageantry of any tribal event involving chubby, middle-aged women and tearfully sentimental men who've had too much to drink, and the oppressive family expectations you sometimes have to deal with. Denby sums up Vardalos' attitude toward her family as, "They feed you and they kill you."

In short, I can't wait to go to MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING this weekend and just despise it to death. And I will do that. See it on Saturday or Sunday, I mean.

I love reading pans of this film. Stephen Garret of timeoutny.com calls it a "laughless ethnic skewering," adding that "there's a fine line between a loving caricature and a vulgar stereotype, and GREEK WEDDING stomps on it with all the ouzo-guzzling power it can muster." THE LOS ANGELES TIMES' Gene Seymour calls it "a movie that's about as overbearing and over-the-top as the family it depicts."

On the other hand, ZAP2IT's Michael Szymanski has said, "If you come from a family that eats, meddles, argues, laughs, kibbitzes and fights together, then go see this delightful comedy." And last spring the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE'S Mike LaSalle called it "a buoyant comedy with more warmth and generosity of spirit than anything else in theaters right now."

Frida Factor

"My favorite films of the [Toronto] festival were THE QUIET AMERICAN, THE GOOD THIEF and FRIDA. Maverick directors all, working at the top of their craft under conditions of reasonable independence. I agree that ANTWONE FISHER will be a huge popular success, too soon to tell what its Oscar chances are. But FRIDA has Oscar written all over it. Cinematography, costumes, art direction, Salma Hayak and Alfred Molina, certainly. How can the Academy resist? Finally, the film is not only a perfect match of director and subject, but a moving love story. Academy members will cry, and that's what makes the difference." -- Entertainment Journalist

Wells to Entertainment Journalist: It's not a four-hankie, a three-hankie, a two-hankie or even a single hankie movie. What's there to cry about? Diego Rivera cheating with Frida's sister? Molina, of course, deserves some kind of acting award or tribute of some kind, but the film isn't strong enough to qualify as an Oscar-level thing. Everywhere I went, everyone I spoke to up there, I could feel this. The air was leaking out of the balloon ... ssssssssss. Just because it's Taymor and Hayek trying to capture the fascinating life of Frida Kahlo doesn't make it Oscar-worthy.

IMAX Pruning

"I'm sure I'm not the only reader to comment on how ridiculous this practice is of movies being pruned for time and content as part of their conversion to IMAX."

Either build a projector that can handle two-hour-plus films, show movies clocking in at under two hours, or scrap the whole project! I'm sure that Lucas doesn't really mind taking another swipe at his EPISODE II; in fact, a version 20 minutes shorter might not have pegged it as one of the most wooden blockbusters I've ever had to sit through. But for other filmmakers to edit their movies for these IMAX-format flagship selections -- especially to make the already-PG Apollo 13 tamer -- is tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot, at least with cinema purists like me who think the IMAX bit is a cool idea. I will not support it, though, if this continues. What's next? Are they going to cut out the shot of the astronaut on fire? That's right up there with changing guns to freakin' walkie-talkies in the new version of E.T." -- Nick Rogers

DePalma

"You said that FEMME FATALE is De Palma's worst film ever. You mean it's actually worse than BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES? Is that even possible?" -- Devone Tucker, Boston, MA.

Wells to Tucker: Now that you mention it, I'm not sure. I think BONFIRE was spectacularly awful in a way that only could have come from a talented filmmaker. It was luridly, flamboyantly awful as opposed to being just routinely awful, which is how I would describe FEMME FATALE, with the exception of the heist sequence at the very beginning. By "routinely" awful I mean plagued by a lack of talent -- a dullness, a lack of pep -- in the screenplay, which was by De Palma.

Worst Movie Titles

"You should do a piece on the worst-ever movie titles. My nomination: EVERYBODYWINS." -- James Bulbrook, Canada.

"Funny you should riff on THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD being the worst movie title ever the same weekend BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER is released. I don't think I ever saw REINCARNATION, but I remember the television commercials scaring the crap out of me when I was a kid." -- Rich Swank

"I saw THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD many times on TV around 1980-1981 while living in Vancouver BC. In Canada, they never edited movies for language or nudity, so impressionable 12 year olds could get quite excited over the bare flesh shown in the movie. My recollection of it was that I found Sarrazin to be a weird actor (actually, that goes for everything he was in), and the movie was your classic 'guy is a reincarnation of a murder victim from 40 years earlier, guy is drawn to murder victim's wife, guy goes out with murder victim's daughter, guy finally remembers that it was the wife who killed him, but guy remembers it too late and it murdered by the wife (now she's a double murderer!).' Oops, that was a spoiler! I remember at the time being shocked by the ending, and in retrospect it has a sort of a VANISHING-style ending (Belgium version). Let's hope they don't turn it into the American version of the THE VANISHING." -- Richard Huffman

"THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD is a terrible film. I've seen it twice, once in the theaters and once when it came out on laser disc. The problem starts with the title--Peter Proud is the name of the hero, not the person being reincarnated. Essentially, he starts having dreams about a murder that occurred shortly before he was born, but the conclusion contains no suprise and the whole movie is flacid, eccept for the nude scenes of Margot Kidder and Corniela Sharpe, and Jerry Goldsmith's let's-wake-people-up-here musical score." -- Doug Pratt

Role Playing

Josh Mooney was first to identify Wednesday's cast. They appeared together in Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), which Mooney describes as "one of those rare films I can and do watch over and over. So many highlights: Rydell's ultra-scary gangster; Marlowe's soft-shoe on that Mexican dirt road to the tune of "Hooray For Hollywood"; ex-ballplayer Bouton in the role he was born to play; Curry-brand catfood; the way the film's title song appears damn-near everywhere, from a doorbell chime to the Muzak in the late-night supermarket; the young supermarket clerk who disdainfully informs Gould: "Man, I don't need a cat, I got a girlfriend"; the great Sterling Hayden as the doomed drunk writer, who looks like Hemingway but walks into the water and drowns like Virginia Woolf; "It's okay with me."

What's That Line?

Brian Lee of Sydney, Australia, was first to identify Wednesday's dialogue. It's from THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957), directed by David Lean, script by Carl Foreman, Michael Wilson, Pierre Boulle and others. The actors are William Holden (Gravedigger #1) and some guy I'm not able to identify.

A very short piece of dialogue for today, and voice-over dialogue at that:

Man's Voice: It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about.