Phil Rosenthal, the creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” was delighted when Sony asked him if he wanted to go to Moscow to help oversee a Russian-language production of his long-running sitcom. He wasn’t so delighted when he discovered that his kind of middle-class American comedy doesn’t necessarily play in Russia. Luckily for us, he filmed the whole messy adventure, which he made into an engaging documentary, “Exporting Raymond,” which opens in Los Angeles on April 29.

Rosenthal’s journey began when Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Michael Lynton regaled him with tales of Sony’s pioneering efforts in Russian TV. The media conglomerate had almost single-handedly created the Russian sitcom, a comedy form that didn’t exist until a Russian-language version of “The Nanny” debuted in 2004. “Until perestroika in the 1980s, their state-run TV’s basic staple was agriculture shows,” explains Lynton. “Russian comedy has always been much darker. After all, when Chekhov wrote ‘The Seagull,’ he thought it was a comedy.”

After Sony’s success with “The Nanny,” it began adapting other shows, like “Married … With Children.” To make sure things went smoothly, Sony even brought over American sitcom talent to train Russian writers in the subtleties of the form.

Since Rosenthal has been looking for film projects to direct, he couldn’t resist Lynton’s offer to bankroll a documentary depicting Rosenthal’s experiences as a creative consultant on the Russian production of “Raymond.” A jumble of Woody Allen-like anxiety, Rosenthal casts himself in the familiar comic persona of a fish out of water, baffled by the cultural quirks of everyday Russian life.

Driving away from the airport in Moscow, his chauffeur suddenly stops, gets out of the car and disappears. Rosenthal is convinced he’s about to be kidnapped. But when the driver returns, he explains that he had to go into a building to pay for parking because apparently no one there has thought to install a parking kiosk.

It’s immediately obvious that working in Russian TV offers little prestige. The production studio, which looks like an abandoned factory, has so many dingy corridors that Rosenthal jokes: “Do you know which room they filmed the movie ‘Saw’ in?” When Rosenthal complains that the Russian comedy writers haven’t bothered to read a translation of a new “Raymond” script, he discovers that they are paid so little that they are always away, moonlighting on other shows to make ends meet.

“TV is definitely not a big business there,” Rosenthal told me over lunch at Umami Burger, one of the many L.A.-area restaurants that he’s an investor in. “When I told them how important it was to have an audience at the taping, they actually said, ‘But we’d have to get chairs.’ Their budget for the show, all in — meaning the pre- and post-production, along with all the salaries — was $80,000 [per episode]. They block and shoot a show every two days. Anything they don’t understand from the American script, they just throw it out.”

Every time the camera cuts away to Rosenthal, he looks puzzled, crestfallen or despondent. The cultural chasm often appears unbridgeable. In the original show, Raymond is regularly scolded by a disgruntled wife and overbearing parents, but the Russian writers grouse that Raymond is unlikable because he’s a weakling, too easily pushed around by women.

An imperious Russian costume designer argues that Raymond’s wife should dress elegantly, not like a drab housewife. When Rosenthal attempts to explain that “maybe her frustration is that she knows how to dress beautifully, but she doesn’t always get the opportunity,” the designer sniffs: “Then why don’t we give her the opportunity?”

Rosenthal says the low point of the experience — though perhaps one of the comic high points of the documentary — was when he tried to breathe life into the taping of the first episode by laughing at the jokes. The show’s director, who by then was deliberately ignoring him, told him to be quiet — his laugh would ruin the take. “That was pretty awful,” Rosenthal told me. “Being shushed for laughing at comedy. We have an old line in the writers room: Punished for caring. That’s what it felt like.”

Although Rosenthal doesn’t want to give away the end of his movie, despite all his travails, the Russian version of “Raymond” isn’t a total disaster. What seems especially intriguing to me is that American TV comedies, remade overseas in local languages, have fared so well almost everywhere around the globe while American comedy films rarely cross over to foreign audiences.

Action films and animated pictures make two or three times more money overseas than they do in the U.S., but live-action comedies rarely do as well internationally. “Dinner for Schmucks,” for example, took in $73 million in the States but only $13.7 million in foreign territories. “Date Night” grossed $98.7 million at the U.S. box office, almost twice what it made overseas. Like most American comedy stars, Will Ferrell has almost no international following. Judd Apatow may be the king of comedy here, but abroad he’s barely registered.

Rosenthal’s theory is that action movies are more relatable. “You can understand a car chase in any language,” he says. “But why a particular guy is funny — that’s harder to easily understand. My guess is that movie stars like Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler are parodying a very specific kind of American type — the man-child who’s never grown up — which just may not be relatable in other cultures.”

TV comedies have the advantage of being remade in a native language. Film comedies feature dubbed dialogue, where it’s possible that some of a comic’s unique personality is lost in translation.

On the other hand, we have to thank God for American comedies, since they reveal far more about our national character than any of our special-effects-studded action films, which are so bland and generic they could be made anywhere. They have no American point of origin, the way films of the past like “The Godfather,” “Taxi Driver” or “Easy Rider” did.

“When I was a kid, growing up in Holland, Hollywood movies served as a huge beacon of public diplomacy — you saw American life through its movies,” says Lynton. “But in our efforts to make franchises that play everywhere around the globe, we’ve lost what made our films distinctive. It’s only through our sitcoms and TV dramas that you still see a reflection of American values and lifestyle.”

You almost get the feeling that in their quest for global domination, American action films have left us behind. They’re aimed at people in Madrid and Mumbai, not Des Moines and Detroit.

Rosenthal wryly admits there was a certain universal quality to his confounding experience with turning “Raymond” into a Russian TV show. “When something wasn’t working, I would try to explain my position by using logic. But logic never seemed to work, which I guess I can’t blame on Russia, since it happens at home with my wife and with all too many network executives.”

He laughs. “I went to Russia worried about being kidnapped, but I have to admit that my fear of kidnapping was quickly replaced by my fear of what they were doing to my TV show.”

--Patrick Goldstein

Here's the trailer for the new film:

 Photo: "Exporting Raymond" director Phil Rosenthal at his home in Hancock Park in 2005. Credit:  Los Angeles Times

American advertising has lost its mojo in recent years. Was there even one memorable commercial during the Super Bowl, which has become a premiere showcase for the best in U.S. advertising?

Invariably the best new ads are made somewhere far away, like Brazil, which spawned the delightfully imaginative spot posted above. According to Ad Week, Ogilvy Brazil has been doing a series of clever ads encouraging people not to drink and drive. This one stars a clearly inebriated valet who is no condition to take care of his patron's shiny new cars. Everyone ultimately demands their keys back, prompting the valet to hand one driver a note saying: "Never let a drunk driver take your car. Even if that driver is you."

Once the drivers figure out it's a stunt, they all have a giggle with the actor playing the tipsy valet. For me, the best touch is the melancholy rendition of "Hava Nagila" that serves as the soundtrack for the ad, the song's pace slyly speeding up as the cautionary tale reaches its comic payoff.

--Patrick Goldstein    

I once went to a Dodgers game with a showbiz big shot who knew Frank McCourt, so we ended up sitting with Frank and Jamie in the owner's box. The most amazing part of the experience was walking around the stadium with McCourt, who was treated like visiting royalty, with his subjects -- the hot dog vendors and security guards and promotions staff -- all bowing and scraping, as if in the presence of a Sun God. Whenever McCourt asked how things were going, everyone said things couldn't be going better, which is what loyal retainers always say right up to the moment when the mob carries the king off to be beheaded.

McCourt hasn't gone to the guillotine yet, but the king has been dethroned. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced Wednesday that baseball was taking control of the Dodgers, appointing a trustee to run the club because of "deep concerns" about the Dodgers' finances. My son and I went to Dodger Stadium Wednesday night with some friends for our first game of the year and it was quite a shock. For years, we've always obsessed about what side streets to take to approach the ballpark and fretted over the long lines of cars backed up at the stadium entrance.

But Wednesday night it was smooth sailing. Hardly any traffic, barely anyone in line at the entrance. When we grabbed our seats down the first-base line, it felt eerie to look around the park and see it half empty. The box-score Thursday said 29,473 tickets were sold, but there's no way that many people showed up. It felt like a ghost town. The Dodgers won the game 6-1 behind Jon Garland, who pitched a four-hit complete game -- sparing us the tsuris of being subjected to the Dodger bullpen -- but the stadium had a melancholy air, suddenly looking its age. It was like seeing a great actress, known for her youthful Broadway triumphs, reduced in late middle age to starring in a bad Neil Simon revival in a dumpy regional theater in Kansas City.

It may take many months, if not years, for MLB to install new Dodgers ownership. But from where I sit, what the Dodgers need is a Hollywood makeover. Like all sports today, baseball is really a form of entertainment, so why not find a showbiz entrepreneur who could right the sinking ship and provide some much-needed razzle dazzle? I thought I'd throw out a few possibilities, which might seem farfetched, but surely not as farfetched as the idea of Donald Trump running for president. Here goes:

Jeffrey Katzenberg

Good News: Full of infectious energy, a tireless promoter of his products, he'd bring a much-needed 10,000 volts of electricity to the team, not to mention convincing Vin Scully to let Tom Hanks sit in as his color man. 

Bad News: Everyone would have to wear 3-D glasses during the seventh-inning stretch and watch trailers for upcoming Dreamworks 3-D movies.

Jimmy Iovine

Good News: Anyone who can make Gwen Stefani a pop star and help stop the ratings slide at "American Idol" surely has the kind of magic touch needed to help save the Dodgers.

Bad News: Will have Lady Gaga on hand every night in a different outfit to sing "God Bless America."

Phil Anschutz

Good News: He already owns the Kings, the Galaxy and 30% of the Lakers, not to mention Staples Center. Why not make it a clean sweep?

Bad News: Hoping to finally get his money's worth from the lavish contract he gave to David Beckham, he may force Dodgers manager Don Mattingly to platoon Beckham in left field with Jerry Sands.

Ryan Kavanaugh

Good News: He'll take that crazy computer program he uses to help pick his movies and let it figure out who should be the Dodgers' closer.

Bad News: Will insist on center field landing rights for his helicopter.

Ron Howard

Good News: Grew up as a Dodgers fan, still knows every player's batting average and would give the team a much-needed fan-friendly front man.

Bad News: All the players would have to get a Brian Grazer hairdo.

Mark Cuban

Good News: He's the movie business' most avid proponent of new technology and has shown, via his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks, that he knows how to win games and successfully market his product.

Bad News: Judging from his ref baiting in the NBA, may get tossed out of more games than Matt Kemp and Davey Lopes combined.

-- Patrick Goldstein  

Photo: Jeffrey Katzenberg, left, with Tom Hanks at Game Two between the Los Angeles Lakers and the New Orleans Hornets. Credit: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press

Chris Hondros, 41, the superb photographer who took some of the most wrenching war photos of our time, has been confirmed dead in a hospital in Misurata, Libya.

The same explosion had earlier Wednesday claimed the life of photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington. At least two other photojournalists were injured in the blast, which was believed to have been caused by a mortar round, Los Angeles Times correspondent Ned Parker reported from Misurata.

The Big Picture noted earlier that Hondros took a series of the most chilling photos to come out of the war in Iraq. He also became one of the most eloquent spokesmen on the importance of exposing suffering in the world's trouble spots.

News reports earlier in the day had prematurely declared Hondros dead, but the 41-year-old photographer clung to life for a few hours, with a critical head wound, at Hikma Hospital.

Hondros was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist for spot news photography for his work in Liberia. He won the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 2006. Friends said he had been scheduled to marry this summer.  

"I still can’t believe it," said Rick Loomis, an L.A. Times photographer and one of a cadre who worked frequently in the world's danger zones. "I knew it would happen some day to one of us. I just never wanted to really have that day ever come.  He was one of the most talented guys out there, working in places that no one wants to go but that everyone should see.  He was the eyes for so many people, whether they know it or not."

RELATED:

Tim Hetherington, photojournalist and 'Restrepo' Oscar nominee, killed in Libya

Tim Hetherington: 'Restrepo' movie takes viewers onto front lines in Afghanistan

-- James Rainey
Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Photographer Chris Hondros walks through the streets in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2003. Hondros, 41, died Wednesday after being wounded in what was believed to be a mortar attack in Misurata, Libya. Credit: Associated Press / Getty Images

Winning a Pulitzer Prize can bring some unexpected surprises. Just ask Ruben Vives, who, along with Jeff Gottlieb, was honored Monday for leading the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of fraud and political corruption in the city of Bell.

Vives was at his desk at the Times on Wednesday when the president of his native Guatemala called to offer his congratulations on the Pulitzer for Public Service.

“I just wanted to call you and personally congratulate you,” Vives said President Alvaro Colom told him. “I can’t tell you how wonderful this is. I made a radio statement yesterday and told all Guatemalans about your big accomplishment in the U.S. and that it was a great day for Guatemala.”

Vives was born in Guatemala and spent the first five years of his life there before his grandmother brought him to Southern California. He grew up in Echo Park and Whittier, as recounted in my "On the Media" column Wednesday.

The president told the reporter he had read about The Times' Pulitzer win in the newspaper Prensa Libre. Colom said he planned to be in Los Angeles soon. He offered to take Vives to dinner. “We’re all so proud of you here,” Colom said. “I’m sending you a big hug.”

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom was among those offering congratulations to Ruben Vives of The Times for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Credit: Johan Ordonez / AFP/Getty Images

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.

Chris Hondros made headlines Wednesday when he became the victim of one of the wars he has chronicled so brilliantly over the years.

Hondros, 41, was one of the photographers gravely injured in an attack in Libya that killed Tim Hetherington, a photographer for Vanity Fair who gained acclaim for co-directing the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo," about soldiers in Afghanistan.

The terrible news about Hondros, who the New York Times reported suffered a critical brain injury, reminded me of the several occasions when the photographer had spoken to me with passion and insight about his dangerous craft.

I first became aware of Hondros in 2005, when Newsweek published photos that I still believe have been the most chilling images to come out of the long war in Iraq. The photos showed terrified and blood-spattered Iraqi children, just moments after their parents had been mistakenly shot to death by a U.S. military patrol.

After seeing the pictures of the children, I contacted Hondros for a long project I was working on -- a story that showed that American newspaper and magazine readers were seeing very few scenes of the bloodshed in Iraq.

“There can be horrible images, but war is horrible and we need to understand that," said Hondros, a freelancer whose work is distributed by the Getty Images agency. "I think if we are going to start a war, we ought to be willing to show the consequences of that war."

Published in Newsweek and several newspapers, the pictures sparked discussion of the military's rules of engagement and provoked an outpouring of aid for the children, who became known as "The Orphans of Tall Afar." The shots also got Hondros banned from any further work with the unit, part of the 25th Infantry Division.

Rick Loomis, one of my Times colleagues who worked with Hondros in some dangerous places, described him as a man with a quick wit and gift of gab.

"It seemed his duty to document the chaos and unrest in these various hell holes," Loomis said. "He operated at the highest levels.  He never expressed fear about returning to these places.  He is always more nonchalant about the danger than I could ever be."

Though I never met Hondros in person, a handful of email and phone exchanges over the years made me feel like I had a friend out in the world's hottest news zones.

After visiting an exhibit at the Getty last summer that featured one of the great war photographers, James Nachtwey, I emailed Hondros. I wanted to know his take on the state of the photo business. His response was typically ebullient and wise.

Hondros said changing technology was making some people uneasy, but he had no doubt photography would continue to thrive. His response, in part: "Doubtless many Victorian portrait-painters were consumed with indignation and doomsaying for the craft when Cubists and Dadaists arrived on the scene, but the art and profession of painting is still with us, if in a different way than a hundred years ago."

He avowed that documentary photography would never be a path to riches. But he continued to shoot great pictures right up until the attack that suddenly put him on the other side of the news. His pictures from the front line in Libya appeared this week on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and, doubtless, many other papers.

Hondros' words came last year from "the middle of the desert in Afghanistan." He wrote them after 2 a.m., local time. But the message certainly could have applied to his work, even this last week in Libya.

"The still image -- the honest, raw, unadorned still image, whether published in print, hung in a gallery or blinking up on a computer screen -- still holds the elemental power it always had."

For the record, 2:28 p.m. April 20: A previous version of this post misspelled photographer Tim Hetherington's last name as Herrington.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: The 2005 images of distraught and bloodied children who had just seen their parents mistakenly shot to death by U.S. forces in Iraq were among the most troubling of the war. Chris Hondros, who shot the "Orphans of Tall Afar" pictures, was gravely injured while photographing the civil war in Libya. Credit: Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Spike Lee has really been taking it on the chin this week. First off, his beloved New York Knicks have lost two straight games to the Boston Celtics, blowing big leads both times, seeing a lot of awful defense from Carmelo Anthony and getting torched at the end of each game by the Celtics backcourt marksmen. Now he's getting also getting scorched by Tyler Perry, who is so mad at Lee that he went careening off-message in the middle of Tuesday's news conference for his new film, "Madea's Big Happy Family," taking a flurry of jabs at Lee.

"I'm so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee," Perry said. "Spike can go to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, 'This is a coon, this is a buffoon.' I am sick of him--he talked about Whoopi, he talked about Oprah, he talked about me, he talked about Clint Eastwood. Spike needs to shut the hell up!"

It's hard to say exactly what prompted Perry's latest outburst, but the feud between the two filmmakers has been simmering for years. Back in 2009, Perry did an interview with "60 Minutes" where he said he was "insulted" and "pissed off"  by Lee, who after name-checking one of Perry's movies, complained about all of the "coonery and bufoonery" in African American comedy, adding, "We got a black president and we're going back. The image is troubling and it harkens back to Amos 'n' Andy."

Perry is especially peeved that the criticism of his films is coming from a fellow African American. "I've never seen Jewish people attack 'Seinfeld' and say, 'This is a stereotype,' I've never seen Italian people attack 'The Sopranos,' I've never seen Jewish people complaining about 'Mrs. Doubtfire' or Dustin Hoffman in 'Tootsie.' It's always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing."

Putting aside all of the whoppers in that rant -- I mean, what's Jewish about "Mrs. Doubtfire" and on what planet would you possibly compare a slapstick comedian like Perry with a brilliant social philosopher like W.E.B. DuBois? -- I think it's safe to say that Lee has obviously gotten under Perry's skin. We can argue all day about whether Lee is a great filmmaker or not, but he's definitely a world-class trash talker, right up there with NBA greats like Kevin Garnett, Rasheed Wallace and Charles Barkley who, like Lee, always knew exactly how to rattle and unhinge their adversaries.

And in fairness to Lee, he's a totally colorblind trash talker, once calling Larry Bird "the most overrated player of all time" and former Sen. Trent Lott a "card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan." When Lee was criticized for a negative portrayal of Jewish club owners in "Mo' Better Blues," he blasted back, saying it wasn't such a big deal since the Jews run Hollywood "and that's a fact." Of course, sometimes Lee's taunting has backfired. He got into an epic trash-talking match with Reggie Miller during Game 5 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals between the Indiana Pacers and the Knicks, inspiring Miller to score 25 points in the fourth quarter of the game, blowing the Knicks out of the building and leading the New York Daily News to run a photo of Lee on the front page of the next day's paper, headlined: Thanks a Lot Spike."

But for now, in the showdown between Perry and Lee, it's Spike who has the upper hand. He's gotten Perry so off his game that he's made his feud with Lee the big news coming out of a press conference supposedly designed to promote Perry's new movie. And while we're at it, when it comes to "Seinfeld," I hate to break the news to Perry, but that's no exaggerated Jewish stereotype, babe. That's just good comedy -- the Jewish version of trash talking.

--Patrick Goldstein   

Here's the famous taunting incident between Lee and Reggie Miller during the 1994 playoffs:

 Photo: Spike Lee courtside, rooting for the New York Knicks against the New Jersey Nets at the Prudential Center. Credit: Jim O'Connor / US Presswire

Have we really become a nation of distracted thumb-twiddlers? If you or I paid tens of thousands of dollars for our Lakers courtside seats, do you think we'd be texting or scanning email on our Blackberry in the middle of the Lakers first playoff game, just as Kobe Bryant comes tumbling in our direction, almost killing himself when he smashes the back of his neck into the leg of an empty courtside folding chair?

Kobe lay motionless for nearly a minute before staggering to his feet and getting some treatment at halftime. Even though he said his neck was sore, he came back to score 34 points in 42 minutes, though it wasn't enough to help the Lakers avoid an embarrassing 109-100 loss to the lowly New Orleans Hornets. I don't know what's more mortifying -- that there was an empty courtside seat for a Lakers playoff game or that, as you can see from the above photo, that the guy on the right couldn't even be bothered to look up from his vital information gathering to notice that the Lakers star was nearly decapitated right in front of his eyes.

(The gentleman on the left of the photo is sports and entertainment tycoon Tim Leiweke, the president of AEG, who owns the Kings, the Galaxy and a 30% share in the Lakers. At least he noticed that Kobe took a hit, thought judging from his expression, he seems more worried about the Galaxy's attendance figures than Kobe's health. The guy to the right of Leiweke is the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, who during timeouts probably regaled Leiweke with stories about his group's Super Bowl appearance.)  

This whole obsession with our smartphones is really out of control. It's almost impossible to go to a concert, a movie or a sporting event without being surrounded by nitwits hunched over in their seats, texting their pals, their eyes riveted on the tiny glowing screen instead of paying attention to the actual event they're attending. The behavior seems reliably class-based in the sense that the more expensive the seat, the more the seat holder is focused on responding to his email.

I always thought the obsession with thumb-twiddling was worse in L.A. than anywhere else, but when I took my kid to a Miami Heat game a few months ago at American Airlines Arena in Miami, we saw pretty much the same level of distraction among Heat fans, who are so blase that the arena often appears half empty on television because most Heat fans can't be bothered to show up until the second quarter. A recent New York Times story heaped ridicule on the local fans, saying that "texting is rarely interrupted for cheering" and that the courtside arrival of P. Diddy, "midway through the second quarter, usually," caused more of a stir than any alley-oop dunk by LeBron James or Dwyane Wade.

Things are so bad in Miami that the Heat management bribes fans to show up on time by offering discounts at the concession stands. If the Lakers did that, they'd lose their shirts. But isn't it time we put away our BlackBerrys and went back to enjoying the unique thrill of a live sporting event? If I were a great athlete like Kobe, I'd be mightily insulted that the fans paying the most money to see me show my skills were often paying the least amount of attention to what I was doing on the court.

-- Patrick Goldstein

RELATED:

Oh no, this is not how the Lakers need to start the postseason

Photo: Kobe Bryant falls and hits his neck on a chair during the first half of the Lakers playoff game Sunday against the New Orleans Hornets. Credit: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press 

When I think of showbiz humanitarians, the images that first pop into my head are Sean Penn digging through debris in Haiti (and Katrina-ravaged New Orleans before that), George Clooney exposing the refugee crisis in Darfur and Stephen Colbert entertaining the troops in Iraq. One person who doesn't immediately come to mind is Tom Cruise, who is the subject of a heated debate in L.A.'s Jewish community after the news surfaced that the Wiesenthal Center is giving Cruise its Humanitarian Award on May 5.

Cruise, of course, is a controversial choice because of his high-profile involvement in the Church of Scientology. As the Jewish Journal's Danielle Berrin puts it in her Hollywood Jew blog, even if the actor is a consummate philanthropist, "Tapping Cruise with a 'humanitarian' award still seems like an odd choice, since one authentic and indisputable aspect of his image is as public champion for the Church of Scientology--and that impenetrable behemoth is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for human trafficking." Berrin cites a number of charities Cruise has supported over the years, but asks the compelling question: "Does giving away lots of dough a humanitarian make?"

It's a good point. But is Cruise any less of a humanitarian than Will Smith or Michael Douglas or Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, who are all previous Wiesenthal honorees? Should he really be declared persona non grata simply because of his association with Scientology? Using that logic, wouldn't it be OK for some crazy Fox News-type right-wingers to attack the Wiesenthal Center if they gave next year's humanitarian award to Muhammad Ali, just because he is a Muslim? 

Berrin spoke to filmmaker Brett Ratner, who sits on the Wiesenthal board of trustees. He defended the decision, saying, "You can't say [Cruise] is the reason the religion is doing what it's doing. It's like saying, 'The Jews killed [expletive] Jesus; why am I a Jew?' " Wiesenthal Center founder Rabbi Marvin Hier argues: "We've given a medal of valor to the pope. Does that mean we agree with everything the church has done? No."

The dirty little secret about the Wiesenthal Center's decision to honor Cruise is that it has less to do with his good works than his importance in Hollywood, since most honorees are chosen for their ability to fill the room with people willing to write big checks. That's how charities raise money. The bigger or more powerful the public figure, the bigger the donation. Cruise wasn't chosen by Hier but by the members of the center's entertainment dinner committee, who include Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ron Meyer, Tom Rothman and Brad Grey. They may have held their noses, but they must have decided that Cruise would be a magnet for sizable contributions.

In the past, this has occasionally led to questionable award selections. One unintentionally hilarious low point was the 1973 Man of the Year award given by the United Jewish Appeal to the late record mogul Morris Levy. Though he was a tireless fundraiser for the charity, Levy was also a longtime frontman for the mob in the music industry who was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to commit extortion, but died before serving any time. At the end of the UJA banquet, MC Joe Smith, then a top executive at Warner Bros., thanked the audience for coming, quipping, "I just got word from two of Morris' friends on the West Coast that my wife and two children have been released."

So at least we can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that Tom Cruise is hardly the most questionable big shot ever to be honored by a charitable group. But is he a worthy humanitarian? I'd love to hear your thoughts. I believe that if you actually spend time doing good in the world, your private beliefs are your own business. After all, the Wiesenthal Center is the home of the Museum of Tolerance. Shouldn't it practice what it preaches?

--Patrick Goldstein 

Photo: Tom Cruise at the premiere of the TV series "The Kennedys" in Beverly Hills. Credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

From the days of Sam Arkoff and Joseph E. Levine to the modern-day media gamesmanship of Harvey Weinstein and Michael Moore, the movie business has always been full of wily hucksters willing to use any outrageous stunt to get moviegoers to see their film.

Back in the 1950s, the B-movie producer William Castle released a cheesy horror film called “Macabre.” Patently awful, the film is remembered today only for Castle's bravura marketing gimmickry. The producer took out a policy with Lloyd's of London, insuring every ticket buyer for $1,000 in case they died of fright, displaying a huge reproduction of the insurance policy over every theater marquee. Castle had hearses parked outside the theaters with fake nurses on hand in the lobbies. The movie was a huge hit, with audiences showing up just to see if anyone dropped dead.

I'm only guessing here, but I have to believe that as a boy, Donald Trump caught a matinee presentation of “Macabre.” After all, when it comes to showmanship, no one can hold a candle to the bombastic real estate tycoon who has been using an old Hollywood staple — controversy-based marketing — to bamboozle the media and put himself front and center in the GOP presidential race. According to a CNN poll released last week, Trump is now tied with Mike Huckabee atop the heap of GOP presidential aspirants, with 19% of likely Republican voters saying they would vote for him for president.

Trump's political ascendancy has been achieved by his single-minded focus on one hot-button issue — his incendiary claim that President Obama wasn't born in the United States. As Trump famously said on “The View”: “I want him to show his birth certificate!”

I won't waste any space here shaming the media for being so gullible — or so cynical — that it's given Trump's charges de facto legitimacy by providing him with free air time everywhere to hurl his stink bombs. Nor will I attempt to rebut Trump's charges, starting with the fact that Obama has long ago produced a certification of live birth showing he was born in Hawaii. As Trump has undoubtedly figured out, the point isn't whether he can prove his case. The point is that by raising the issue, he can generate a tsunami of publicity.

To anyone who spent time in Hollywood, this is an all-too-familiar strategy, especially in the hands of a modern-day Svengali like Weinstein. Dating to his first big hit, “The Crying Game,” Weinstein has shrewdly relied on controversy-based marketing, seeing it as a fountain of free publicity, allowing him to compete with larger studios with more lavish marketing resources. When Weinstein acquired “Priest,” a 1995 film about a Catholic priest who was persecuted by the church for being gay, Weinstein counted on blowback from the church to make the film a cause celebre — his initial plan, just to fan the flames, was to release the film on Good Friday. As one of his lieutenants said at the time, fueling the fire “is the way he marketed movies. He saw controversy as an opportunity to create greater publicity and greater awareness.”

More recently, Weinstein has counted on ratings controversies with films like “The King's Speech” and “Blue Valentine” to provide kindling wood for box-office success. So you might say that the Trump birther scam is right out of the Hollywood playbook. When the Wall Street Journal reported on the marketing campaign for Moore's 2007 film “Sicko,” financed by Weinstein, the paper's Merissa Marr wrote: “Mr. Moore's formula is simple: Pick a divisive topic and goad opponents into a public debate.”

Of course, for Moore and Weinstein, the divisiveness was designed to sell movie tickets. With Trump, it's not so easy to figure out the end game. Trump insists that he's gearing up for a presidential run. But most political observers agree that Trump, who has flirted with presidential bids in the past, has no intention of putting himself under the media microscope by officially declaring his candidacy, since it would inspire a raft of stories rehashing his messy financial deals and questioning his financial acumen. (The Smoking Gun has already released a damning look at his charitable contributions, dubbing him perhaps “the least charitable billionaire in the United States.”)

People in Hollywood are especially appalled by Trump's malicious birther claims and not just because most of them are Democrats. Having seen so many cynical marketing ploys in their own jobs, they're hip to Trump's shuck 'n' jive. After all, narcissistic personalities are a dime a dozen in showbiz — and equally coddled by the media. Mark Harris caught the Trump vibe perfectly in a recent New York magazine piece, writing that “he started talking and never stopped, venting his inflamed sense of entitlement to every radio show, Internet site and camera crew that was willing to serve as enabler, gawker, exploiter, concern troll or cheering section.” Except Harris was actually writing about Charlie Sheen.

Without changing a word, Harris could've been describing Tom Cruise in his couch-jumping phase or Lindsay Lohan in her self-destructive spiral. Or Paris Hilton or Courtney Love. Or Kevin Smith, out hustling a new movie. “Trump is Charlie Sheen without the drugs,” says 42 West principal partner Allan Mayer. “He's making his wild charges about Obama in much the same way he took a very shaky financial empire and sold it to the public as the epitome of capitalist brilliance — he's willing to exaggerate anything to get attention. It's his version of tiger's blood.”

For Terry Press, the former head of marketing at DreamWorks, Trump, Sheen and for that matter Glenn Beck are reminiscent of the central character of Elia Kazan's “A Face in the Crowd,” Lonesome Rhodes, a hillbilly singer who becomes a populist sensation and incipient political demagogue before spiraling into self-destruction. “Trump and Sheen exhibit the same kind of grandiose behavior you see in the Kazan film,” says Press. “You realize how close we are to embracing that kind of character: a media-made celebrity whose influence over the public could be used to pursue any sort of political agenda.”

I wish I could argue that if Trump's cynical fear-mongering is rooted in a movie made nearly 55 years ago, then things really haven't changed for the worse. When Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay for “A Face in the Crowd,” he was trying to scare us with a nightmarish vision of the future. But it's no longer a madcap, invented vision — it's business as usual in our soulless media culture. Hearing Donald Trump peddle his nonsense is just like hearing Lonesome Rhodes say of the “idiots” who follow him: “I can make 'em eat dog food and think it's steak.”

--Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Donald Trump at an April 5th "Dressed to Kilt" charity fashion show in New York City. 

Credit: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Kobe Bryant has been in full-on damage control the last 24 hours, trying to smooth the waters after bellowing a nasty anti-gay slur at an NBA referee when he was hit with a technical foul during the Lakers game Tuesday night against the San Antonio Spurs. (We can't use the term in a family blog, but my colleague Bill Plaschke described it as the gay community's version of the F-word.) Ever since word circulated about Bryant's explosive remark, he's been doing the familiar apology kabuki dance -- issuing a carefully worded statement, then doing an interview on ESPN radio and, finally, making a more direct apology to Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-oriented civil rights organization.

But it took a long time for an actual apology to surface. Bryant's initial statement was pretty pathetic, with him using the most tired of tired excuses -- "my actions were out of frustration" -- and arguing that "what I said last night should not be taken literally," which sounded a lot like Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl's staff saying that his preposterous claim that 90% of Planned Parenthood's resources were used to facilitate abortions was "not meant to be taken as a factual statement."

NBA Commissioner David Stern has fined Bryant $100,000 and, no pun intended, sternly admonished him for his distasteful behavior. But is that just a slap on the wrist? After all, Bryant makes more than $300,000 in every regular season game. He isn't even being suspended for one game of the playoffs.

In Hollywood, you don't get off so easy. Actor Isaiah Washington was fired from "Grey's Anatomy" in 2007 for using a similar anti-gay slur on the set of the show, and then making the mistake of using the slur again in a backstage interview at the Golden Globes. Washington made the same sort of public apology, but he was canned anyway. And we all know what happened to Mel Gibson after he uttered a similarly offensive series of slurs against African Americans and women during a heated argument with his former lover. His talent agency dumped him and he's been even more of a pariah in Hollyood polite society than he was after making anti-Semitic remarks several years earlier.

Gibson can still work -- he has a new film due out next month. But he's a long way from achieving any kind of forgiveness. He can't even do publicity for his upcoming movie, knowing that even the most hapless TV celebrity talk-show host will feel obligated to ask him about his transgressions. This is hardly the fate that awaits Kobe. He will get to bask in the spotlight of the NBA playoffs, and if he leads the Lakers to another championship, all will be forgiven. Basketball fans will opt for winning over chivalry every time.

I'm not saying that means Hollywood has a more rigorous moral code than professional sports, since in the movie business you can still get away with murder, just as long as long as you don't publicly make a spectacle of yourself. But what Kobe did was very much a public spectacle, and a public disgrace. His apology, such as it was, was totally an example of cynical damage control. He's the same Kobe he always was -- icy cold and almost impossible to adore. If you're looking for a role model in the world of professional sports, you shouldn't bother to look in Kobe's direction.

-- Patrick Goldstein 

Photo: Kobe Bryant biting his jersey during the game this week against the Sacramento Kings.

Credit: Cary Edmondson/US Presswire

I'd almost forgotten what an unabashed liberal Sidney Lumet had been until I read this essay by New York Post critic Kyle Smith, an unabashed conservative who has little good to say about Lumet's signature work, seeing it as emblematic of the weak-kneed moral relativism of lefty do-gooders. Taking apart Lumet's "12 Angry Men," Smith dubs it an "ur-myth of liberal fantasy," saying "one wonders how many young lawyers got into criminal defense with this film holding a central place in their moral foundations -- Bronx-born Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited it as a key influence -- and how many were later disabused of the notion that New York City jails are packed with innocents."

Smith also takes a swipe at Lumet's beloved "Serpico," saying it "created an impression of all-pervasive wickedness and incurable rot in the city's leading institutions. If the police can't be trusted, who can? Nobody, decided the businesses and professionals who fled the city in the '70s."

I can only imagine what Smith would have to say about Lumet's earliest work in television, which was given short shrift in most of the obituaries when news surfaced of Lumet's death Saturday at age 86. Long before he made "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon," Lumet cut his teeth directing TV dramas, but more important, he played an active role in helping to undermine the brutish Hollywood blacklist, which cost untold numbers of writers, actors and filmmakers their jobs simply because of their political beliefs.

In the early 1950s, Lumet was an in-house director on "Danger," a murder-mystery drama, and "You Are There," a show that featured historical reenactments of such events as the Salem witch trials and the fall of Troy. The shows' producer, Charles Russell, an ardent liberal himself, decided to hire several blacklisted writers--notably Walter Bernstein ("Fail Safe") and Abraham Polonsky ("Body and Soul")--to pen the scripts, using fronts and pseudonyms to protect their identities. (The 1976 film "The Front," written by Bernstein, stars Woody Allen as an unlikely front hired by a Bernstein-like writer.)

Lumet knew exactly what was happening, since there were never any writers in the office, rehearsal hall or TV studio. Lumet knew he had to keep his mouth shut. In Russell's memoirs, he recalls telling Lumet for the first time that he was using blacklisted writers. "If it is revealed, it will come as a complete surprise to you--understand?" Russell told him. Lumet replied: "I understand and I don't want to know what other writers are doing scripts," quickly adding, "but you got Bernstein working, haven't you?"

Lumet once nearly got blacklisted himself, thanks to Counterattack, a crazed anti-Communist publication published by a business that accumulated names of alleged Communists and their sympathizers for the networks, clearing them for a fee. If you made the list, you were in trouble. One day, Lumet was named in a Counterattack article, which claimed he was an associate of known Communists as well as a member of the supposedly left-wing Group Theater.

The fact that Lumet, a child actor, was 12 when he was in the Group Theater didn't seem to get him off the hook. He had to clear his name by meeting with Mel Block, whose toothpaste company sponsored "Danger"; Harvey Matusow, an ex-Communist Party member turned FBI informant; and Victor Riesel, a Hearst newspaper columnist who moonlighted as a clearance officer for blacklisted types who wanted to clear their names. 

The sole damning evidence against Lumet was a photo in a monthly American Legion magazine that showed a host of people at a Communist Party meeting. As Walter Bernstein recounts in his memoirs:

They looked at Lumet when he entered, looked again at the picture, and then Matusow turned back to Lumet. "Don't get your [expletive] in an uproar," he said genially. "You're not the one." "What about his wife?" Riesel asked, hoping for the best. "Maybe she's there." She wasn't in the picture either. They had been told that a couple in the photograph were Lumet and his wife; this had been Counterattack's evidence. Now they knew better, but no one apologized to Lumet for bringing him there. Matusow slapped him on the back and wanted him to know it was nothing personal. Lumet was free to work; he should go out and celebrate. 

I bet Lumet did. And he spent decades celebrating the idea that justice is for everyone in this country, not just the rich and the powerful. It's a message that will make his films always seem as fresh as the day they were made.

--Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Sidney Lumet posing with his honorary Oscar in 2005 at the Academy Awards in Hollywood. Credit: Robert Galbraith / Reuters

If you regularly watch Fox News, as I do, you've probably heard all about "Atlas Shrugged," the new movie version of the iconic Ayn Rand bestseller that opens in 300 theaters this Friday. (Yes, on tax filing day, which must surely be a sly Randian joke.) The party line at Fox is that "Atlas Shrugged," as host Sean Hannity put it, is the movie "liberal Hollywood doesn't want you to see." In fact, it's the movie's own marketing hook. If you do a Google search for the phrase "the movie Hollywood doesn't want you to see," the first thing you find is the film's Facebook page.

Of course, it would be more accurate to say that "Atlas Shrugged" is the film Hollywood didn't want to make, but that doesn't have quite the same forbidden fruit zing to it. As my colleague Rebecca Keegan has reported, the film was actually in development at Lionsgate, with Angelina Jolie attached to a script by heavyweight writer-director Randall Wallace. The project fell apart, though not because of any liberal plot. The film's financier, John Aglialoro, wanted a more faithful version of the book, which even many of its admirers will admit is something of an unlikely commercial property. Agliatoro eventually handed the filmmaking reins to "One Tree Hill" actor Paul Johansson, who had never directed a feature before.

So Aglialoro is essentially distributing the film himself. He's already had tastemaker screenings for such influential conservatives as Big Hollywood's Andrew Breitbart and House Speaker John Boehner. But will moviegoers flock to a film just because its backers say it's a film Hollywood liberals didn't want them to see? After all, didn't that scheme work pretty well for Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which cast Gibson as an embattled outsider whose film had been turned down everywhere in la-la-liberal Hollywood?

Of course, to embrace that narrative, whether with "Passion of the Christ" or with "Atlas Shrugged," you'd have to be willing to conveniently forget that 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in town, is owned by -- ahem -- conservative kingpin Rupert Murdoch.

With "Atlas Shrugged," you'd also have to ignore the reviews, not just from those pesky liberal critics who would never give Ayn Rand a fair shake, but from P.J. O'Rourke, perhaps the most distinctive conservative cultural critic of our time. Even though he's a die-hard fan of Rand, O'Rourke admits that the movie is a stinker. As he writes:  

"Atlas shrugged. And so did I. The movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel treats its source material with such formal, reverent ceremoniousness that the uninitiated will feel they’ve wandered without a guide into the midst of the elaborate and interminable rituals of some obscure exotic tribe. Meanwhile, members of that tribe of 'Atlas Shrugged' fans will be wondering why director Paul Johansson doesn’t knock it off with the incantations, sacraments and recitations of liturgy and cut to the human sacrifice. ... The movie’s acting is borrowed from 'Dallas,' although the absence of Larry Hagman’s skill at subtly underplaying villainous roles is to be regretted. Staging and action owe a debt to 'Dynasty' — except, on 'Dynasty,' there usually was action. ... In 'Atlas Shrugged' Rand set out to prove that self-interest is vital to mankind. This, of course, is the whole point of free-market classical liberalism and has been since Adam Smith invented free-market classical liberalism by proving the same point.  Therefore trying to make a movie of 'Atlas Shrugged' is like trying to make a movie of 'The Wealth of Nations.' But Adam Smith had the good sense to leave us with no plot, characters or melodramatic clashes of will so that we wouldn’t be tempted to try."

I think what P.J. is saying, in the nicest possible way, is that maybe the trashy Angelina Jolie version of the movie wouldn't have been so bad after all.

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Paul Johansson at a HuffPost Comedy event at the Roxy Theater last February in West Hollywood. Credit: Angela Weiss / Getty Images

In the NFL, the 2011 season could be wiped out by a nasty labor battle between the owners and the players union. The NBA could end up having its own titanic labor showdown this year as well. But in Hollywood, all is quiet on the labor front. The real war is between the studios and the movie theater owners.

In recent weeks, theater owners have been fuming as word has leaked about plans by at least four studios — Sony, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Universal — to make a deal that would enable consumers to watch some of the industry's biggest hits on DirecTV just two months after their release in theaters. The new service, which could start this spring, would charge $30 for video on demand (VOD) rentals of films before they become available for sale on DVD or for rent through Netflix or Redbox.

When my colleagues Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier first reported on the existence of an initial version of the plan, they got an earful from theater owners. Gerry Lopez, chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the nation's second-largest theater chain, said, “We do not intend to screen movies released under such circumstances.”

This kind of nuclear option from exhibitors would be bad news for the four participating studios, which, according to early reports, are considering releasing such titles as Adam Sandler's “Just Go With It,” the Farrelly Brothers' “Hall Pass” and the Matt Damon-starring “The Adjustment Bureau,” though Sony is now reconsidering involving the Sandler film in the initial offering.

No one at the participating studios is talking on the record, but privately they argue that the premium VOD service would create a new window for movie consumption. They say studies have shown that only 3% of the theaters' box-office take comes after the first 60 days of a film's theatrical run, so the new service wouldn't significantly cut into any box office proceeds. They also argue that an enormous segment of the potential movie audience rarely frequents theaters at all, so having the ability to see a relatively new film in their living room would be a serious drawing card.

But I have one simple question: When would you ever pay $30 to see an Adam Sandler movie? Or, for that matter, a movie from the Farrelly Brothers, the Coen Brothers or even the Jonas Brothers? As it stands now, you can see a new film in a movie theater for roughly $10. Or you can wait 100 days or so and pay $15 for a DVD or rent the film for $3 or $4. Or wait a little longer, in some cases, to order it from Netflix. But $30? C'mon. I think I speak for many moviegoers when I say that even if you told me I could watch an Adam Sandler movie two months before it was released in theaters, I still wouldn't pay $30.

The same goes for most current Hollywood releases. In fact, that's why the studios seem willing to make such a strange, almost desperate gamble. Faced with all sorts of economic tribulations over the last several years, most moviegoers have been spending less on movies, not more. In fact, you might say that the real enemy here is Netflix, which for $9 a month gives consumers the convenience of movie ownership without having to ever buy a DVD.

The studios seem to be trying to establish an entirely new — and pricey — rental model, since this new premium service will still be a rental operation, with the right to see the movie expiring after a three-day viewing period.

Studio insiders say the $30 price tag is just a starting point, one no doubt fixed by studio lawyers who probably stared at their shrinking DVD balance sheets and said, “OMG! What if there were really a bunch of crazy people who would pay $30 for a three-day window to see ‘Hall Pass'?” But the price tag raises the question — just who do the studios expect to pay that kind of money to see a film that will be available 40 days later for $3.99?

One obvious target would be the 18- to 25-year-olds who have grown up consuming content (legally or not) through their computers and smartphones. Alas, they are the group least likely to pay $30 to see a movie, not having that kind of disposable income.

Others have argued that the DirecTV premium service would be a great deal for families with young kids who already pay $30 to schlep three kids to a theater. But as the parent of a 12-year-old, I can assure you that if all of his friends are seeing a hot new film on opening weekend, it will be small consolation to him for me to say, ‘Hey, don't worry, we'll be able to see it in 60 days on the living room couch.'” For kids, 60 days might as well be 60 years.

The biggest potential audience for this kind of service is older-than-40 moviegoers who don't like to brave the crowds, pay for parking or listen to the knucklehead in the row behind them chat on his smartphone with his buddies about where to eat later. If they've spent a fortune on a home entertainment system, why not shell out $30 more to see a movie at home?

It might be a nice little payday for the studios, but at what cost? After all, even if DirecTV doesn't announce what titles are debuting on its service until after they're already playing in theaters, exhibitors can still retaliate by pulling the movies after their fourth or fifth week of release, a move that would hardly be noticed by most moviegoers but would force studios to leave millions in potential theatrical revenue on the table.

Trying to get consumers to pay more to see a film 60 days out isn't a new window of opportunity. It's just a bad idea. With theater attendance down 20% this year, the last thing studios should be doing is creating more indecision in the minds of their customers.

It's never good for business when you encourage your core customers to start wondering — should I wait 60 days and pay more? Or wait 100 days and pay a lot less? The more time people spend thinking about the price of the product, the more time they have to realize that the product isn't worth that much in the first place.

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Moviegoers gather under the marquee in 2002 to attend a new film at Universal Citywalk Theaters. Credit: George Wilhelm/Los Angeles Times

 In corporate America, when you're done, you're done. Even the fabled superstar CEO Jack Welch agreed to retire at 65, allowing General Electric to hold an orderly bake-off between a trio of strong contenders before handing the  job over to Jeffrey Immelt.

 But in the entertainment business, the top talent rarely plays by this rule book. Oversized egos and volatile personalities often get in the way, as does the fact that several of the biggest companies are still family run and controlled. It’s hard for a board to tell Rupert Murdoch, the indomitable octogenarian who controls News Corp., to step aside for the younger generation.

That was reinforced this week when News Corp., which operates like a Middle Eastern monarchy, named Murdoch’s son, James, as its deputy chief operating officer. The move only intensified speculation that the 38-year-old Murdoch is  his father’s successor, a decade after James’ older brother Lachlan relinquished that title, unable to navigate the political waters of News Corp.’s top management.

This week, another Hollywood succession battle began in earnest. Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes  pushed out longtime motion picture group chief Alan Horn, even though under his leadership, the studio has enjoyed record profits and remarkable stability. That clears the way for Horn’s successor, Jeff Robinov, who took charge on Friday, to step into a three-way race to become studio chairman when Barry Meyer departs in 2013.

Bewkes insisted it was time to make room for  Robinov, who will now oversee the studio’s massive movie production and marketing machinery. When I spoke to Horn the other day, he was trying to play the part of a good soldier, but it was clear that he believed, at age 68, he still had plenty of gas left in the tank.

Meyer and Horn had originally told Warners’ staffers they would be going out together in 2011. But Meyer never had a clear successor, while Horn had carefully groomed Robinov to take the film studio reins. So Meyer is staying on while a trio of younger guns--Robinov, television president Bruce Rosenblum and home entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara--compete for his job.

Warners insiders say Bewkes has simply delayed the inevitable, since once someone becomes the preferred candidate, the others will likely defect to an industry rival. No matter how much Bewkes says that he won't tolerate  infighting among the three men, the whole set up is fraught with peril, since the contenders have very specialized strengths in very different areas of the Time Warner universe.

To see how messy succession plans can become, you only have to look at Universal Music, the record industry's leading  label. Vivendi, the French media conglomerate that owns Universal, had been trying for years to persuade longtime Universal Music chief Doug Morris  to name a successor. Finally, early last year, Universal announced that Morris would step aside, allowing international division chief Lucian Grainge to become chief executive this January. Until then, he would share responsibilities with Morris, who had made Universal the most profitable and most stable record company in the troubled music business.

But in the midst of what was suppose to be an orderly transition, Morris, 72, decided his career wasn’t over. In December, word leaked out that Morris had been in secret negotiations with Universal's arch-rival, Sony Music, to become  chief executive. After considerable turmoil, Morris was granted an early release from his contract, allowing him to assume power at Sony in July.

Of course, when it comes to botched succession plans, nothing can top former NBCUniversal chief Jeff Zucker's ill-fated scheme to have Conan O'Brien take Jay Leno's job hosting “The Tonight Show.” Not wanting to lose Leno to a rival network, Zucker moved him to prime time, which was a disaster, resulting in lower ratings not only for Leno, but  for O'Brien and NBC stations’ nightly newscasts. After a firestorm of criticism, Zucker gave Leno his old job back, prompting O'Brien to leave with a $45 million severance package. Now O'Brien hosts a nightly show on TBS and Zucker is out of a job, having taken the hit for mishandling some of NBC's most precious talent.

It's little wonder that so many showbiz entities fumble their succession plans, since any effort to gently ease out the Big Kahuna and make room for a Young Gun is a trade-off between short-term continuity and long-term growth potential. Having enjoyed bigger-than-life careers, the giants of show business rarely recognize their own mortality. Even in his 80s, after he'd sold Universal to Matsushita, its chief, Lew Wasserman, never wanted to pass the torch, be it to his No. 2 man, Sid Sheinberg, or a new owner.
Much of the instability at Disney in the 1990s was due to CEO Michael Eisner's unwillingness to cede any real power to Jeffrey Katzenberg, which not only cost Disney a wad of cash after Katzenberg's departure, but ultimately created a formidable competitor in the form of DreamWorks Animation. It later took a shareholder vote to convince the Disney board that Eisner himself needed to retire.

Viacom has long been a studio in turmoil, largely because Sumner Redstone, 87, has fallen out with a stream of trusted lieutenants who were viewed as potential successors. Frank Biondi, Mel Karmazin and Tom Freston were unceremoniously ousted by Redstone, who rules Viacom with little regard for polite corporate governance. When Business Week once asked Redstone what his succession plan was, he answered: “That's a good question. As [cable mogul] John Malone [once] said to me, 'Some of us are going to die, Sumner, but you're never going to die, so you don't have to have a succession plan.' That's my answer.”

People in show business have an inordinate capacity for self-deception. This is especially true of older men who, having hired personal trainers and wooed younger wives, see themselves as ageless wonders. After working so many long hours and making so many difficult decisions, they are married to their jobs, their corporate identity having merged with their personal psyche. It's why many self-made moguls have ended up selling their company, as Ted Turner and Lew Wasserman did. Grooming a successor is a perilous psychological proposition.Tycoons are loathe to pick a young successor who might fail, or worse, do a better job of running the show than they did.

Ultimately, youth must be served, whether it’s in showbiz or in sports, where the New York Yankees recently concluded a contentious contract negotiation with the team's aging icon, Derek Jeter, who will soon have to make way for a younger shortstop the way Horn and Morris had to step aside for a new top executive. No one wants to be like Bret Favre, still trying to be the star attraction after his skills have largely eroded.

Still, it's hard to let go. If anyone handled it well, it was Horn, who told me, “At the end of the day, I'm an employee. It wasn't my decision to leave. But I did my best to prepare Jeff Robinov. He's 52 and it's his time to run things. I just wanted to make a graceful exit.”

Unfortunately, Horn is the exception. In showbiz, most of the people who've enjoyed the rarefied air at the top of the heap never want to leave center stage.

--Patrick Goldstein

It's the beginning of baseball season, but it's the end of a long Hollywood season for Alan Horn, who ends his 12-year reign as head of the Warner Bros. motion picture group this week. When we sat down to talk the other day, Horn, 68, was clearly feeling ambivalent about his exit, which is usually the way top executives feel when the big corporate boss -- in this case, Jeff Bewkes -- tells them their time is up.

"It wasn't my decision," he told me. "They wanted to have a succession plan in place, so the timing was theirs -- meaning Jeff Bewkes and Barry Meyer. At the end of the day, I'm just an employee. Every dog has his day and I had a very good run. They offered to throw a going-away party, but I didn't want it. As I like to say, and I say this with a smile, they wanted younger and arguably better-looking management. I helped give Jeff Robinov a lot of responsibilities and now it's his time to run things."

When you gauge a studio chief's record, you usually just look at the movies he made. But Horn also had a big effect when it came to what you might call his films' social content. An ardent environmentalist who prodded the studio into converting much of its diesel truck fleet to Priuses and installed solar panels on a number of buildings across the lot, Horn gave the thumbs-down to characters in scripts who were driving Hummers, frowned on unnecessary nudity and dirty language and fought to keep smoking out of most of the studio's films.

To his credit, he didn't just put pressure on some first-time filmmaker. When Horn saw an early cut of Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," which went on to win an Oscar for best picture, he was appalled by a scene that featured Jack Nicholson having sex and doing cocaine. Horn talked to Scorsese and Nicholson and persuaded the twosome that the movie could survive without it.

"I spent an hour on the phone with Jack," Horn recalls. "I'm a huge fan of his work and we had a very frank discussion about art and morality and other issues. If he had said, 'No, I think the scene has to stay,' I don't know what I would have done. But at the end of the day, he said OK, we can take it out. There were lots of scenes I was willing to leave alone, because they were appropriate to the context of a film, but when something felt gratuitous, I thought it was my role to voice my opinion about it."   

I didn't always agree with Horn's taste in films, which I guess is a nice way of saying that I don't think the films he greenlit at Warners were any better than the raft of forgettable films churned out by any studio. Horn's legacy as a studio chief will largely hinge on his efforts to direct Warners' focus toward the international end of the movie business and the record profits he achieved for the studio. When he took over at Warners in 1999, the studio would occasionally make a Big Event movie, but it wasn't an integral part of the studio's release strategy. Now the studio releases five or six tent pole movies each year, a number that could rise to seven or eight in the next few years.

It was Horn who pushed the studio to ramp up its Big Event films, presiding over the windfall profits that derived from its "Harry Potter" and "Batman" franchises, as well as the "Matrix" and "Oceans 11" series. There were plenty of clunkers along the way -- remember "Pluto Nash" and "Body of Lies"? But Horn realized that Hollywood's splashy, special-effects driven action adventure films gave it a competitive advantage in the overseas market, which was, with America already being saturated with multiplexes, the sole remaining growth area in the theatrical business.

When it comes to comedy or drama, it's hard to compete with local productions -- audiences in Japan, Germany or Italy would rather see a story about familiar characters and settings in their own language. But when it comes to larger-than-life visual effects and comic-book superheroes, those countries don't have the cinematic resources to compete with Hollywood.

"We had the capacity, the infrastructure and the economic staying power to make films that most other countries didn't have the size or scope to handle," Horn explains. "That gave us a real competitive advantage. On the level of a $5-million drama, the audience would probably pick its own locally made movie that was specific to its culture. But when it came to a big visually oriented action and adventure film with big movie stars, no one could match what we could do."

If you looked at the business in a bottom-line way, you can see why Warners made such a hash out of its Warner Independent Pictures specialty division. WIP made low-budget dramas that might occasionally find a small audience in the U.S., but rarely had any ability to make a bigger impact overseas. It was the Big Event movies that allowed Warners to use its marketing and distribution muscle to maximum effect.

Horn admits that he couldn't justify the meager profit potential for smaller films. "My feeling has always been -- this isn't my money. It belongs to the Time-Warner shareholders. And if a shareholder walked in and asked, 'What are doing making those pictures with my money? Why not leave that business to other people?' I didn't have a very good answer."

When I asked Horn what he would miss the most about running a studio, he said it would be the people. Not just the filmmakers he'd grown close to, like Clint Eastwood, whom he called "the coolest guy on the planet." But the people who make the Warners machinery hum. "There were a lot of people who really contributed to the success that I often would get credit for," he says. "They are the unsung heroes."

He fell silent for a moment, his eyes looking a bit watery. "If you go into the studio on the weekend when it's quiet and there isn't much work going on, you realize that it's just buildings. What makes the difference is the people. Without them, we'd be nowhere. With them, we could do anything. So I'll miss the movies but I'll miss the relationships even more." 

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Warner Bros. president Alan Horn at an awards gala earlier this year in New York.

Credit: Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

If this were April's Fool's Day, I'd be spoofing the high stakes battle between AMC and "Mad Men's" Matthew Weiner by saying that AMC was bringing in Wisconsin's hard-nosed Gov. Scott Walker to handle the contract negotiations, figuring Walker, who has stripped public worker unions of their ability to collectively bargain, would be the perfect guy to tighten the screws on Weiner.

Of course, labor negotiations work differently in Hollywood, where if you've created a buzzy TV show and won seven Emmys, as Weiner has, no one would dare ask you to take a pay cut or surrender your right to have a team of CAA agents in the room, indefatigably bargaining on your behalf. As it turns out, AMC and Lionsgate, the show's production company, aren't trying to get Weiner to take less money to deliver more shows. 

In fact, Weiner is telling people that he's offered to take less money in order to save the jobs of some cast members and allow the show to keep its current running time. Even though Lionsgate could eventually rake in $100 million in "Mad Men" DVD sales alone, it wants to make even more money from the show, which has a relatively small but fervently devoted audience and huge critical acclaim. So AMC and Lionsgate are attempting to get Weiner to cut two minutes out of every script so they can sell more commercial time and, on top of that, allow the network to insert even more product placement plugs, which has become one of the key areas of revenue growth in TV.

Like so many writer-producers before him, Weiner is fighting for creative autonomy, not just more money. It's the network that's tossing cash his way. As Weiner told a website: "The harder that I've fought for the show, the more money that they've offered me." Just a guess, but when Steven Bochco, David Chase and Chuck Lorre read that, I'll bet they all said -- Hey, that's just what the network said to me too!

Contract negotiations are all about power. In baseball, where the major league players' association is perhaps the most powerful union in the sports world, the money keeps heading steadily skyward, since the most talented baseball players hold all the cards, especially because of their scarcity value. The same goes in Hollywood: There are only so many top writers like Matthew Weiner and Aaron Sorkin, just as there are only so many A-list stars like Derek Jeter, Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee.

In Wisconsin, after the Republicans won control of both the governorship and the state legislature, it was only a matter of time before Gov. Walker, eager to balance his budget and limit the union's ability to fund any future Democratic adversaries, set about rolling back the unions' hard-won bargaining rights. In Hollywood, the studios rarely act in such a unified manner -- after all, someone might claim collusion.

But when the networks have a hit show, an increasingly rare occurrence, they've made it clear that they want to maximize their profits. And in the new era of TV, the bargaining isn't over salary -- it's over amping up product placement and selling some more ads. Of course, Weiner has a better hand to play than any of Wisconsin's union workers. He can walk away from the poker table anytime he wants and keep all of his winnings. When you create a phenomenon like "Mad Man," you don't need to go on strike to survive.

-- Patrick Goldstein

MORE ON "MAD MEN":

Talks stall between 'Mad Men' creator Matt Weiner and AMC, Lionsgate 

How to survive life without 'Mad Men'

Could 'Mad Men' be an Emmy winner without Matt Weiner?

Photo: Matthew Weiner posing with his Emmy for outstanding drama series for "Mad Men" at the 2009 Emmy Awards. Credit: Paul Buck / European Pressphoto Agency

It would be hard to find anyone who would argue with the notion that Roger Ebert is perhaps the most influential film critic of our time (and with all of his tweets, blog posts and freelance essays, one of our  most prolific too). But it turns out that Ebert has also had an uncanny knack for predicting film's technological future too. Paleofuture dug up this fascinating excerpt from a 1987 interview with Ebert and the late Gene Siskel from Omni magazine, where Ebert weighed in on just how radically different the delivery and distribution of movies would be in the not-so-distant future. 

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, inhabiting a primitive world where the biggest movies of the moment were such cinematic fossils as "Three Men and a Baby" and "Beverly Hills Cop II," Ebert took a pretty impressive stab at swami-like crystal ball gazing:

We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology. I also am very, very excited by the fact that before long, alternative films will penetrate the entire country. Today seventy-five percent of the gross from a typical art film in America comes from as few as six --six-- different theaters in six different cities. Ninety percent of the American motion-picture marketplace never shows art films. With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see.

OK, so the CD became DVD and 8mm didn't really go anywhere, but otherwise, Ebert got it pretty much right on the money. He also predicted that by 2000, people could be making movies for as little money as it costs to publish a book or make a record, which also turned out to be true, at least as long as you didn't hire James Cameron or Michael Bay as the director. 

Ebert's ideas look especially sagacious when you compare his prognostications to much-heralded futurists like Herman Kahn, who promoted the idea of a winnable nuclear war or Paul Ehrlich, whose famous "Population Bomb" doomsday thinking warned that hundreds of millions people would have died of starvation by now. As it turned out, most of those hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook helping overthrow their governments and watching cruddy Hollywood movies and TV shows on their smartphones. Maybe Afghanistan isn't Vietnam, maybe Newt Gingrich is really finally happily married and maybe "Arthur" won't be an unbearably pale imitation of the original, but isn't it funny how the future often turns out to be tacky and dispiriting, but rarely as awful as we think it will be?  

--Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Roger Ebert at work in his office at the WTTW-TV  studios in Chicago. Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press

Most of the mainstream media has been treating the news that Robert Redford will be at Wrigley Field, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at the Cubs March 31 home opener, as a feel-good story. After all, it was Redford who starred in "The Natural," which is on everyone's Top 10 list of all-time great baseball movies. And even better, the 74-year-old founder of the Sundance Film Festival was teammates with Dodgers Hall of Famer Don Drysdale at Van Nuys High back in the 1950s, even earning a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado as a pitcher.

But despite Redford's baseball pedigree, it's pretty obvious that he got the gig for an entirely different reason. As it turns out, Redford is doing an entirely different kind of pitching -- as in movie promotion. Redford has directed a new historical drama, "The Conspirator," a behind-the-scenes drama involving the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which is due out this spring from Roadside Attractions.

But here's the real tie-in. The movie is the first release from the American Film Co., which finances historically-oriented movies. The American Film Co. is owned by Joe Ricketts. And if you're a Cubs fan, like I am, you know that it's the Ricketts family who owns, ahem, the Chicago Cubs. So the Redford pitching assignment is actually a cozy insider tie-in for a Ricketts family movie production.

All in all, that wouldn't be so bad, since, if you ever watch any baseball on Fox Sports, you know that this would hardly be the first time a media company plugged one of its own products. But Cubs fans are still in mourning over the loss of our beloved third-baseman icon Ron Santo, who died last  winter after spending years making a joyful noise in the Cubs' broadcast booth. If anyone should be throwing out the first pitch, it should be a member of the Santo family, surrounded by Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and a clump of other Cubs legends.

That would be the kind of emotional moment any team would love to stage for its opening day ceremonies. The Cubs have announced that Ron Santo Jr. will be singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch, but it's just not the same thing as having one of the Santo clan start the game with a triumphant toss to home plate. Let's at least hope that Redford throws a strike and doesn't wear a "Conspirator" T-shirt. That would be taking movie promotion day at Wrigley too far for this Cubs fan.

--Patrick Goldstein 

Photo: Robert Redford at a news conference for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Credit: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Sometimes you get the feeling that politics has gone totally Hollywood. When former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced his run for the presidency the other day (well, he actually announced the formation of an exploratory committee, which is pol-speak for "Hey everybody, I'm going for it!"), he did it with a video that looked a heck of a lot like a Hollywood movie trailer.

It's loaded with distressed and washed-out film stock, herky-jerky camera work and off-kilter camera angles, people moving in and out of frame and, of course, the kind of stirring orchestral music that is supposed to rouse your emotions. It's only when you listen to the soundtrack, with all the usual buzz words ("limit government spending...tackle entitlements...get ahead without government getting in the way...") that you realize it's a political ad.

It was so visually striking that I would have half-guessed that Pawlenty had dug deep into his pockets and hired Pete Berg or Zach Snyder to shoot the footage. But as it turns out, Pawlenty is using a 22-year-old wunderkind named Lucas Baiano, who as Swampland's Michael Scherer informs us, got his start volunteering for Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Baiano volunteered for the McCain campaign and ended up making a series of highly charged "Remember November" spots for the Republican Governors Assn. He's also shot a host of videos for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

I've put up a few spots that you can watch. I found them fascinating. One of the Christie spots is so loaded with grim, grainy footage of pre-Christie run-down New Jersey that it almost looks like it was swiped from outtakes from "Blue Valentine." Baiano is very clever. He makes Pawlenty, who is famously dull, look forceful and decisive while shooting Christie the way cinematographers used to shoot Steven Seagal after he got fat. You never see Christie's ample waistline--Baiano only shows his broad shoulders and expressive face. In fact, at one point, he actually photo-shops out Christie's corpulent frame when he's standing at a podium, to give him a more slender looking frame.

I showed the clips to a studio marketing chief, asking for his assessment of Baiano's work on the Pawlenty ad. His thoughts: "This guy is a good editor with a strong bag of visual tricks. but the Pawlenty clip reminds me of movie advertising that is trying to fool the public into buying a ticket for a bad movie--quick cuts, off-centered shots, edgy without being off-putting. The best thing is that he hides Pawlenty as much as Disney hid Miley Cyrus in 'The Last Song' campaign. The frame hardly ever holds on him, and then gets off his face immediately. Sarah Palin would just look right into the camera and blow us all away. No stock footage needed for her, no siree. Still, this guy is good--he's got a career at any movie trailer company waiting for him."    

--Patrick Goldstein

Take a look at some of Baiano's spots and see what you think. Here's his Pawlenty ad:

Tim Pawlenty Exploratory Committee for President of the United States Visual Announcement from Tim Pawlenty on Vimeo.

Here's some of the spots for Governor Christie:

Photo: Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty speaking at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event earlier this month in Waukee, Iowa.

Credit: Steve Pope / Getty Images