Ian Rothkerch

I recently sat down with the grumpy gadfly prior to a sold-out show at the Gotham Comedy Club. If he’s irascible onstage, he was perfectly affable and generous off.

I’m going to give you a few names and I want you to tell me the first word that comes to mind:

Charlton Heston.

Syphilis.

George W. Bush.

Arrogant.

Oprah.

Oprah.

Hillary Clinton.

Bitch.

Monica Lewinsky.

The only Jewish girl I know who gave a blow job.

Being in an industry that promotes diplomacy, have there been any professional repercussions to being so honest?

Early on as a writer, I met [former segment producer] Frank Gannon, who was doing Letterman — a great guy. He said, “The good news is you’re really intelligent. The bad news is you’re really intelligent.” Then I found out that he was a speechwriter for Nixon and I said, “That’s like telling me you’ve worked with Himmler.” He laughed out loud, so I know he got it, but I also know it’s not the thing I should have said.

One of the reasons I didn’t do as well in the theater community is that I told people to go fuck themselves and I shouldn’t have. You have to learn that part of the job. You have to smile and nod your head and not say anything. I’ve never really been good at it. My advice to any young comic is — when in doubt, don’t drink.

You’re very critical of the state of American culture, especially when it comes to our political system. In your professional opinion, where in God’s name did we all go wrong?

Part of it is education. I really believe that the bottom line of the culture is education. They can talk about family values and all that crap all they want, but it’s a matter of how you transmit knowledge from one generation to the next, and we’re not doing it anymore. Now don’t tell me you can’t come up with an educational plan you can speak about passionately that we will understand.

These people out there are not stupid. I don’t know why there’s a certain gutlessness to both parties, why it’s so difficult to speak your mind. This society has grown tenfold and I don’t think the leadership has grown at all. If we’re gonna teach kids wood shop, I think leadership training skills should be taught since I don’t think these people know how to lead.

With so many worthy targets out there, who has given you the best material?

Dan Quayle — because he was so consistent. He was unbelievable. I had almost 50 minutes of material on him.

How do you think we ever got to a point where people like that could get into office?

The media has scared a lot of people out of the business. People don’t want to talk about their lives, the way they’re being exposed. Like in the case of [former Texas governor] Ann Richards, who I have a great amount of admiration for, she loses to George W. Bush ’cause she’s honest, so they pick her apart. Once you start becoming honest they pick the shit out of you — unless you’re Jesse Ventura, who’s very, very honest, but isn’t really saying anything.

If you were the emperor of Rome and could throw one person to the lions — who would it be?

It would’ve been Newt Gingrich, but at this point I’d have to say Trent Lott. He’s a moron.

When did you first realize you had the talent to make people laugh and get paid for it?

Basically after killing myself. Actually, I was shocked when I found out I could get paid for it, cause I always did this for fun. This is as much fun as being paid could be.

Did you initially get discovered, or did you have to go through the whole rigmarole of finding an agent?

Oh, Christ — it was a combination of it all. I ran the West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar and opened every show that we did for eight years. That room really shaped me and then the folks at Catch a Rising Star saw me and got me on the road. Then from there, I’d stumble onto other work. I had an agent from the beginning, thanks to the writing, but even when I started going on the road it was hard to find someone who would book me. I was really on the road for like eight years … just really lonely.

So you’re a glutton for punishment?

I think anybody is who chooses to go into a profession where you learn by failure — unless you’re a natural. The real punishment is the business of it. It’s like a salmon going upstream — you hit the rock, you hit the rock and then finally you go by the rock, and you don’t really know why.

Even after all these years, do you ever fear tanking on stage?

Only if the situation is wrong — if I’m at a corporate event or in one of those idiotic Holiday Inn conference rooms. I once did a thing for Muscular Dystrophy in Amarillo, Texas, and I was literally 30 yards from the audience in a room that was probably 80 yards wide. Even when it was silent, it had two waterfalls going — so you know you’re gonna die. You just go up there and die.

Your expressive delivery style is very unique — did it come naturally to you?

Yeah, it was ultimately very natural. It would’ve been nice if I’d known it [laughs]. It’s what I was really like as a kid, the personality I had when I was angry. For me, I had this persona that was part of me and I brought it on stage only to a point. Once I took it to the next level, myself to the seventh power, then it really worked.

Here’s a Barbara Walters question. If Pfizer created a “happy pill” that could get rid of all that rage you project in your act, would you take it?

On weekends.

Traditionally, stand-up comedians often transition into television. If it meant watering down your persona, would you star in your own sitcom?

Well, if it was an interesting character. All of my training leads to the next step to be that. I was a playwright and I worked in theater and I’m a comic — all of that ends up being vaudeville and that’s what a sitcom is. There’s a point where you do this for a long time and you want to work with other people, so I’ve written stuff for myself and done all of that. I’ve been through this process. [Frustrated grunt.]

Why do you think Hollywood has taken so long to appreciate you as a commodity? Is it finding the right vehicle? The right talent?

I don’t know what it is. You got everybody and your mother saying, “How come you don’t have a sitcom yet?” And you think, “Well, I don’t know if it’s my agent, my manager, if it’s me.” The first time [I was commissioned to write a pilot], I would say that CBS got this script on Friday. By Monday morning, after having the script a weekend, CBS passed on the script. I don’t believe CBS ever read the script. Then a year and a half ago, NBC Productions hired me to do this thing and Warren Littlefield was fired by NBC — and that was the end of my sitcom. That has happened about every two years.

Do you ever get the sense that Hollywood execs are too shortsighted to see the bigger picture?

What I find astonishing is how many times it takes them to see certain people to get it. A lot of the people I’ve had to meet had to do none of the preparation that the professional within the business has to do. The person who’s standing in the spotlight has to do all this preparation and these people have to do nothing but learn how to go to a cocktail party. You know, reading would be nice. It’s unconscionable.

How has your stint on “The Daily Show” affected your career?

Huge. This [Gotham show] sold out and they’re already selling tickets for the next. It’s insane. I’d come out here on a night like this two years ago and there would be half the room filled.

Even with all the success you’ve had, are you still angry?

How can you not be? It’s funny because you just gotta be. I constantly feel like there’s a really great group of comics in the community not being given their due and certain comics within the community who are given their due for reasons that will always escape me.

But isn’t that just the nature of the beast?

It may be the nature of the beast, but the beast is wrong. At some point if you stick to your guns hopefully you change that. I mean, I was sitting here watching [Sam] Kinison, who’s an angry guy. Here’s Steven Wright, who’s a bright guy. Here’s Bill Hicks, who’s an angry guy. When I saw these guys, I felt like I was somewhat within the category of that. Then you go to take your turn and they go, “Well, you’re a little too edgy. You’re a little too intelligent.” Well, hello … it works!

In recent years, Eddie Izzard has parlayed his popularity into a thriving film career, opting for dramatic roles in independent films like “Shadow of the Vampire,” “Velvet Goldmine” and “The Cat’s Meow” (in which he played Charlie Chaplin). His latest big-screen effort is “All the Queen’s Men,” a World War II comedy about a bumbling group of soldiers (led by “Friends” star Matt LeBlanc) who disguise themselves as women in order to infiltrate a female-run factory housing the Nazis’ Enigma code machines. In the film, Izzard playfully exploits his drag persona as a combat-shy cabaret diva who gives his squad a crash course in the fine art of cross-dressing. An actor of surprising naturalness and versatility, Izzard frequently takes on theater projects, and his portrayal of Lenny Bruce in the London production of “Lenny” earned critical raves.

How do you explain the allure of dressing up in women’s clothes?

It’s not an allure, it’s just a sexuality. It’s the only way I can express the feminine side of myself as a member of the transgender community. If you have an outwardly biological bloke’s body, then that’s the only way you can move toward where you feel more comfortable. I mean, women can already do it — they can be tomboys and that’s no problem.

When did you first decide to incorporate transvestitism into your act?

I came out when I was 23, and I got into stand-up when I was about 26 and that started taking off when I was about 29. In 1991, I told the press because I thought, Well, my stand-up’s taking off in Britain so I better tell them so they can’t reveal it. Then I just started talking about it onstage for about a year and the press thought that it was some sort of gag. Then I thought I better wear some makeup so I’m not scared of being able to do that. The people started saying it was a whole gimmick. It was very bizarre. I was hugely fearful of the impact it [coming out] would have on my career. I videotaped the first-ever gig and it was 60-40 that I could’ve lost the career at that point.

How did initial audiences react to your onstage persona?

Well, they were sort of OK. The first five minutes, they all went, “Wow, what the hell’s going on?” Then after five minutes they just got on with it; I could’ve been wearing an elephant suit. It didn’t really matter. The comedy was still the same. I talk surreal crap and that never changes.

Your role in “All the Queen’s Men” plays up your transgender image. Was that a selling point for you or just incidental?

Yeah, I think that was a selling point. They wanted me to play this part, which was initially a gay transvestite, and I said, “Well, I’m a straight transvestite, so why don’t we bring the character more toward my end?” In the end, we ended up making him a bisexual transvestite, and I thought, OK, because he was supposed to be something of an action transvestite who had been in the military and then kicked out when they found him wearing his wife’s clothing. When the director [Stefan Ruzowitzky] agreed to go with that, I thought I’ll go do it because when I first came out, I never thought I’d be able to play an action transvestite in a film and get paid for it. Plus, I’m also kind of fascinated with that period and I wanted to be in the army when I was a kid.

As someone who’s fiendishly in tune with American pop culture, what was it like acting alongside one of the “Friends”?

It was great. I haven’t done comedy in my films. I’ve generally chosen dramas in my films and theater work because I always wanted to be a dramatic actor. I had a great time working with Matt [LeBlanc] and it was also quite weird working with someone who had such good comic timing since I’m used to working on my own.

From “Velvet Goldmine” to “Shadow of the Vampire,” you’ve made some pretty unorthodox film choices. How do you usually pick your projects?

Well, initially, and even still, I don’t really have a choice of everything in the world. Quite often when something comes around it tends to be like, “Do you wanna do this film or not?” And if I say no, then I just have to wait around another few months for something else to come up. I take money out of it. Money is not the driving thing; that’s where you lose it.

Is it frustrating not having your pick of projects or are you happy with the roles you get offered?

In the sense that you always like to have the choice for every single film, I’d love to be in “The Lord of the Rings,” but I was probably touring at the time and didn’t even know it was being made. [Laughs] You have to deal with it.

What do you see as the major differences between American and British audiences?

There’s no difference.

Did you feel any pressure to refigure your material in order to adapt to the sensibilities of American audiences?

No, the audiences I play for can all string a sentence together. In fact, American audiences prefer it if you just keep it entirely British and they can work out the slang and everything. The trick is, don’t change a thing.

Why do you feel the need to keep returning to the stage?

Well, it does teach you a hell of a lot because you do it night after night. But if you land really good theater roles, you get better film roles. Film is my first love. I’m not a theater person, really. I do a hell of a lot of time onstage just performing my stand-up. Because I’m coming from comedy, if you do deliver a good theater role, then hopefully producers and/or directors will go, “Hey, I heard you did good in that.” And therefore it could put you on a more believable dramatic track.

Your most mainstream films like “Mystery Men” and “The Avengers” have tanked at the box office. Do you aspire to star in a blockbuster or is that not really a priority for you?

That’s not a main priority, but I do. I am a very mainstream, popcorn-eating watcher of films. That’s not necessarily a problem because I wasn’t the controller of either of those two films. But even if I was in control, it might have happened the same way. [Laughs] It’s better for me to come this way [from comedy] because people say, “Plug him into a comedy and try to make that $100 million straight off.” I needed to prove that I could hold something dramatic and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. I have to pay my dues and earn my spurs, but I’ll get there cause I’m a relentless bastard.

You’re obviously very proud that “Dress to Kill” is finally coming out on DVD. Does this particular show hold any more importance for you compared to the other one-man productions you’ve done?

It does in the fact that in America it won a couple of Emmys. That was very nice, because in Britain I don’t get any awards for the stand-up shows. We don’t have such an idea of having comedy specials, or any specials for that matter. It was a breakthrough show for me.

While you were performing this show, did you have any idea it would garner so much attention?

Not particularly. Having played in a number of different countries and found that at certain points things break through, it tends not to be a particular show. Rather, it’s more like how much time you spent and at which point everyone decides to buy into it; a number of factors come into play. The show I did in New York was somewhat different from the one I did on the West Coast where Robin Williams came in and helped produce the show. Then HBO put it on and opened it wide.

Describe the process of preparing for your one-man shows. Do you start out with a specific theme in mind or do you just go where the jokes take you?

The second one. I have no process. I start a new tour with the old tour. I never write a show; it’s always improvised from whatever comes into me that night. Any show is a constant work in progress. I’m constantly chucking out old stuff which is boring me and improvising new stuff. Then I’ll develop that and a week later I’ll think, Oh, there’s another bit I can add to that. It’s a constantly moving process. About five to 10 minutes of my show is improvised, but only five to 10 minutes.

This seems very little, but interestingly, when I was playing Lenny Bruce, I managed to get hold of many tapes left to his estate and he said he did the same thing. It’s good to know that I’m in the same ballpark.

In the case of “Lenny,” was it very daunting to play someone of such iconic proportions?

Lenny was very daunting, but it was a good challenge because it was dramatic and comedic — one of those crossover roles. No stand-up has ever played Lenny, as far as I know, so that was a great challenge. It was a very arduous experience. It really was draining because you do have to die eight times a week for three months.

How did you prepare to inhabit the role?

Well, with any character, I sort of pull them to me. Knowing a lot about Lenny beforehand, and then just going further on in my research, he started from a more mainstream position than I did. His early television stuff was so broad, it was kind of reminiscent of Jerry Lewis and the childlike characters he used to play. “Lenny” went beyond comedy and into reading out the transcripts of the trial. So, I just put myself in that position. If I had lived that life, how would it be for me? It’s actually very difficult to do stand-up in someone else’s style. I could do a facsimile of Lenny doing his stuff, but I also found that I had to refine some of his other comedy — especially his early comedy. It was quite a weird experience. I could never be exactly Lenny, but I had to give the essence of Lenny, like when I was playing Chaplin.

You spent a lot of your early childhood years moving from country to country. What impact do you think that had on the content of your comedy routines?

Being from Yemen, you can’t help but be interested in everything that’s going on now — otherwise I’m just getting rid of my birthplace. It does give you a global perspective, but I still just talk about crap.

Religion and politics are two recurring themes in your act. Do you have any thoughts on how President Bush is handling international relations post-9/11?

In a short one-line answer, I don’t know quite where he’s going. America is the Roman Empire, so I think the Bush administration could do whatever the hell they want and no one can really stop them. So keep your fingers crossed.

How did you develop this voracious love of history?

I’ve always been fascinated by history. It’s a family thing, really. My brother and my father are both history buffs. It could be that we have a history genetic thing going on. [Laughs] Also, I realized that nobody was using it in stand-up, and there was just tons of stuff lying around. It makes you look really intellectual, even though I’m just talking crap.

The Sarah Lawrence-educated auteur made a modest name for himself in the late ’60s and early ’70s with a couple of zany, subversively risqué satires (“Greetings” and “Hi, Mom!”) featuring a young Robert De Niro. Following the marginal success, De Palma did a creative 180 and tackled a genre that would eventually become his stock in trade: the psychological thriller. “Sisters” (1973) is a creepy, blood-drenched chiller starring Margot Kidder. While many deemed the film a worthy homage to Alfred Hitchcock, others dismissed it as rank plagiarism — right down to the claustrophobic close-ups and the piercing Bernard Herrmann score. From here on out, every other article about De Palma would call him a “Hitchcock wannabe.”

In 1974, he made “Phantom of the Paradise,” his inimitably baroque take on “Phantom of the Opera.” The Faustian satire was a resounding flop but it has since amassed a deserved cult following. Two years later, De Palma revisited Hitchcock with “Obsession,” an elegant and skillfully rendered variation on “Vertigo,” and then finally cracked Hollywood’s A list in 1976 with the adaptation of Stephen King’s “Carrie.” Setting a pattern, he squandered his momentum with two duds, “The Fury” and “Home Movies.”

De Palma rebounded in 1980 with his masterwork, “Dressed to Kill.” The psychosexual thriller is a nerve-fraying exercise in suspense, crafted by a director at the peak of his macabre talents. The split screens, extended tracking shots and dreamily lush scores from that film still show up in films like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” and on TV shows like “24.” Next, De Palma unapologetically lifted the premise of Michelangelo Antonioni’s mod classic “Blowup” for “Blow Out,” a voyeuristic nail-biter about political corruption starring John Travolta.

Now a bankable commodity, De Palma turned to Howard Hawks’ 1932 “Scarface.” With a meaty, tirelessly quotable script by Oliver Stone and Al Pacino’s bombastic performance as a Cuban drug lord, the film was as popular as it was controversial. The following year, De Palma gave his critics more ammunition with the fetishistic sleaze-fest “Body Double.”

In 1987, De Palma made his first real foray into the big-budget studio picture. “The Untouchables,” a classy and rousingly entertaining gangster saga set in Al Capone’s Chicago, proved that De Palma could deliver a crowd-pleasing popcorn picture without losing his distinctive visual touches, like the breathless, “Potemkin”-inspired baby carriage sequence. The searing (if uneven) morality tale “Casualties of War” followed, but De Palma had lost his audience.

His commercial drought continued into the ’90s with the notoriously ill-fated adaptation of “Bonfire of the Vanities.” Marred by obscene budget overruns, incurable script problems and profound casting blunders, it became the subject of journalist Julie Salamon’s “The Devil’s Candy,” a bestselling account of the making of the film and a cautionary tale about Hollywood excess. The “Bonfire” debacle rendered De Palma a near pariah; in what looked like an effort to regain respectability he returned to familiar terrain with hodgepodge “Raising Cain.”

In 1993, the director bounced back with “Carlito’s Way,” a crackerjack gangster tale based on the real-life exploits of Carlito Brigante, a reformed Puerto Rican street hood who just can’t shake his criminal past (portrayed with swaggering nobility by Al Pacino). Rife with bravura camerawork, an expertly used disco soundtrack and richly memorable performances (particularly Sean Penn as a sleazy, coke-sniffing shyster), the film remains one of De Palma’s most unjustly overlooked achievements.

On the strength of “Carlito’s Way,” Tom Cruise tapped De Palma to helm the big-screen version of “Mission: Impossible.” Although the $80 million actioner was lambasted for its impenetrable plot, it went on to become the third-highest-grossing movie of 1996. In typical De Palma fashion, however, he parlayed the biggest hit of his entire career into a series of trifling misfires, the obtrusively gimmicky “Snake Eyes” and the inert space odyssey “Mission to Mars.”

In his latest film, “Femme Fatale,” De Palma returns to the tawdry playfulness of his ’70s masterworks. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos stars as a seductively conniving jewel thief who ditches her partners and adopts a new identity. While on the lam, she happens to catch the leering eye of a paparazzo (Antonio Banderas), who gradually gets sucked into her treacherous vortex. Voyeurism, lesbianism, sexual depravity, pitch-black humor, leggy doppelgängers — all De Palma’s favorites are on proud display. It’s a formula guaranteed to alienate (or indoctrinate) a whole new generation of moviegoers. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

A lot of people are calling “Femme Fatale” a return to your earlier works like “Dressed to Kill” and “Sisters.” Do you agree?

Yes, in the fact that it’s written and directed by me like those pictures were. It’s very much a movie that’s driven by visual ideas, as opposed to character-driven or story-driven. This is kind of a meditation on film noir. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite like that before that.

What was your initial inspiration?

I always wanted to make a movie with a film noir protagonist because I think these women are so much fun — they’re dark, they’re sexy, they’re manipulative. I tried to find a venue to make that work in and then I got this idea of putting this noir story into this dream sequence, because I don’t think you can do noir straight in a kind of realistic setting.

I like to do different things and go to different genres and have different moviemaking experiences. I’m 62, I’ve made a lot movies in the system and outside the system, so to me it’s like taking an interesting excursion up the Nile. I mean, if the terrain is interesting and you can make a movie there then I’m ready to go.

How do you feel about being a director-for-hire on films like “Mission: Impossible” as opposed to writing and directing films you develop from the outset?

Well, that is not really a correct perception. With “Mission: Impossible” I developed the story and the screenplay. They were working on it for quite a while and I came in and started from scratch. So, “director for hire” isn’t exactly the right thing. When you read a script, it’s either developed for the studio, or they want you to start from scratch on it — they basically let you do what you want. And if they don’t like what you do, you wind up not making the movie. This concept of “director for hire,” which I read a lot about, I don’t quite understand what that means in the present way film business is conducted.

Well, there has been this perception that you’ve taken on high-profile projects, namely “Mission to Mars,” as a deliberate attempt to go “mainstream.” Is that off-base?

I basically do things because I’m interested by the script. Whatever anybody thinks about “Mission to Mars,” I liked the script and developed it with a very good writer [Ted Tally, who wrote "Silence of the Lambs"]. I had a good time working on the material. Whether people think it’s successful or not is something else.

It was a terribly difficult movie to make, but I think journalists don’t have the right idea the way this sort of system works. When they hire a director like me who is a final-cut director — you got a big item there. So, you better want to let me make the movie the way I’m gonna make it or hire somebody else. You can get them for cheaper and have more control over them. [Laughs]

So despite the bureaucracy involved in big studio films, you’ve never had a problem putting your personal imprint on them?

That’s why they hire you.

Would you concede that your body of work is better appreciated in Europe than in the States or is that another misperception?

That is also a perception I’m not sure about. The reason my movies do so well in Europe is because they’re visual and not driven by dialogue, so you don’t have to have a lot of subtitles. I get some pretty staunch, diehard De Palma admirers here in the United States. There may not be as many of them, but they are indeed impassioned. Of course, in my movies there’s always some kind of battleground. I have always been very popular right from the beginning with “Sisters.” My first real success was “Greetings!” which won the only big international prize I ever had at the Berlin International Film Festival.

To be making movies at my age, going into my fourth decade, having my hits and misses, you have to be commercially viable in order to continue to make movies. Even though “Mission to Mars” got quite a drubbing by the critics, it still did $100 million worldwide. People seem to forget that. Do we ever hear the grosses on “Red Planet” and “Ghosts of Mars?”

Do you feel any more pressure than usual for “Femme Fatale” to succeed both critically and commercially?

Of course, you always want your movies to succeed on all those levels. But I had a lot of fun making “Femme Fatale.” I think it’s a kind of unique, very sophisticated, witty, fun, sexy idea. So, if it connects — great. It was done relatively inexpensively and it’s all been paid off because of the advances and the way it’s been doing in Europe. If it does like $20 million-$30 million, it’ll be a huge hit for us here. That’s all that matters to me — it paid everybody back and I can go out and continue working.

To this day, your visual style remains an influence on so many directors. How did your own style evolve?

Oh, I don’t know. It has a lot to do with being very driven by visual ideas and being a great admirer of Michelangelo Antonioni and Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa, directors who were great visual stylists. You connect with them because you sort of see the world as they do. It gives you a history of material to know that you’re working in an area that has been, needless to say, done exquisitely before. My particular style started to grow from the actual way I laid things out. Slow-motion, parallel action sequences, the use of the Steadicam, which gives you more mobility and allows you to use longer takes, split screen — I sort of developed these things as one developing, specific technique for specific material.

Then, of course, I kinda liked them because I like silent filmmaking. I like using pictures and music. I found myself, after 20 or 30 years, sort of alone in this area. Not too many directors do stuff like that, and I also find that they don’t really think too hard about where they stage their scenes — stuff which I am obsessed with. People stage chases or shootouts and it doesn’t look like they think about where they’re placing the people. Whether you build a set or go out and find a location, I will prowl these places, take photographs of them, create computer modeling of them — I go through all the options and it gives me all kinds of interesting visual ideas for the sequences.

The museum scene in “Dressed to Kill,” in which you use a lengthy tracking shot, is frequently cited as an exemplary piece of filmmaking. What were the origins of that sequence?

A lot of what I think is misunderstood about me is that most of the things you see in my movies are usually not based on somebody staying at home in a dark room watching old movies all the time, but someone who actually experiences the sequence. I picked up girls in the Museum of Modern Art when I was in college, so I was used to walking around, looking at paintings, talking to people.

Are you surprised by the renown that scene has acquired over the years?

Well, it’s beautifully done. It’s like a ballet. And the scoring is beautiful. That’s why it lives. It’s a very good idea and that’s what makes great sequences, much like the shower scene in “Psycho.” That’s a great idea. It was greatly figured out how to shoot it, where the camera positions were, etc. That’s why those sequences stick with us.

At the time you were filming “Scarface,” did you have any idea it would pervade popular culture like it did?

No, no way. There was such a political furor — everything about “Scarface” was controversial. Just to get out of the experience alive was more than I could ask. We were embattled about “Scarface” from the inception of it right through the release.

In retrospect, do you understand why the picture resonated? The majority of critics panned it, but audiences seemed to eat it up.

Some audiences ate it up. I remember many screenings where the movie was loathed by the audiences.

What do you think it is about your films that divides so many people?

It kind of surprises me when they just go berserk over something like “Mission to Mars.” I mean, you might not like it or you might not like the genre or think it’s dreamy or surreal or whatever, but the vehemence of the critical response was kind of shocking.

Do feel that you’ve finally lived down “Bonfire of the Vanities?”

I have nothing to live down about “Bonfire of the Vanities.” I made some aesthetic choices that I like and nobody else did. Most of the people who were upset about “Bonfire of the Vanities” were people who thought if I changed the book it was sacrilege. I made changes because I felt that there were too many anti-Semitic characters in the book. So I changed the Jewish jokes to black jokes, and I made Tom Hanks’ character a lot more sympathetic than he was in the book. If I had made him, or the whole material, as tough as the book was, we would have had “The Sweet Smell of Success,” which will be revered now but ended [director] Alexander Mackendrick’s career.

Were you surprised by the uproar?

When you make a movie, you sort of step into a little kind of shell and stay in it until it comes out. You have no idea how, exactly, it’s going to affect the audience or how strong their feelings are going to be. I’ve usually been very surprised one way or another about how audiences or critics have reacted to my movies. They never seem to go by anything I can predict.

Does it ever bother you that you sometimes don’t get the critical respect of fellow film-school grads like Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola?

I have enough esoteric doctoral theses being written about my work. [Laughs] We’ll just see what lives through time. I have this big retrospective at the Pompidou in Paris and I’ve noticed that most of my fans are extremely young. I think you kind of live off of that. That’s why I know about Salon and a lot of the Web sites. I’ve met the people who run my Web site and the French guy just graduated high school. If I want to know anything going on about my movies, I go to De Palma à la Mod. [Laughs] This guy [who runs the site] has an ability to find everything.

You know, I really believe in these Web sites. I think this is where our legacy will exist. This is not flattery, but I do feel the most interesting people are writing on the Web sites if you want to read criticism.

Why do you think your work inspires such rabid devotion?

I guess it has to be pretty tough to defend me all the time, so they have to have their stuff together. [Laughs] If you like De Palma, I guess you’re going to have to square off with the establishment ideas of what De Palma is and hold your own.

Voyeurism and violence are two recurring themes in your work. Why?

Well, these are two things I’ve been talking about for close to 40 years and everything I say about them, I feel like I’m throwing a paper airplane against the wall that keeps bouncing back. I will explain it for the nine-hundred-thousandth time and maybe when you write it down and somebody reads it, it will get through. I haven’t been lucky so far. [Laughs]

The reason violence is interesting to me is because it’s filmic, it’s action, it’s movement. And sometimes movements can lead to death and sometimes they can lead to chases — whatever. It’s visual. That’s why I am drawn to it. And since I’m a visual stylist, I have people following each other, running after each other, stabbing each other, stalking each other. I use situations that have these kind of musical beginnings which get faster and faster and onto some kind of crescendo which works very well on film. It’s the only forum that you can use these kind of visually violent images.

Voyeurism is just one of the primary tools of cinema. Hitchcock and directors before him in the silent era, when you shot a close-up from somebody’s point of view, you were tying the audience very directly into the experience. It’s the only art form in which you are showing the same piece of information to your character and the viewer in the audience simultaneously. That’s what’s unique about it and that’s why people are drawn into film — because they’re experiencing the same visual information as the character.

How do you respond to those age-old charges that you’re a misogynist?

It comes out of making my thrillers in the ’70s and early ’80s; I had women as protagonists and we had a strong feminist movement emerging. If you put a woman in a situation where she’s gonna get killed or chopped up or stabbed, you were a misogynist. I make thrillers; I think women in peril are more interesting than men; and I like to have a woman in a negligee wandering around in a dark house rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m sorry. It works for me better.

Do you enjoy your controversial reputation?

I don’t know. It’s whatever works as far as I’m concerned. I’m just interested in getting my movies made. I’m not interested in picketing in the streets. We’re in a big, money-grinding industry, and I’m not interested in antagonizing anybody. I basically just want to make the best movie I can, hope people enjoy it, go to see it, but if they don’t — too bad. On to the next one.

That the film succeeds is as much a credit to Spielberg’s direction and Cruise’s sturdy performance as it is to Alex McDowell’s inspired production design. Helping McDowell achieve the look and ideas of the film were a coterie of self-styled futurists assembled by Spielberg prior to filming. This “think tank summit” (as it’s been widely dubbed) hosted a cross section of philosophers, scientists and artists. Two of these conceptual consultants, Harald Belker and John Underkoffler, spoke with Salon by phone from their respective offices in California.

A native of Germany, Harald Belker is recognized as one of the premier conceptual artists/designers in the business. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Belker designed automobiles for Porsche and Mercedes (most notably the latter’s Smart Car). In 1996, in his first Hollywood job, he was asked to dream up a new Batmobile for the franchise-killing “Batman and Robin,” and went on to work on “Inspector Gadget” and “Armageddon.”

John Underkoffler, of the left-brained variety, spent the better part of his pre-Hollywood years as a researcher at MIT’s prestigious, multidisciplinary Media Lab. There, he toiled on a myriad of intellectually minded projects encompassing everything from holography to computer graphics to electronic publishing. Having survived his virgin foray into the film industry with “Minority Report,” Underkoffler now finds himself a wanted man, serving as a science and technology consultant on Ang Lee’s anticipated comic-book opus “The Hulk.”

What exactly is a “futurist” and how do you become one?

Harald Belker: I know people who call themselves that, but I’m not one of them. [Laughs.] I think I live in that world, sort of thinking of the future a lot. I like to give my input toward futuristic looks and designs specifically. But call myself a futurist … I don’t think so.

John Underkoffler: I think you just have to blather a lot about the future. I hope to see the term become slightly debauched — in the present it probably already is. It was still a plausible position, say, three years ago, because the economy was good and we had the kind of technological utopianism thing going on. But it doesn’t work as well when everyone has told all the stories there are to tell and actually it’s time to invent some of the stuff instead of just talking about it.

So, technically, would it be fair to say that you get paid to see what the future is going to be like?

Underkoffler: In the context of these movies, that’s definitely a piece of the job. The interesting thing is that it’s not just broad-strokes prognostication. It requires coming up with all the details as well.

On “Minority Report,” you’re credited as being a “science and technology advisor.” What does that mean?

Underkoffler: It extended quite broadly. It was everything from inventing future history, sort of extrapolating from the present to describe trends that by 2054 were already in the past and would’ve led to what we see on the screen. And these aren’t merely technological trends but also social and political. For everything you see on the screen, there’s actually a hundred times more well-knit back story.

Describe the process of how you begin to invent an imaginary world. What’s your source of inspiration?

Underkoffler: I think it might even be more interesting to talk about the collective effort inspiration. For example, Alex McDowell produced — and kept revising throughout the course of preproduction — what we called “the 2054 bible.” It’s a brilliant document, and I hope someone gets encouraged to publish it. Its notion was that it kind of laid out in about 80 pages or so the entire world that we were going to build. It covered everything from architectural overviews, the trends that had led to more vertical buildings and cities, the urban areas pulling in the skirts, so to speak, and rising into the air to allow green to return to surrounding lands (that sort of ecological imperative), the political tenor of the times, the individual economics of different social strata that led to certain architectural forms, right on down to the gadgets — the nonlethal weapons, the hover packs, the little spider robots that run around and identify you.

Had you read Philip K. Dick’s story before you started working on the film?

Belker: They gave us the short story to read when we first got started because the actual script was all secret. So we’d get a page or so which we were directly involved with. I got pages where vehicles were described. The short story stuff was promising, though it didn’t go into much detail.

Underkoffler: Oh yes, long before. I’m a huge fan of all of Dick’s writings. It’s a very compact little piece with a fascinating central idea that very much competes with all his other stuff. As with the rest of his writings, he recognizes that social science fiction is more interesting than pure science fiction. He was one of the few guys back in the ’50s who knew the truth about technology. Everyone else wanted shiny ray guns and perfect societies floating around in anti-gravity space stations and who knows what. Dick knew that technology mostly doesn’t work or complicates things in unforeseen ways. And so, in Dick’s books and stories, you always have doors that won’t let you through ’cause you have to give them a quarter and you have to argue with them because you don’t have any spare change. In general, with him, it’s the intersection of high-end science with other more human elements: individual psychologies, larger-scale sociology or politics. That’s what makes him continue to be relevant where other authors of the same era … their shiny spaceships and ray guns look a little tarnished right now.

How often did you refer to the original text? Did you have much creative license?

Belker: I don’t think I had much license except for the actual design of a vehicle. I’m definitely bound by the direction of the director and the production design, but the way it looks is my problem.

Underkoffler: I myself didn’t, and I think that the film took everything it was possible to take from the story. By the time we were up and running, those ideas were so fully dissolved into the fabric of everything that we were doing, it wasn’t as if had to go back and look at the scripture, so to speak.

What were some of the ideas or concepts you personally devised that made it into the final film?

Underkoffler: The sort of single largest scale item was the gestural interface language that we see in the first scene that Mr. Cruise’s character uses to sift through the pre-visions — the evidence dreamed by the pre-cogs. We had him in the middle of that giant curved, transparent screen and Steven’s brief was that he wanted the interface of that computer to be like conducting an orchestra. Armed with that brief, I went off and devised this whole kind of sign language for interacting with this computer, for controlling the flow of all this information. That was great fun and it derived in some ways from my earlier research back at MIT.

Much has been made of this “think tank summit” hosted by Steven Spielberg prior to shooting. Can you give us an idea what that experience was like?

Belker: I thought, “What is all this?” [Laughs.] They went into great detail on medical future, architectural future, the rising of the sea level. For me, what was most interesting was the way they foresaw the future; if you really showed that in a movie today it would be unbelievable. So, to make it more realistic, you almost have to draw back from that and show it a little more reasonable.

Science used to draw on sci-fi all the time, but that relationship has changed: now sci-fi draws more from science. Which does this film do?

Underkoffler: I’m not sure that I totally agree. I think in some ways, science draws more than ever from science fiction. Here’s one example. We had the constant problem of designing access panels to high-tech installations, stuff that appears in movies where you scan your thumb or your iris. And what does it say when you can’t get it? It says, “Access Denied.” Everyone knows that. The guys who have to build that hate “Access Denied” — we all hate “Access Denied.” It’s such a clichi, but the fact is, the people who build those things for real make them say “Access Denied.” And why? Because we all know that from movies.

Of all the technological advancements showcased in the film, how much of this stuff actually exists or is in the early stages of development?

Underkoffler: I would say a surprisingly large fraction. Almost an astoundingly large fraction. The mag-lev cars, for example. Although we don’t have mag-lev technology that works on vertical surfaces, mag-lev technology has been around for many decades, spearheaded by professor Eric Laithwaite, who died not too long ago. And, of course, in Japan and Europe you have mag-lev trains. The nonlethal weapons are all variants or extrapolations of currently existing or under-development technology. It would be hard to identify anything that had no grounding in reality. I think that was very much by design.

Are there any concepts to which you were particularly attached that never made it into the movie?

Underkoffler: [mock coyness] Mmm … not sure if I’m allowed to say such things. I mean, there was a lot we certainly didn’t have time to do. We had a couple of interesting gadgets. Stuff like media-bots that were kind of autonomous, flying robots that would collect video and audio footage of the scene of the crime, a sporting event, some other paparazzi-intensive place. And they’d sort of jostle with each other for space and transmit it back to TV. The world that we all had in our heads was complete and as rich as our real world.

Belker: Yeah, I wish there were a lot more establishing shots of the transportation system, not just a quick drive-by. [Laughs.] There was a lot of work done on explaining how the hovership works, the whole transportation system. It was fantastically put together and yet you see very little of that. But, the way he [Spielberg] was shooting the film, the subject matter and the actor were his prime goals.

As a futurist, do you see the world as you think it will be or as you personally want it to be?

Underkoffler: The more time you spend thinking about that sort of thing, the more you have to acknowledge how things rarely turn out the way you intend. Very often it’s the case that new technology — even with beneficial ends in mind — turns out to have effects you didn’t expect at all. I think more and more I feel wary about technology just in the sense that we’re rushing headlong into any number of different of technologically advanced fields without a full understanding of what’s necessarily going on. Bioengineering is an obvious example — just hanging around waiting for the mini bio-apocalypse.

The sci-fi genre often has a tendency to cannibalize itself — almost to the point of parody. This film, however, boasts a look that is a lot fresher and more original than most. If you could put your finger on it, how did you manage to accomplish that?

Belker: For once, they tried to show a very positive future environment. I mean, we all lived through the bible of all sci-fi movies, “Blade Runner,” which painted a very dark view of the future. And many, many sci-fi films after that kind of reflected what “Blade Runner” had started. So, there was a conscious effort to go the other way, to make it a positive, bright future where we solve a lot of problems and make life more pleasant.

But there is a lot of negative as well. Of all the fantastical inventions featured in the film, which do you fear the most?

Belker: Those little spiders. You have to surrender. Watching the “First Look” special on HBO, I think one of the guys said, “You don’t have 15 minutes of fame, you have 15 minutes of privacy.” If that is all taken away, that’s a pretty scary thing.

Underkoffler: I think the clearest warning comes in relation to the kind of Orwellian or Huxley-esque scenario, where your eyes are constantly being scanned, your identity is being assessed at every moment and your location known at all times. In the movie, of course, that’s motivated by principally market concerns, commercial concerns. The idea is that if we can identify you at this place and time, then we can advertise very specific to you. “It’s time for a Guinness, John Anderton.” [Laughs]

How much input did you have in the whole advertising scenario?

Underkoffler: That idea was integral from the very beginning in Steven and Alex’s conception. The idea that your privacy was really a thing of the past, that the pure market forces had long since eroded everyone’s intimate civil liberties to the point where only the wealthy could afford to not be bothered all the time. That was one of the benefits of extreme wealth, that you could afford to silence some states where stuff wouldn’t be yammering at you constantly trying to sell you watches and beer.

Is this film more of a cautionary idea or does it present more of an inevitable future?

Underkoffler: I think it’s something that is in danger of happening right now. I mean, given the awful events of last fall where we’re starting to see a lot of this stuff on the immediate horizon. We have video surveillance systems being installed in Boston’s Logan Airport and Providence Airport that are being tied on the back end to template matching — facial recognition systems. They may not be accurate enough, but we’re at that moment where if we, as an ostensibly democratic society, don’t make some choices, the choice will just happen automatically.

I think we are in danger of approaching the world shot in the film from the opposite standpoint. In the film, we see a society with this universal surveillance because advertisers benefit from that, and they sort of pass off the information to peacekeeping forces and law-enforcement agencies like “Pre-crime.” I think we’re in danger of doing that the opposite way around, where people’s knee-jerk reaction concerns for national and personal security allow that kind of surveillance to take hold. And then, of course, there’s nothing to stop stuff from migrating into the commercial sector. If everyone’s being scanned and identified all the time anyway, maybe the government would like to make a few extra bucks selling it to Timex or whoever wants the demographic information.

Do you see this type of future as unavoidable or can society do something to prevent this so-called progress?

Underkoffler: Well, the most important thing is for people to remain really aware of what’s going on and, having made a decision about it, to speak that decision clearly. Which isn’t necessarily something always in practice.

Belker: How many phone calls do you get everyday of people advertising? Isn’t that annoying already? I wish I could turn that off. I mean, with the Internet today and your personal information available everywhere, we hope that doesn’t go out of control.

In your opinion, what is the most unlikely thing to happen in the future that we see in “Minority Report”?

Underkoffler: Clearly the farthest out element of the story are the pre-cogs themselves, the essentially psychic adolescents who float in the tank. That was our largest leap. The whole movie is predicated on the accidental creation or discovery of these psychic kids.

Belker: The hover packs.

Which scares you more: The world depicted in “Minority Report” or the one we live in now?

Belker: Really neither. I just see technology exploding in the future. If you look at the last industrial revolution, what humankind has done in the last 50 years — there has to come some good from that.

Underkoffler: Well, because the one depicted in “Minority Report” is fictional, we always have the option of correcting it through rewriting. The one we live in now is ultimately more frightening because there’s no promise that we can divert the course, even if we were vigilant enough to watch the course and see where we’re going and try to change it. There’s much more uncertainty in the real world.

McNulty’s outspoken complaints about the verdict inadvertently invoke the wrath of his boss, who skewers him for bringing his department’s ineptitude to light. Forced to do damage control, the deputy commissioner (the great Frankie Faison) orders a joint task force to infiltrate Barksdale’s operation in a move that’s more P.R.-minded than anything else. Hamstrung by a half-assed investigation, McNulty doggedly pursues the Barksdale crew on his own — putting his career at risk in the process. Even while his P.R.-minded superiors are content to sweep the case away, McNulty persists and eventually opens up a Pandora’s box of bureaucratic intransigence, red tape and possible corruption within the department.

“The Wire” is co-written by ex-cop Ed Burns and former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, who imbues the show with the kind of stark realism and street-level grittiness he brought as a writer to critical faves “Homicide: Life on the Streets” and HBO’s “The Corner.” (Simon also wrote “Homicide,” the book that the TV series was based on, and he and Burns coauthored “The Corner,” another nonfiction work about Baltimore.) Shunning the black-and-white simplicity of most TV police dramas, Simon examines the parallel lives of both the drug dealers and the cops, finding a morally skewed universe where the dealers are pragmatic entrepreneurs and the cops are apathetic political animals driven more by ambition than altruism. Reflecting the nihilistic vision put forth in “Traffic,” “The Wire” depicts the drug war as a perpetual, misguided exercise in futility. At the end of the day, the show argues, junkies will be junkies, dealers will be there to supply them, and the system will always be one step behind both of them. As one overzealous detective lectures another in the opening episode, the term “drug war” is a misnomer: “wars end.”

Simon recently spoke by phone with Salon from his offices in Baltimore. “The Wire” airs on HBO every Sunday night at 10 p.m.

What’s behind the basic plot of “The Wire”?

It’s very loosely based on the experiences of my co-writer, Ed Burns, who was a 20-year veteran of the police department here in Baltimore. He did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a year’s time, into violent drug traffickers. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department. And then it was also based on my experiences at my newspaper, which became a sort of hellish, futile bureaucracy. And then while we were writing the scripts, Enron was happening. And the Catholic Church. It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show.

Like “The Corner,” “The Wire” deals with the drug epidemic in Baltimore. Why do you keep coming back to this subject and this city?

I’ve lived in Baltimore coming up on 20 years. I know it. I actually went to the mayor and told him, “This is gonna be a pretty bleak show. If you’re sick of this shit, we’ll take our business elsewhere.” But to his credit, he said, Do it. Baltimore is one of the most drug-involved cities in the country. It has been for years. The police department we’re portraying is not particularly exaggerated for the late ’80s, early ’90s. It was that dysfunctional.

Was the show originally developed for HBO? And how do you think it would fare on network TV?

We went straight to HBO with it. Part of it was that I already had the existing relationship with HBO, and secondly I didn’t want to have the arguments. My experience with “Homicide” was that you’d write a very good episode that didn’t end in any kind of gratifying, emotionally uplifting way, and the notes would be consistently the same: “Where are the life-affirming moments? How can our viewers hope?” I mean, the name of the show’s “Homicide.” [Laughs.]

["The Wire" is] sort of a visual novel. We knew exactly what we wanted to say about the bureaucratic aspects of the drug war. It is about what happens in this land of ours when product ceases to matter, when the institutions themselves become predominant over their purpose. Pick up the paper: You take a job, you go down to Houston, you move your family there, you find out they gutted the company and stole your pension. It’s like whatever you believe in, whatever you commit to that’s larger than you or your family, will somehow find a way to fuck you.

Without being preachy, “The Wire” is rather critical of the way our government has fought the drug war. What have we been doing wrong?

We bought in to a war metaphor that justifies anything. Once you’re at war, you have an enemy. Once you have an enemy, you can do what you want. I don’t think that the government will ever find a meaningful way to police desire and human frailty. I’m not supportive of the idea of drugs, but what drugs have not destroyed, the war on them has managed to pry apart.

[The government] created war zones where the only economic engine is the self-perpetuating drug trade. It survives no matter what, and they expect people to walk away from it. The naiveté is just incredible. They’ve spent 34 years taking these neighborhoods and basically divesting them from the rest of America. We’ve embraced a permanent war of attrition against the underclass and it can’t work.

You know what’s reduced drug use in Baltimore? Crack cocaine, ’cause it kicked the living shit out of a generation of people, and now you got heroin addicts who consider themselves lucky because they’re not smoking crack. The fact remains: Violence and drug use would not be reduced in New York, Philadelphia, Washington or Baltimore in any respects because four or five separate mayors discover a new form of policing. It’s because something pharmacological happened.

And, of course, that theory is rarely explored in the media.

No, it’s great: When crime goes up, it’s not in our control. When it goes down, they jump in there taking credit. I’m real down on their drug war, and I’m approaching it from somebody who admires good police work.

Writing for a larger audience, do you feel you might be able to rectify some of these inequities, as opposed to when you were a journalist?

I don’t think anything’s gonna get better. I don’t buy in to that “We wrote a five-part series and now they’re gonna pass a law” — just so the law could fuck it up worse. I’m just trying to come to the campfire with a good story that feels very real. I think some people may have problems with ["The Wire"] because the expectation is of a cop show and of delivering either arrests or denouements at the end of every episode and basically exploring good and evil. Good and evil at this point bores the shit out of me.

“The Wire” distinguishes itself from a lot of other police shows with its down-and-dirty style. If you could put your finger on it, what’s the key to achieving that kind of verisimilitude?

As a reporter I made a point of getting out of the newsroom. And I tried to spend more time with the people who were getting policed. I think one of the things that makes this thing feel real is that the bad guys in most cop shows are basically fodder for the cops: They’re to be chewed on and spit out and rendered as archetypes. And I got no interest in that. Even the guys who have the capacity for being sociopaths have to be considered in human terms. It doesn’t mean you give ‘em a puppy, but it’s about making everybody whole. Cop shows don’t have room to do that. In one sense, the whole cop-show thing has been so calcified and entrenched that you basically have to take a chainsaw to it in people’s minds.

In doing research for both of these series ["The Wire" and "The Corner"], you spent time in some of the most dangerous housing projects in Baltimore. What was that like?

You know, I’m gonna sorta subvert that and say I’ve never had any real problem introducing myself to people anywhere in Baltimore or asking their help. I felt very little resistance to anything I tried to do or anywhere I tried to go in the city, and that goes back to my time at the Sun. It ain’t Beirut. We were treated as gracefully by people in some of these struggling places as I was in other parts of town. It has been so mythologized: People think you hop into your car and you immediately get ripped off, carjacked and shot three times in the head. I mean, we went to the same corner every day for a year and we got robbed once. It was by people who didn’t know us, who were from another neighborhood; they thought we were white guys trying to buy dope, so they thought they were gonna get money or some vials. I don’t want to go to the notion that I’m some fucking war correspondent.

Does dealing with bleak material ever get depressing for you?

The trick is to take what can become a calcified universe and try to find some new way to do it. It’s kinda like blues music, you know. There’s 12 bars. It’s all the same. But if you’re listening it’s not. “Homicide” was still a show where you felt like they [the police] were doing God’s work, and I don’t buy that in the drug war. I think it may have begun nobly enough as this crusade against dangerous drugs, but it’s become a war on the underclass. Wonderfully drawn as they were, you never felt that the guys in “Homicide” were anything but a band of brothers.

Not to open old wounds here, but was it tough to see “Homicide” fail to find a larger audience?

Yeah, I wanted that show to get attention ’cause I wanted to sell books. [NBC] didn’t understand what they had in terms of the tone of the show. They would have meetings with the people who do the promos and Tom [Fontana] would complain that they weren’t promo-ing the show. They would say, “Well, nobody’s chasing anybody, there’s no violence, there’s no gunfights, and there’s no ticking time bombs. What do you want us to promo, people talking to each other?” Well, yeah. [Laughs.]

The pilot of ["The Wire"] is very much the anti-pilot. The one thing it doesn’t have is that sense of, “Are you gonna watch this show now? Are ya? Huh? Huh? Huh? If you don’t come back we might kill this guy.” That’s what you have to do on network, ’cause if they don’t come back, you’re cancelled. On HBO it’s like, “We’re in it for the long haul. Tell the story in a smart way and we will bring people into the tent or we will die trying.”

What first drew you to the world of police officers? You seem to have an endless fascination with how these people interact in and out of the workplace.

I think they’re just wonderful vehicles for telling a story about the greater culture and the greater community. They intersect with every problem and foible and dysfunction that we have — and they’re compelled to react to that. I’m actually interested in a lot of different stuff, but I got stuck on the police beat. I wouldn’t try to write a TV show about something I didn’t know. I think it’s a very funny and absurd existence to be a cop in America, particularly in a big city.

What is the cardinal sin most writers commit with cop characters?

They make them care. I mean, do you believe McNulty cares?

To be honest, I don’t know. It’s pretty ambiguous, actually.

Exactly. I wanted it to be ambiguous and I think there’s a frightening aspect to McNulty, which is this: He cares about making the case, clearly. But does he care about the people he’s making it for? Does he care about West Baltimore? Is he connected to these people in any empathetic way? And I’m not going near that until viewers are ready to accept the absolute truth of all the cops I’ve known, which is, the best you can hope for from a really good cop is that he cares about the game. To a good homicide detective, the murder is an affront to his intellectual vanity, and I mean that in the best possible way. “This fucker did this murder, I caught it, and he thinks he’s fucking better than me. Fuck him. He’s about to find out.” That’s a good cop. He could be class-conscious, racist, homophobic, sexist and still wanna solve the murder.

One of the best detectives I knew in Baltimore was a racist. He’d catch 12 murderers a year and all the victims would be black. But if a black family moved in next door, he’d run the father through the computer to find out if he had charges. It’s who he was. Whenever the cop lifts the blanket and looks down at the body and says, “Jesus, what a waste” — they never say that. [Laughs.] They never fuckin’ say that. I think most cop shows think the guys are doing it because it fixes the neighborhood: “I care that the world gets better, therefore I police.” Bullshit. So I wanna jettison all that.

Do you hope, in some way, that your shows might help to reform the institutions they explore?

I’ll tell you what, this would be enough for me: The next time the drug czar or Ashcroft or any of these guys stands up and declares, “With a little fine-tuning, with a few more prison cells, and a few more lawyers, a few more cops, a little better armament, and another omnibus crime bill that adds 15 more death-penalty statutes, we can win the war on drugs” — if a slightly larger percentage of the American population looks at him and goes, “You are so full of shit” … that would be gratifying.

The only distinguishable thing about this summer’s “event” releases is their utter inertness — particularly those in the action department (“The Sum of All Fears,” “The Bourne Identity,” “Reign of Fire”). The problem is that not one of them has a real action star. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, two of the bigger names to appear in this season’s blockbusters, just don’t measure up.

Summer ’02 marks a mournful turning point in Hollywood. Where once stalwart, middle-aged movie icons like Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson firmly ruled the action roost, they’re now being phased out by a younger breed of screen heroes with twice the leg power — and half the charisma. These days, Ford and Gibson find themselves relegated to bloodless roles in spectacle-free vehicles like “K-19: The Widowmaker” (a waterlogged submarine opus) and “Signs” (another pretentious paranormal thriller via M. Night Shamaylan) — two films that almost make you forget about the bygone days of “Indiana Jones” and “Mad Max.” And, in yet another unholy Hollywood alliance, the decidedly unheroic Johnny Depp just inked a two-picture deal with inveterate action whore Jerry Bruckheimer, effectively squandering the indie cred he earned on personal films like “Dead Man” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” What truly makes this overthrow of yesteryear’s leading men so intolerable is that the actors leading the revolution possess none of the gravitas or virility of their predecessors. They’re emasculated by comparison.

In probably the most heretical bit of miscasting since stiff George Clooney filled Batman’s oversize codpiece, Paramount Pictures picked Ben Affleck to replace Ford as beleaguered CIA op Jack Ryan in “The Sum of All Fears,” the latest techno-thriller from Tom Clancy. In the trailers, Affleck delivers his lines with the same phlegmatic, phoned-in nonchalance that characterizes most of his performances. My guess is that here he’ll seem even more vanilla than usual since he’s paired opposite a class act like Morgan Freeman.

Then there’s Affleck’s bosom buddy/screenwriting enabler, Matt Damon, who’s toplining a spy thriller based on a novel by Robert Ludlum — one pulled out of the TV vaults, where it featured Richard Chamberlain. While casting against type paid off for “Spiderman‘s” Tobey Maguire, I find it hard to believe that audiences will buy a diminutive slice of milquetoast like Damon as a studly, world-class assassin.

Sure, there’s Vin Diesel, the pectorally protuberant star of the upcoming “XXX” (his mind-numbing follow-up to the equally mind-numbing “The Fast and the Furious”). But guys like Diesel and meatheads like the Rock are always going to be around. The problem is that the real action stars have all turned into sissies. Proof? Here are just a few films on the horizon guaranteed to make you steer clear of the multiplex:

“Superman Rocks”

Following the highly publicized defections of Nicolas Cage and Tim Burton, Warner Bros.’ oft-delayed plan to restart their dormant Superman franchise is finally taking flight. In a desperate bid to pander to a younger demographic (i.e., indiscriminate teenagers with disposable incomes), W.B. muckety-mucks signed America’s favorite nebbish, Jason Biggs, to don the Man of Steel’s cape. This casting faux pas ignited such a storm of controversy among die-hard fanboys, a radical sect calling itself “S.O.S.” (“Save Our Superman”) even threatened to kidnap Biggs unless his part was recast with an actor whose claim to fame isn’t having fucked a pie.

Not content to ruin one iconic comic character, hack director McG (“Charlie’s Angels,” those cheesy Sugar Ray videos) decided to round out the cast with fellow “American Pie” alums Tara Reid and Eugene “Mr. Overexposed” Levy (as Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, respectively). When asked why he put sandpaper-voiced ditz-pot Reid in the role of a hardened newspaper journalist, McG reportedly asked, “Did you see the ass on that girl?”

At press time, the producers of “Superman Rocks” find themselves locked in a fierce battle with the MPAA, which has branded the pic with a kid-spurning R rating. The bone of contention is a risqué scene in which Superman pops “a supersized stiffy” (as one character refers to it) while rescuing a buxom cheerleader from a falling goalpost. Also on the editing block are various and sundry gross-out references to “super splooge” and “Kryptonian carpet-munching.”

“Dirty Harry: The Turntable Murders”

Given the indefinite retirement of big-screen badasses like John McClane and Martin Riggs, the “renegade cop” genre has gradually gone the way of Mariah Carey’s acting career. Observing this void in the marketplace, Warner Bros. has set in motion plans to resurrect the granddaddy of rogue detectives, “Dirty” Harry Callahan.

After an exhaustive search to find someone who could do justice to Clint Eastwood’s creation, the studio went outside the box and ultimately settled on omnipresent electronica pusher Moby. Bowing to pressure from gun-control groups and anti-violence advocates, studio boss Alan Horn promises “a more humane and tolerant Dirty Harry designed for these sensitive times in which we live.”

At the behest of Moby, the screenplay underwent a complete overhaul, transforming Callahan from a Magnum-toting carnivore to a pacifistic vegetarian (not unlike Mr. Moby himself). “Vigilantism is so passé,” opined the chrome-domed musician at a recent press conference. “We’re gonna bring this prehistoric character into the new age, replete with a PETA card, an acceptance of minorities, a sunny disposition and a newfound appreciation for break beats.”

Although much of the plot remains cloaked in secrecy, we hear that the central story line revolves around a fanatical Motörhead groupie who is systematically bumping off San Francisco’s top nightclub DJs. “The filmmakers may consider that a crime … I consider it a public service,” said the jazz-loving Mr. Eastwood, who has since issued an injunction against W.B. to halt production on this cinematic travesty.

“Ebony and Ivory”

Having tackled just about every commercial genre in the book, from westerns to war films, iconoclast director Robert Altman is out to subvert the well-worn conventions of the interracial buddy flick. With his latest experiment in improvisation, Altman seems to be making a concerted effort to further alienate all those wayward Oscar voters who snubbed “Gosford Park.” How? By casting two of Tinseltown’s most gratingly obnoxious actors, Ed Burns and Chris Tucker, as a couple of mismatched secret agents out to expose an elaborate lip-synching scam orchestrated by none other than Enrique Iglesias (playing himself).

Between Burns’ intolerable Lawng Island accent and Tucker’s exasperating motormouth shtick, test audiences have fled the preview screenings in droves; many complained of permanent auditory damage.

Despite denials from all involved, rumors abound of a tumultuous shoot stemming from Burns’ insistence that he rewrite his own dialogue. Of the final script by Academy Award-winner William Goldman, the would-be auteur whines, “It just wasn’t up to the standards set by my films ‘The Brothers McMullen’ and ‘She’s the One.’” When questioned about the validity of Burns’ on-set petulance, Altman said only, “The problem with that kid is that he fancies himself some kind of artist. Well, after seeing his last couple pictures — all of which look and sound the same to me — I can tell you that he’s as much an artist as I am a goddamn Bush lover.”

“The Magnificent Six”

A feminist “reinterpretation” of John Sturges’ classic western about a ragtag group of gunfighters who join together to protect a Mexican village targeted by cutthroat bandits. This time around, the roles made famous by macho men Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner and James Coburn will be played by Tinseltown’s A-list lesbians.

Top-lined by Sapphic poster girl Ellen DeGeneres, the film also stars Melissa Etheridge, Sandra Bernhard and a freshly out Rosie O’Donnell. In a major casting coup, ex-talk show yenta Kathie Lee (Epstein) Gifford stars as the head bandita, an upstart clothing entrepreneur named Coco who kidnaps unsuspecting immigrants and coerces them into working in her suburban sweatshop.

Initially envisioned as an estrogen-soaked shoot-’em-up, “The Magnificent Six” changed direction once übermom O’Donnell came aboard the project. Appalled by all the “unnecessary fighting” and “obscene dirty talk,” the self-righteous queen of nice demanded that the pic be edited down to a PG rating so as not to offend her fainthearted fan base. As a result, all scenes involving blood, shooting and swearing were replaced with musical numbers from O’Donnell’s favorite Broadway shows, “Cats” and “Funny Lady.”

And as for the title change, director Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”) explains, “We only need six women to kick the kind of ass that seven men did in the first one. Ultimately, this movie is not so much about action as it is about the triumph and tenacity of the female will.”

James Bond in “Die Again … Twice”

Ever since Pierce Brosnan picked up the coveted mantle of 007, longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have taken great pains to neuter the world’s most beloved martini-guzzling misogynist in an effort to “modernize” him. As if seeing Mr. Bond get in touch with his “inner spy” weren’t blasphemous enough, now comes word that MGM has tapped openly gay actor Rupert Everett to replace the departing Brosnan — a franchise-killing move that has many 007 purists clamoring for the return of George Lazenby.

In defense of Everett, star of “The Next Best Thing” and “Inspector Gadget,” an MGM spokesperson says, “Rupert is an extremely versatile and talented actor whose sexuality has absolutely no bearing on his ability to play cinema’s quintessential alpha male.” Tell that to Internet film geeks like Harry Knowles, who are up in arms over one reputed scene in which Bond is captured by the villainous mastermind Hugo N. Blomee (Sir Ian McKellen) and tortured with a futuristic, overtly phallic contraption that discharges vibratory shockwaves of electricity up his posterior.

While the makers of “Die Again … Twice” are quick to play down its latent homoeroticism, that still hasn’t stopped them from releasing a teaser poster featuring Everett suggestively fondling the nozzle of his Walther PPK.

When reached for comment regarding this provocative change in James Bond’s screen persona, devout heterosexual Sean Connery issued the following statement: “If they want to turn him into a f****** queen – what the f*** do I care? Those stupid f****** a******* can kiss my royal Scottish a** for p****** on my legacy.”