And there at the top of the stairs is Leonardo DiCaprio, waiting to give me a great big kiss while Michael and Vanessa and Sacheen and the orchestra all applaud and beam their approval and –

Oh, uh, excuse me. Apparently about three and a quarter hours into last night’s Academy Awards I dozed off and mixed up the grand finale of “Titanic” with what was really on TV at that point: “Oscar’s Family Album,” another procession of smiling, familiar faces from the past, featuring everyone from Anne Bancroft to Teresa Wright. I wasn’t imagining Vanessa Redgrave, but instead of blathering about the Palestinians this time she just beamed benignly at her fellow “R,” Luise Rainer.

Listen, I’m not complaining. The Oscars should run long. They should also be smarmy, vulgar, over the top, dripping with sentiment and show biz feel-goodism and the occasional, truly leaden missed attempt at humor. (Dustin Hoffman’s pointlessly snickering innuendo about the meaning of the number “69″ took care of that within, I believe, the first hour.)

Truly, I enjoyed “Oscar’s Family Album,” not least because it offered a nice counterpoint to the annual salute to passed-on movie folk. Instead of “Oh, that’s right, he’s dead,” the thought inspired by this largest assemblage of Oscar-winning actors ever was a cheerier, “Gee, I didn’t know he was still alive.” It’s just that when the Oscars go much past three hours — and this one, of course, went way past — a person can’t be blamed for starting to hallucinate.

Still, the upbeat tone was refreshing. It’s a happy thing when the life achievement award winner, Stanley Donen, not only didn’t have one foot in the grave like so many life achievers, but was actually spry enough to perform a little tap dance. It’s inspiring when the geezers in attendance aren’t frail and pitiable but crankily vigorous. “It used to be much better organized,” grumbled Charlton Heston to an interviewer during the melee of the arrivals. An ungracious moment, certainly, but also kind of a peppy one.

Last night I even warmed to Billy Crystal, whom I normally find a rather irritating and self-important host. The “Titanic” loogie-in-the-face in the opening montage won me over, even though the mucous-evoking image was so nauseating I had to close my eyes and think of beautiful fields of flowers for a few minutes to keep from throwing up.

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed the Oscars. For one thing, they are that rare, special time when the whole stuffy concept of “Ms.” stays home and “Miss” is allowed to come, in all its retro finery, to the ball (“Please welcome a great actress, Miss Meg Ryan!”). Crystal did, absurdly, refer at one point to the girls in the wings handing out the Oscar statues as “the — (long, respectful pause) women.” But more in the Oscars spirit was Alec Baldwin, who in introducing the “L.A. Confidential” best picture clip, informed us cozily, “the girl in the picture is kinda cute too.”

When you watch them here in Los Angeles, as I always have, the Oscars make you feel like “this town” (to use the industry term) is your town. The awards bring people together. On Christmas friends and family call each other with season’s greetings. On Oscars night, during the commercials or tedious song numbers, Hollywood folk call each other with — well, last night, my friend and I had a long conversation about whether Kate Winslet was wearing shoulder pads or not, and if this was an attempt to make her shoulders seem wider than her hips.

This year felt even more small-towny than usual, since the outrage my daughter and all the other third-grade girls felt about “Titanic” heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio’s unnominated status was enhanced by the fact that Leonardo is truly a local boy. At this point I know more about Leonardo’s history here in the Los Feliz-Silverlake area than I’d ever hoped to (“He shops for groceries at Lucky’s!” “One of the teachers at school used to baby-sit him!” “When he visits his mom, sometimes they go to Lucky’s together!”).

So last night’s Oscars were colored by my daughter’s sulky We Wuz Robbed attitude whenever “Titanic” didn’t win something. “She shouldn’t keep saying ‘um,’” was her only comment on Helen Hunt’s rather gracious best actress acceptance speech. Never mind. I’m sure some 30 years from now she’ll remember all this with the rosy nostalgia I feel for Michael Jackson and “Ben.”

But to return, as we must, to “Titanic”: Even if it didn’t, as some observers had wagered, beat “Ben Hur’s” Oscar record, its record-tying 11 Academy Awards still made last night an almost thoroughly “Titanic” evening. Which was fine with me, because I was looking forward to seeing James Cameron’s rampant egomania in all its splendor and wasn’t disappointed. (Also, a plus was that the director did indeed keep his promise to thank my old pal Rod Lurie.)

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 1 came when he won the best film editing award. “Honey,” he said to his 5-year-old daughter watching at home, as he waggled the statuette at the camera, “this is the thing I was talking about. It’s called an Oscar, and it’s really cool to get.” A neat touch, that — puffed-up pride sugarcoated in a public display of preciousness.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 2, during the best director acceptance speech, took a while to develop. Several moments of gracious thanks all around — I began worriedly looking at my watch — and then (yes!) here it came, that full-throated shout: “I’M KING OF THE WORLD!” Only if he’d said, “I’M KING OF THE WORLD, MA,” would the moment have been more perfect.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 3 was perhaps the most in keeping with the true spirit of the Oscars. Almost four hours had passed, the longest awards ceremony within recent memory, yet Cameron had the nerve to extend it even more with a few moments of silence for the Titanic dead. (Oh yeah — them.) Only the most unfeeling, hardened wretches would resent going along with this — but come on, it was quarter to 10 already.

Well, Academy Awards producer Gil Cates resisted his probable temptation to yank Cameron off the stage with a hook and everyone was dutifully silent. Until, of course, the director ended it with that traditional benediction at the end of such prayerful moments: “NOW LET’S PARTY TILL DAWN!”

Can you blame me if I consider last night one of the best Oscars ever?

And there at the top of the stairs is Leonardo DiCaprio, waiting to give me a great big kiss while Michael and Vanessa and Sacheen and the orchestra all applaud and beam their approval and –

Oh, uh, excuse me. Apparently about three and a quarter hours into last night’s Academy Awards I dozed off and mixed up the grand finale of “Titanic” with what was really on TV at that point: “Oscar’s Family Album,” another procession of smiling, familiar faces from the past, featuring everyone from Anne Bancroft to Teresa Wright. I wasn’t imagining Vanessa Redgrave, but instead of blathering about the Palestinians this time she just beamed benignly at her fellow “R,” Luise Rainer.

Listen, I’m not complaining. The Oscars should run long. They should also be smarmy, vulgar, over the top, dripping with sentiment and show biz feel-goodism and the occasional, truly leaden missed attempt at humor. (Dustin Hoffman’s pointlessly snickering innuendo about the meaning of the number “69″ took care of that within, I believe, the first hour.)

Truly, I enjoyed “Oscar’s Family Album,” not least because it offered a nice counterpoint to the annual salute to passed-on movie folk. Instead of “Oh, that’s right, he’s dead,” the thought inspired by this largest assemblage of Oscar-winning actors ever was a cheerier, “Gee, I didn’t know he was still alive.” It’s just that when the Oscars go much past three hours — and this one, of course, went way past — a person can’t be blamed for starting to hallucinate.

Still, the upbeat tone was refreshing. It’s a happy thing when the life achievement award winner, Stanley Donen, not only didn’t have one foot in the grave like so many life achievers, but was actually spry enough to perform a little tap dance. It’s inspiring when the geezers in attendance aren’t frail and pitiable but crankily vigorous. “It used to be much better organized,” grumbled Charlton Heston to an interviewer during the melee of the arrivals. An ungracious moment, certainly, but also kind of a peppy one.

Last night I even warmed to Billy Crystal, whom I normally find a rather irritating and self-important host. The “Titanic” loogie-in-the-face in the opening montage won me over, even though the mucous-evoking image was so nauseating I had to close my eyes and think of beautiful fields of flowers for a few minutes to keep from throwing up.

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed the Oscars. For one thing, they are that rare, special time when the whole stuffy concept of “Ms.” stays home and “Miss” is allowed to come, in all its retro finery, to the ball (“Please welcome a great actress, Miss Meg Ryan!”). Crystal did, absurdly, refer at one point to the girls in the wings handing out the Oscar statues as “the — (long, respectful pause) women.” But more in the Oscars spirit was Alec Baldwin, who in introducing the “L.A. Confidential” best picture clip, informed us cozily, “the girl in the picture is kinda cute too.”

When you watch them here in Los Angeles, as I always have, the Oscars make you feel like “this town” (to use the industry term) is your town. The awards bring people together. On Christmas friends and family call each other with season’s greetings. On Oscars night, during the commercials or tedious song numbers, Hollywood folk call each other with — well, last night, my friend and I had a long conversation about whether Kate Winslet was wearing shoulder pads or not, and if this was an attempt to make her shoulders seem wider than her hips.

This year felt even more small-towny than usual, since the outrage my daughter and all the other third-grade girls felt about “Titanic” heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio’s unnominated status was enhanced by the fact that Leonardo is truly a local boy. At this point I know more about Leonardo’s history here in the Los Feliz-Silverlake area than I’d ever hoped to (“He shops for groceries at Lucky’s!” “One of the teachers at school used to baby-sit him!” “When he visits his mom, sometimes they go to Lucky’s together!”).

So last night’s Oscars were colored by my daughter’s sulky We Wuz Robbed attitude whenever “Titanic” didn’t win something. “She shouldn’t keep saying ‘um,’” was her only comment on Helen Hunt’s rather gracious best actress acceptance speech. Never mind. I’m sure some 30 years from now she’ll remember all this with the rosy nostalgia I feel for Michael Jackson and “Ben.”

But to return, as we must, to “Titanic”: Even if it didn’t, as some observers had wagered, beat “Ben Hur’s” Oscar record, its record-tying 11 Academy Awards still made last night an almost thoroughly “Titanic” evening. Which was fine with me, because I was looking forward to seeing James Cameron’s rampant egomania in all its splendor and wasn’t disappointed. (Also, a plus was that the director did indeed keep his promise to thank my old pal Rod Lurie.)

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 1 came when he won the best film editing award. “Honey,” he said to his 5-year-old daughter watching at home, as he waggled the statuette at the camera, “this is the thing I was talking about. It’s called an Oscar, and it’s really cool to get.” A neat touch, that — puffed-up pride sugarcoated in a public display of preciousness.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 2, during the best director acceptance speech, took a while to develop. Several moments of gracious thanks all around — I began worriedly looking at my watch — and then (yes!) here it came, that full-throated shout: “I’M KING OF THE WORLD!” Only if he’d said, “I’M KING OF THE WORLD, MA,” would the moment have been more perfect.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 3 was perhaps the most in keeping with the true spirit of the Oscars. Almost four hours had passed, the longest awards ceremony within recent memory, yet Cameron had the nerve to extend it even more with a few moments of silence for the Titanic dead. (Oh yeah — them.) Only the most unfeeling, hardened wretches would resent going along with this — but come on, it was quarter to 10 already.

Well, Academy Awards producer Gil Cates resisted his probable temptation to yank Cameron off the stage with a hook and everyone was dutifully silent. Until, of course, the director ended it with that traditional benediction at the end of such prayerful moments: “NOW LET’S PARTY TILL DAWN!”

Can you blame me if I consider last night one of the best Oscars ever?

And there at the top of the stairs is Leonardo DiCaprio, waiting to give me a great big kiss while Michael and Vanessa and Sacheen and the orchestra all applaud and beam their approval and –

Oh, uh, excuse me. Apparently about three and a quarter hours into last night’s Academy Awards I dozed off and mixed up the grand finale of “Titanic” with what was really on TV at that point: “Oscar’s Family Album,” another procession of smiling, familiar faces from the past, featuring everyone from Anne Bancroft to Teresa Wright. I wasn’t imagining Vanessa Redgrave, but instead of blathering about the Palestinians this time she just beamed benignly at her fellow “R,” Luise Rainer.

Listen, I’m not complaining. The Oscars should run long. They should also be smarmy, vulgar, over the top, dripping with sentiment and show biz feel-goodism and the occasional, truly leaden missed attempt at humor. (Dustin Hoffman’s pointlessly snickering innuendo about the meaning of the number “69″ took care of that within, I believe, the first hour.)

Truly, I enjoyed “Oscar’s Family Album,” not least because it offered a nice counterpoint to the annual salute to passed-on movie folk. Instead of “Oh, that’s right, he’s dead,” the thought inspired by this largest assemblage of Oscar-winning actors ever was a cheerier, “Gee, I didn’t know he was still alive.” It’s just that when the Oscars go much past three hours — and this one, of course, went way past — a person can’t be blamed for starting to hallucinate.

Still, the upbeat tone was refreshing. It’s a happy thing when the life achievement award winner, Stanley Donen, not only didn’t have one foot in the grave like so many life achievers, but was actually spry enough to perform a little tap dance. It’s inspiring when the geezers in attendance aren’t frail and pitiable but crankily vigorous. “It used to be much better organized,” grumbled Charlton Heston to an interviewer during the melee of the arrivals. An ungracious moment, certainly, but also kind of a peppy one.

Last night I even warmed to Billy Crystal, whom I normally find a rather irritating and self-important host. The “Titanic” loogie-in-the-face in the opening montage won me over, even though the mucous-evoking image was so nauseating I had to close my eyes and think of beautiful fields of flowers for a few minutes to keep from throwing up.

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed the Oscars. For one thing, they are that rare, special time when the whole stuffy concept of “Ms.” stays home and “Miss” is allowed to come, in all its retro finery, to the ball (“Please welcome a great actress, Miss Meg Ryan!”). Crystal did, absurdly, refer at one point to the girls in the wings handing out the Oscar statues as “the — (long, respectful pause) women.” But more in the Oscars spirit was Alec Baldwin, who in introducing the “L.A. Confidential” best picture clip, informed us cozily, “the girl in the picture is kinda cute too.”

When you watch them here in Los Angeles, as I always have, the Oscars make you feel like “this town” (to use the industry term) is your town. The awards bring people together. On Christmas friends and family call each other with season’s greetings. On Oscars night, during the commercials or tedious song numbers, Hollywood folk call each other with — well, last night, my friend and I had a long conversation about whether Kate Winslet was wearing shoulder pads or not, and if this was an attempt to make her shoulders seem wider than her hips.

This year felt even more small-towny than usual, since the outrage my daughter and all the other third-grade girls felt about “Titanic” heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio’s unnominated status was enhanced by the fact that Leonardo is truly a local boy. At this point I know more about Leonardo’s history here in the Los Feliz-Silverlake area than I’d ever hoped to (“He shops for groceries at Lucky’s!” “One of the teachers at school used to baby-sit him!” “When he visits his mom, sometimes they go to Lucky’s together!”).

So last night’s Oscars were colored by my daughter’s sulky We Wuz Robbed attitude whenever “Titanic” didn’t win something. “She shouldn’t keep saying ‘um,’” was her only comment on Helen Hunt’s rather gracious best actress acceptance speech. Never mind. I’m sure some 30 years from now she’ll remember all this with the rosy nostalgia I feel for Michael Jackson and “Ben.”

But to return, as we must, to “Titanic”: Even if it didn’t, as some observers had wagered, beat “Ben Hur’s” Oscar record, its record-tying 11 Academy Awards still made last night an almost thoroughly “Titanic” evening. Which was fine with me, because I was looking forward to seeing James Cameron’s rampant egomania in all its splendor and wasn’t disappointed. (Also, a plus was that the director did indeed keep his promise to thank my old pal Rod Lurie.)

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 1 came when he won the best film editing award. “Honey,” he said to his 5-year-old daughter watching at home, as he waggled the statuette at the camera, “this is the thing I was talking about. It’s called an Oscar, and it’s really cool to get.” A neat touch, that — puffed-up pride sugarcoated in a public display of preciousness.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 2, during the best director acceptance speech, took a while to develop. Several moments of gracious thanks all around — I began worriedly looking at my watch — and then (yes!) here it came, that full-throated shout: “I’M KING OF THE WORLD!” Only if he’d said, “I’M KING OF THE WORLD, MA,” would the moment have been more perfect.

James Cameron Rampant Egomania Moment No. 3 was perhaps the most in keeping with the true spirit of the Oscars. Almost four hours had passed, the longest awards ceremony within recent memory, yet Cameron had the nerve to extend it even more with a few moments of silence for the Titanic dead. (Oh yeah — them.) Only the most unfeeling, hardened wretches would resent going along with this — but come on, it was quarter to 10 already.

Well, Academy Awards producer Gil Cates resisted his probable temptation to yank Cameron off the stage with a hook and everyone was dutifully silent. Until, of course, the director ended it with that traditional benediction at the end of such prayerful moments: “NOW LET’S PARTY TILL DAWN!”

Can you blame me if I consider last night one of the best Oscars ever?

3. Clueless Young Things, easily identified by their favorite phrase, the lilting “… and where can I get a copy of your magazine?”

Then there’s Michael Levine. I’ve never been able to categorize Michael Levine, even though in the ’80s he was for a while needled monthly in the old Spy magazine as the quintessential Hollywood flack. In the past couple of years, however, he’s managed to make his monthly Los Angeles Media Roundtable dinners a prized invitation among journalists, who are normally dismissive of invitations from press agents. And it’s not just the free food either, although of course with the press you should never underestimate the importance of that.

Tall, with silvery blond hair, the stepson of gossip columnist Marilyn Beck, Levine cultivates the slick demeanor of a Hollywood man-about-town. He’s generally seen at social events with a different babelike young actress. Once one of these girls got a little overexcited and started prattling loudly in my direction about “Generation X articles” and how “we should have coffee some time!”

“I must apologize for my date,” Levine said later. “I was going for the visual.”

But all that aside, Michael Levine is more than a publicist — more than even, as he’s sometimes described in the press, a “superpublicist.” He’s one of Hollywood’s grand eccentrics.

A while ago, he decided we should have lunch. Although we had exchanged few words prior to that meeting, he dispensed with the small talk and began right away with a line of intense questioning:

“If a man calls you up for a date on a Sunday evening,” Levine asked, “is it a big deal for you to get a baby sitter? And should the man pay for the baby sitter?”

“Uh …” I said.

“Because I don’t think a woman should make it a big deal,” he said. “And don’t you agree,” he added, leaning forward intently, “that the biggest favor you could do for your daughter would be to find her another father?”

“Well, uh …”

We also talked about his idea for raising money for a Statue of Responsibility, a sort of Los Angeles bookend to New York’s Statue of Liberty. And about how he was thinking of volunteering to be a Jewish Big Brother.

“That’s really nice!” I said.

“But the thing is,” he added, “I’d rather be a Big Brother to a girl.”

Levine Communications Office of Beverly Hills is known for its high-volume, regularly changing roster of up-and-coming personalities, anchored by the loyal, rocklike presence of Charlton Heston, a client for 15 years. Thus it occupies a unique niche in the world of Hollywood press agentry, which tends to focus on cultivating a few high-profile cash cows.

But unlike many of his fellows, Levine is not known for being nasty. His method of dealing with calls from the press could perhaps best be described as deeply psychotherapized. It’s a tone that’s echoed in a little book of aphorisms he published three years ago when he turned 40, called “Lessons at the Halfway Point: Wisdom for Midlife.”

Some of the lessons: “Truth is like ammonia on a dirty windshield”; “The weirdest dream I ever had involved being stuck in an elevator with Shari Lewis and Lambchop”; and “One night, to relieve some tension, I drew up a list of people I’d kill if they weren’t already dead.”

He makes a point of returning all calls the same day. “Mr. Solters, in his wisdom, decided that being belligerent to the media was the way to go,” Levine says. “I don’t happen to feel there’s ever any reason for being impolite. I feel the tunnel between the publicist and the media should be clean, well-lit and well-traveled.”

Which brings us back to his Los Angeles Media Roundtable. Two years ago, Levine was thinking about a line that had always irritated him in his favorite movie, “Annie Hall,” the one about how the only cultural advantage to Los Angeles is the ability to make a right turn on a red light. The dinners, says Levine, “grew out of my constant annoyance at Los Angeles being crapped on as an intellectual desert.”

At these dinners, journalists (mixed with a smattering of lawyers, politicians, business leaders and, for some reason, the odd plastic surgeon or dermatologist) get together and, off the record, complain loudly to each other about the state of things in general. A big attraction is the four-course meal at Campanile, probably the best restaurant in town.

Still, in the beginning, “No one wanted to come — not even my own staff,” says Levine. Now there are three or four people hoping to be invited for every seat that’s available. Of course, the popularity of any given dinner depends on the guest of honor. Sometimes it’s just an editor from a local publication, which can be a tough sell.

But in the past two years, guests of honor have included movie producer Robert Evans, Variety editor in chief Peter Bart, Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, ousted Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams, good old Charlton Heston and — at last week’s dinner — O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden.

I can’t tell you what’s said at these events, because they’re off the record. But based on my experience (which is to say, two dinners) someone will always deliver an uplifting monologue about volunteering with inner-city children. And someone else (OK, that would be me) will deliver a rather tactless opinion — like how watching TV news rots your brain, even though the table might include (OK, did include) several TV news people.

But Michael Levine says he welcomes such outspoken opinion. “I like the way you participated,” he told me later. Then he leaned forward and said, with quiet intensity, “So … are you plantable?” Match me, Sidney, what a “Sweet Smell of Success” moment! But, to get back to my publicist categories, maybe that’s what kind of a publicist Michael Levine is: a Sidney Falco for the ’90s.

But after spending some time in Movielineland, I’ve come to rather admire the magazine for the way it rudely deconstructs the pretenses of entertainment journalism. Joe Queenan, who a couple of years ago collected many of his Movieline pieces into the aptly named book, “If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble,” describes the problem with the typical “sucking off” celebrity profile:

“Life isn’t like that,” he tells me, using as a generic example “the story that ends with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger driving off to spend time with the kids, when they’re probably really on their way to shoot pool or something.” Journalists, Queenan adds, tend to be quite attached to these neat, omniscient conventions.

Not at Movieline.

The core value of any Movieline profile is its transparency: The interviewer takes the reader by the hand through the process (sometimes clearly frustrating, always falsely intimate) of making movie stars reveal themselves — which not infrequently resembles poking a small animal with a sharp stick.

Here’s Martha Frankel, for instance, trying to get young dreamboat-of-the-moment Matt Damon to talk about his love life in the December/January issue. (Frankel had noticed, during a snooping foray while Damon was on the phone, a framed photo of the actor and his “Good Will Hunting” co-star Minnie Driver in the hotel room:)

“So, is it true that you fell in love with Claire Danes on the set of ‘The Rainmaker?’” I ask …

“Sure, who wouldn’t? She’s fabulous.”

“So, both girlfriends have been actresses … I’m leery of actors being together.”

Damon gives me a blank look.

“Claire Danes was your girlfriend, right?” I ask. Damon leans over and smacks my arm and says, “No, she’s only 18.” As if that’s ever stopped anyone before.

Another thing I like about Movieline is that every issue seems to contain at least one reference to celebrity genitalia. It took me a while to find this in the current issue, distracted as I was by the weird child-rearing philosophy of “X-Files” star Gillian Anderson, the mother of a 3-year-old, who confided to interviewer Stephen Rebello: “I think it’s good that my daughter can look at a man who’s got blood running out of his eyeballs and be compassionate, not terrified.”

But — at last! — here it is. The ubiquitous Rebello (he has three interviews in this issue, which is pretty typical) manages to work in a disparaging, intended-to-provoke remark about Harvey Keitel’s nudity in a profile of Sam Neill, who of course co-starred with Keitel in “The Piano.” Neill’s cool refusal to play along — “Hmm … Did you see Harvey’s willy in ‘The Piano?’ I didn’t. I guess I must have blinked” — contrasts nicely with fish-in-a-barrel Anderson.

Rebello, a slender, soft-spoken man who used to be a shrink, has a real knack for getting people to talk about themselves. Often, like Anderson, they end up sounding like idiots; sometimes, like Neill, they know how to avoid it. But they will open up. If they try not to, the smarm hits the fan: “I just wanted to warn you,” the reticent Neill informs Rebello, “I’m not very much fun.” “For our readers, then,” Rebello responds, “I’ll be fun and you just go ahead and be Sam. Deal?”

Film critic David Thomson, who also writes for Esquire and the Independent in London, is probably Movieline’s highest-brow contributor. The magazine recently hosted a reception for Thomson and his new book, “Beneath Mulholland” (Knopf), which includes many pieces originally published in Movieline. “It is a strange combination of the tone and some of the ploys of the tabloid press, fused with a very marked insider knowledge,” Thomson says. “The thing I like about it is that it comes out of Los Angeles and, historically, surprisingly few film magazines have” — like the old fan magazine Photoplay, of which Movieline is something of a camp version.

Much of the magazine’s bitchy, kitsch-loving sensibility is due to co-editor-in-chief Ed Margulies, who’s actually been out on disability for more than a year but still contributes to the “Bad Movies We Love” feature he created. Now solely in charge editorially is co-editor in chief Virginia Campbell, who came from the Rand Corporation think tank.

Movieline began life in 1985 as an unprepossessing newsprint giveaway, with a controlled circulation of around 100,000, distributed free in movie theaters and picked up for its listings. The magazine was the brainchild of Soviet Russian imigri Anne Volokh, a journalist who moved to Los Angeles in 1975 with her computer scientist husband and two sons, then ages 7 and 2. Movieline became a paid glossy in 1989, and roared right through the recession of the early ’90s to the circulation of 265,000 it enjoys today.

“I love to look at our (audited) statement, because every quarter it goes up,” purrs Volokh, who is the magazine’s president and executive publisher. Both in demeanor and accent she brings to mind a brunet Zsa Zsa Gabor. Smoking nonstop in her upstairs parlor-cum-screening room at home in Beverly Hills, about 10 minutes north of Movieline headquarters, she pauses to take a call from “Sasha darling,” a favorite jewelry saleswoman. “She is Bulgarian,” Volokh notes equably, “which goes to show it doesn’t matter where you come from.”

Movieline has plenty of enemies in Hollywood. But often as not, they come around. Two movie studios pulled their advertising because of offensive articles. “The first one came back, the second didn’t,” Volokh shrugs. A few years ago, Queenan wrote a devastatingly funny critique of Oliver Stone in the magazine; the director remained stung enough by it to complain, “You hate me” to Volokh when he ran into her at a party earlier this year.

“No, no, no,” Volokh corrected him smoothly, “we do not hate you; we have opinions.” She invited Stone to give his side of the story in a Q&A interview for Movieline. “We do not need to agree with you, Oliver, but as long as it is a strong opinion, we will print it.” The two-part interview appeared in the October and November issues, and Stone came off as … well, as Oliver Stone, calling Pauline Kael “an elitist bag lady,” and explaining that a crew member who attacked him on one film “was fucking my lead actress and … was jealous of me.”

Volokh was pleased. “Blandness and monotony are rather intensely disliked here,” she says, puffing on her cigarette, “both in this house and in the office.”

There are those who find the flamboyance of both the magazine and its creator forced and annoying. “The only assignment I ever turned down was one from Movieline called ‘Who’s a Good Fuck In Hollywood?’” says a freelance writer I know. In fact, Movieline’s fast, unusual rise has spawned rumors that it’s backed by the Russian mafia — rumors that cause Volokh to burst out laughing. “Oh, no, I haven’t heard that!” she says delightedly. “But of course, we got here before the Russian mafia existed. I have heard, ‘Oh, the Volokhs, they became so successful so fast, it must have been drug money.’”

Actually, it was software money. The Volokhs’ eldest son, Eugene, now 29, was a child prodigy who founded a software firm with his father, Vladimir, at the age of 12. He graduated from UCLA at 15 and is now a law professor there. He often contributes weighty opinion pieces to the Los Angeles Times. People who see Eugene’s name in the Times often assume he’s the father of his younger brother, Sasha, who’s 23 and a policy analyst for a libertarian think tank.

Young Sasha also usually operates the VCR at his mother’s regular “coffee and clips” evenings, in which she invites film directors and others to dine on rich desserts and bring their favorite three-to-five-minute excerpts from films. But at the one I attended Sasha was off in South America. Anne had his number handy in case she ran into trouble with the machine; however, all went smoothly.

Among the dozen or so guests were artist David Hockney, directors Ron Shelton and Cameron Crowe, actresses Nina Foch and Lolita Davidovich and, from the Movieline staff, editor in chief Campbell and writer Rebello. Clips ranged from the beginning of Fellini’s generally panned “And the Ship Sails On” (courtesy of Hockney: The reviewers, he said, just didn’t get it) to a drunken scene, from “Jerry Maguire” director Crowe, out of Billy Wilder’s “Love in the Afternoon.”

Volokh chose a short ladies’-room conversation between Gene Tierney and Judith Anderson from “Laura.” There was a brief murmur of appreciation about the stylized dialogue from the guests after the clip ended.

“People just don’t talk that way anymore,” remarked Campbell.

“They do at Movieline,” said Rebello.