Hey...why not? As David Poland is fond of saying, "It's a comedy, Jeffrey." Yeah, I get it. Throw anything in. Nothing matters as long as people laugh and the movie makes money....right?

Anyway, my lion-cage outline is slightly more believable than the one used in Keenan Ivory Wayans' WHITE CHICKS (Columbia, opening Friday). It's about two black FBI guys (Marlon and Shawn Wayans) impersonating a pair of white socialite-sisters-from-hell as part of an undercover attempt to foil a kidnapping plot.

I don't mean to lecture, but there has to be a shred of credibility in any farce. It has to acknowledge a semblance of behavioral reality among humans. You could just barely buy Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon getting away with their drag act in SOME LIKE IT HOT. Dustin Hoffman and Julie Andrews doing the same in TOOTSIE and VICTOR VICTORIA felt like a stretch, but you could roll with it.

But you can't even flirt with WHITE CHICKS as anything remotely digestible.

The Wayan brothers "become" the socialites through the application of pounds and pounds of makeup (latex, skin-lightening cream, wigs, etc., which would take hours and hours to apply and get just right, from what I know about such things), and blue-eyed contact lenses that make them look like fiends...I'm not kidding. They look like those little blond-haired girls from the old VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

Somebody wrote that the Wayans' latex Caucasian deception "isn't any more realistic than the rubber mask worn by Michael Myers in the HALLOWEEN movies -- only tighter, as if their faces had been shrink-wrapped."

Shawn and Marlon walk around in their own skin in about seven or eight scenes, perhaps to maintain racial authenticity or whatever.

This movie is supposed to be dumb, I realize, but it's nonetheless the equivalent of a condemned man sitting along in a Latin American jail cell in a 1940s John Ford film, waiting to be taken out and tied to a pole in front of a firing squad. It's going to die. Maybe not this weekend, but very soon after.

And here I am lowering myself into the ooze in order to take issue with this unfunny, third-tier farce that doesn't shoot itself in the foot as much as shove a live grenade up its ass...repeatedly.

The undercover scheme is hatched when the real heiresses (Anne Dudek, Maitland Ward) decide to hide in a New York hotel room instead of attend a social gathering in the Hamptons, which is where their kidnapping is expected to happen. (Have any cops anywhere every been tipped about a kidnapping in advance?)

I hated -- hated -- the character of Marlon's wife, played by Faune Chambers -- a whining, obsessively jealous moron. Every moment she's on screen induces acute nausea.

The screenplay -- the writers include Marlon, Shawn, Xavier Cook, Andy McElfresh and director Keenan Ivory Wayans (helmer of both SCARY MOVIE's, I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA, MOST WANTED, etc.) -- isn't so much idiotic (true idiocy can be sublime, if it's done right) as amateurish in a desperate, paint-by-numbers sort of way.

I was amazed that a bathroom gag (a series of foundation-rattling farts emanating from a toilet stall occupied by Marlon or Shawn...I forget which, and I don't care anyway) got the laughs that it did at Monday night's all-media screening.

If something's funny I know it, whether I actually laugh or not. This bowel-eruption sequence wasn't -- isn't -- the least bit laugh-worthy. It's nothing....but people all around me were...well, chortling.

A pretty Columbia publicist winked and smiled at me as I went into the theatre and told me this film was really funny. What are we coming to? How close to the cement floor can we get before we become the floor?

The Honor of Quality

I went to three or four movies at the Los Angeles Film Festival last weekend, and saw a few more on DVD and tape (including the final two episodes of THE SOPRANOS, which I loved) on top of sitting through WHITE CHICKS on Monday...

And the weekend's best, alive-est, most transporting experience came by way of Peter Greenville's BECKET, which I saw at the Academy theatre on Wilshire on Friday night. I was levitating when I left....on a pure high.

This utterly riveting, beautifully written, superbly performed historical drama had its world premiere 39 and 2/3 years ago. It's been out of circulation for several years due to a literary rights squabble and a deteriorated condition, but a 35mm version has now been restored by Academy Film Archive, with support from the Film Foundation. The same print was shown to Academy members last fall in London.

Richard Burton is masterful as Thomas Becket, but Peter O'Toole's performance as King Henry II is one of the most exciting and delicious ever captured by a mainstream movie. O'Toole takes your breath away half the time, and the other half he makes you grin with delight. The Academy's decision to deny him the Best Actor Oscar in 1965 (they handed it instead to Rex Harrison for MY FAIR LADY) was shameful.

Nominated for 12 Oscars (but winning only one for Best Adapted Screenplay), BECKET isn't just a touching story about unrequited love but one that manages to dramatize in a recognizable way what it is to experience profound spiritual growth.

It's also one of the most emotionally intense gay-shaded love stories ever filmed. The love between Henry and Thomas is non-sexual (although sexuality is vaguely hinted at in one scene), but their emotional connection couldn`t be more front and center, especially on Henry`s part. He loves but is not fully loved back, and this pains him like a heart attack.

It's a costume drama, yes, but one of the smartest and most engrossing ever assembled. Directed by Glenville from a screenplay by Edward Anhalt (who adapted Jean Anouilh's play), filmed by the great Geoffrey Unsworth and edited by Anne V. Coates, BECKET is tip-top stuff all the way.

I haven't sat through anything this good in a long, long time. It's so good that most of the younger viewers (the short-attention-spanners, I mean) will probably hate it.

But they actually won't, I`m guessing...not with O'Toole doing his impassioned Royal Academy elocutionary thing and letting go with some of the choicest, razor-sharp dialogue ever put to paper. And with all the emotion that comes with this.

MPI Home Video, which has owned the film for several years but contributed nothing to the Academy's restoration costs, is thinking about releasing BECKET down the road....in theatres first, perhaps, followed by a loaded DVD version. BECKET should go first into theatres. It's too good to send straight to video. It should get the whole big-screen treatment -- critics screenings, prestige bookings in big cities, etc. -- and then go to DVD.

But don't expect to see it until sometime in `05, according to MPI's vp of development and special projects Greg Newman. He was at last Friday's screening along with "Pogo" -- Mike Pogorzelski -- the guy who handled the restoration for Academy at a cost of....I don't know the tab but it was probably about $125,000.

Newman says MPI got O'Toole to record a commentary track in London last fall. The 71 year-old actor talked all through the 2 hour and 29 minute film, Newman informs.

But "we're still doing quite a lot of the technical work for the DVD and everything else," says Newman, "and we're going to have a hell of an extras package, and these releases take time. I hope that it will come out next year. Remember, we're coming right on the heels of this restoration thing. It was only finished recently."

Recently? The restored version was screened in London seven months ago.

The original negative of BECKET has supposedly been lost. The restoration was done by drawing upon the separation masters. And yet I'm told by an informed party that the original negative of BECKET was actually sent to a company in Spain several years ago (paper work supports this theory, apparently), and that it's still sitting there.

"There was a sale to a company in Spain, and either MPI or it s co-owner sent them, probably unwittingly, the original negative," the source contends. "We know it's over there. Either MPI or their co-owner...someone shipped or allowed to be shipped the negative."

If "Pogo" had the negative to work with the restored BECKET would, of course, look that much better. It looks pretty good, but not as sharp and full-toned as it did when it first opened at Leow's State in `64, when it was projected in 70 mm.

The original stereo mix of the film has been restored and made digital. "That's what the restoration was mainly about," says the source.

"MPI never invested in the film," says restoration specialist Robert Harris, who wanted to restore BECKET a decade ago. "If the Academy hadn't done it, those audio tracks would have been trashed. The Academy is an angel here."

Harris believes that MPI "should pay the Academy back out of their first earnings, because without the Academy's efforts they wouldn't have a film to release."

Manchurian Queen

I've always loved a certain key image from the posters for John Frankenheimer's 1962 version of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE -- a visual anchor that ranks as one of most distinctive and intriguing in the history of movie marketing.

I'm referring to that malevolent red queen with a sneer on her face that seems to flirt with the erotic (like she's a dominatrix or something), pasted on a campaign button.

The queen carries an echo of Angela Lansbury's conniving-political-harridan character (i.e., the mother of Laurence Harvey's Raymond Shaw) in that film, as well as a certain moment -- cut off before things develop -- in which Lansbury begins to cover her son with kisses that are obviously more sexual than maternal.

To go by a draft of the script, there are no playing-card red queens in Jonathan Demme's THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE remake (Paramount, July 30), and so there are none in the one-sheet I've been seeing recently online.

But at least the ad team has held onto the campaign-button image -- an obvious homage -- while adding a glob of oozing blood. I like this one-sheet image. It puts me into an excited and receptive place....despite some qualified reactions I had to Dean Georgaris and Daniel Pyne's MANCHURIAN script (dated 6.6.03) that were posted last October.

"I'm not going to give anything away except to say it's a pretty wild piece," I wrote. "You could say [this script] feels as 'out there' and as wedded to contemporary neuroses and nightmares as the '62 film seemed nervy and provocative by Kennedy-era standards.

"But it feels forced to me. It doesn't seem to flow from its own natural place. It has a pre-determined, re-furbished, squeezed-in feeling -- like a size 13 foot scrunched into a size 11 1/2 shoe.

"I'll mention one thing. Without the Korean War to play with, Georgaris and Pyne had to somehow fit the word 'Manchurian' into the story so the title would make sense, and they go to the moon in order to do this. That's all I'll say. "

Demme's film stars Liev Schreiber as Raymond Shaw and Meryl Streep as his possessive manipulating bitch mom (i.e., the Lansbury part with, according to an article I read last week, shades of Hilary Clinton). That's inspired casting right there -- an ultra-blonde German-Swedish type playing the mother of a brown-eyed, frizzy-haired guy who looks like a Jewish professor from Queens College.

Jon Voight is portraying the ultra-liberal Senator Thomas Jordan, who was played by John McGiver in the '62 version.

The new CANDIDATE substitutes the Gulf War of the early '90s for the Korean War backdrop of the novel by Richard Condon. The demonic brainwashed-assassin plot is hatched by baddies operating somewhere near or around around Kuwait rather than Asian Commie villains based in Manchuria.

But why transpose Condon's work, which after all came out of the Red Scare days of the '50s and contains all kinds of references to '50s political figures like Joe McCarthy, Adlai Stevenson and whatnot -- why mess around and change the time and the locale for the mere purpose of updating it for the sake of updating?

"The idea for Condon's novel came out of a specific social brew," I wrote last October. "You might as well remake John Ford's 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH but drop the Oakies and the 1930s backdrop."

That said, my interest in Demme's film is keen, if for no other reason that my respect for the gems he's made (SOMETHING WILD, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, CITIZEN'S BAND) and the promise that comes with this.

Cracchiolo

"There is a special place in Heaven for what you've done for our brother 'Crack Danials.' You have given him the respect he deserved in death, that he could never achieve in life after Silver. You showed us all that his life did stand for something, even though it was something he could never realize. You set the record straight on THE MATRIX for all the buddies who couldn't quite be moved to attend his funeral.

"One thing that Dan was fond of saying when he was at the heights of creative insanity in the midst of being in the depths of unfulfilled madness was, 'You have to be willing to serve the work, give everything for the work, bleed for the work.' It is honorable of you for your willingness to bleed for your friends. It assures your post as Senior Editor and Chief for the Almighty. " -- Harry Webber.

"Great article on Dan. You hit the nail right on the head with your overview of this truly creative genius.

"I came to know Dan through my son, Lawrence Longo, who was Dan's assistant for two years until about March 2004. I read all of the scripts Dan, Lawrence and Opus staffers were working on. They are all excellent. As a matter of fact, before Dan pitched 'The Element Trilogy' to Dreamworks, he rehearsed his pitch to me one day at the Oakhurst office. I was blown away!

"Lawrence was asked to read the eulogy at Dan's funeral and was approached by some of those at Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures who want to know what Dan had in the works the last two years. Imagine that one day soon there may be several of Dan's projects in the theatres. I know my son is intent on making sure that a project like Pink Hills gets made in tribute to Dan. Discussions are about to begin.

"Anyway, I pray everyday for Dan's soul. He was a good man whose end came too soon. I miss him very much. " -- Frank Longo.

"I just want to say that your tribute to Dan Cracchiolo was one of the better and more moving things I've read lately.

"I never met the guy, but your words were so authentic and heartfelt, I feel like I have, in a way. you really nailed the story of an unsung, passionate player who was instrumental in making things happen but who got obscured by those with bigger egos, offices or obsessions. I felt like you told the tale of a real, complete person.

"It was nice work and thanks for using some of your column for it." -- Publicist pal based at major studio

"I read your article about Dan Cracchiolo, and thought you'd want to know that some of the information is incorrect. " -- Maharishi

Wells to Maharishi: Okay. Thanks for telling me this. What information?

Maharishi back to Wells: "Okay, here it is. Dan was actually 39 when he died. He was born 1/31/65. And that picture that you have where you say it was it was his 37th birthday was actually taken at the Opus opening party in May 2002.

Wells back to Maharishi: I stand corrected about Dan's age. I was told by a confidante that he'd fudged his birthdate by a year because he was bothered about turning 40. But I double checked about the party photo and have been told it was taken at a birthday party at Dan's Sierra Towers apartment in January 02.

Maharishi back to Wells: "Dan left Silver Pictures because Warner Brothers drug-tested him repeatedly and he failed every time, therefore Joel had no choice but to let him go. He didn't want to see him become another Jay Maloney.

"Also, the projects at Opus did not come to fruition because of his ADD, but because unfortunately he never took care of the "substance thing" (although I'm sure he told you he did) and it overwhelmed his life and work and Dan made no sense most of the time because of it. And he continued to play the charade of sober.

"If Dan had taken care of the substance thing (a.k.a., crystal methamphetamine and heroin addiction), none of us would have attended his funeral on Saturday and he would be alive and well today. From January 2001 to the present Dan completely changed. Drugs completely ruined this man and his life, and the motorcycle accident wouldn't have happened because he would have had money to fill up the tank of his car.

"It's a SAD, SAD, SAD story because he had it all. I don't know if you know this but all the donations are being sent to The Betty Ford Center.

Wells to Maharishi: I get very, very angry when I suspect I've been lied to, and if what you're saying here is true, then Dan lied to me by omission, and so did some of his confidantes last Wednesday (understandably, under the circmstances) when I called around before writing up last Friday's article."

Maharishi back to Wells: I didn't realize this would be such a big deal to you, and I didn't realize you were being fed different info. Everything I wrote you is true. You can call Silver to confirm the testing, and Dan's family to confirm BFC donations or better yet, look at the piece about him in last Saturday's LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Heathrow

"My condolences on your recent visit to Heathrow Airport, which is apparently the busiest airport in the world. Next time you are unfortunate enough to visit Britain make sure you remember that the words 'customer' and 'service' are mutually exclusive in this great country.

"To make you feel better about your experience, spare a thought for me and my partner. We were flying into Stansted Airport (it caters to budget airlines from Europe mainly) from Venice on RyanAir. The flight was delayed by over an hour and we didn't land at Stansted until midnight, by which time all of the baggage collection staff had retired for the evening. We didn't get to collect our luggage until 3 am.

"As a result we missed our connecting train into London which we had pre-paid and had to fork out an extra £10 each for a bus to Victoria Station, and then pay a further £30 for a taxi home to South London. " -- Jerome Mazandarani, London.

"As a Brit, I tried to be patriotic and give my money to the national flag carrier....never again! On the ground.... it's the untrained, uninformed yobbo staff level. In the air it's the matrons that control the plane and not the pilot, who merely steers it.

"The hierarchy is a cross section of Britain as a whole. First class, middle class and hooligan....sorry... economy class. You must be polite, stiff upper lip, grin and bear it..... conform and you will be given food and a nice cup of tea. Make any demands and you get to be served by motherly/matronly figures who throw you a scold and inflict the feeling you are bothering them with each request.

"It's some huge 'repressed mothering' thing that is the whole philosophy of the service. I married Asian, I fly Asian carriers.... I do 100,000 miles a year and I get service...... forget British Airways, go home the other way around the world." -- Paulus, Bangkok, Thailand.

Becket Ola

"I'm so happy someone wrote about the outstanding Becket. I'm 34, so maybe I'm not part of the core demographic for this film, but when I discovered it on VHS a few years ago I can't tell you how riveted I was. It's now one of my favorite movies, and in my opinion contains Peter O'Toole's best performance. Yes, even over LAWRENCE.

"So where is the DVD? I read or heard it was going to come out in a bare bones edition, which would have been fine by me, because at least the movie was out there. But it was inexplicably pulled.

"Mr. Wells, use all your powers to get this thing released, please. BECKET is easily one of the best films ever made, and a lackadaisical DVD release policy should not happen.

"If you love snappy dialogue, witty banter, a compelling story, and honest to God fun in a movie without turning in your brain at the door, BECKET is the primo, the number one, the giga megasize burger.

"Your article made my day....thanks!" -- Alan Cerny

Wells to Cerny: Like I said in the piece, MPI Home Video will be releasing a loaded DVD...just not this year. They're saying sometime in '05....hopefully. Maybe it won't come out until 2006 or 2007. Who knows? All I know is, MPI is not in any kind of hurry.

Rap on Moore

"Moore doesn't exactly say that the Saudis (most of whom were students, and all of whom were screened by the FBI, according to the 9/11 commission report which is supposedly Moore's source) were let go without being questioned, but the movie definitely leaves the impression that they were given no more than a cursory screening. This may be true, but he needs to make the argument rather than simply assert so. Moore has become a master of argument-by-innuendo, staying just this side of libel laws while making assertions he knows he can't prove.

"Okay, so slipping in a snippet of Eric Clapton's Cocaine' after mentioning that Bush skipped his 1972 National Guard physical is a funny underhanded attack, but it's still an underhanded attack. There's plenty of indisputable evidence in the public record to condemn Bush without relying on half-facts and slippery insinuation.

"Moore, sadly, weakens an otherwise credible argument by casting his net too wide. I'd bet money that if you polled moviegoers, the vast majority come out of the theater with the impression that the FBI let a bunch of well-connected oil merchants fly the coop two days after the worst terrorist attack in US history. Maybe every word in the movie does check out in a legalistic fashion, but I don't think there's any question Moore is aware of the false impressions he fosters.

"However, the movie definitely does state that the departures took place beginning on Sept. 13, 2001, after commercial airspace had been reopened (although it doesn't mention the latter fact), and even misses what would seem to be a conspiratorial slam-dunk: the departures began on the same day of Prince Bandar's supper at the White House." -- Sam Adams, Movies Editor, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER.

Wells to Adams You're saying Craig Unger's findings and conclusions about the Saudi-bin Laden fly-outs in his book "House of Bush, House of Saud" are slippery and half-factual? That's not my understanding. And I've never read anything to indicate there's anything slippery or half-factual about W.'s cocaine problem in the '70s. Throwing in the Clapton song is perfectly legitimate, in my view....as well as funny.