Here is how they think — and how they are likely to vote:

Best supporting actress

This is the category where the voters try to demonstrate they’re not just the media’s pawns. It’s also where old scores are settled, ingénues anointed and plain idiotic decisions are made. For instance, Lauren Bacall has been a disliked figure in Hollywood for seemingly eons, so the academy ignored the critics who touted her as a sure thing in this category and refused her an Oscar for “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

Or take Mira Sorvino: Given her lousy taste in roles and even lousier on-set behavior, voters may be ruing their encouragement of her for “Mighty Aphrodite.” And how Kim Basinger won for “L.A. Confidential” when the voters could only judge her on at most a dozen lines of dialogue is nonsensical: They apparently felt bad for her because she was married to that train wreck, Alec Baldwin.

This year, voters see Kate Winslet and Marisa Tomei as actresses who each had high-profile starts but then became nonpersons. Besides, Tomei and Maggie Smith already have Oscars. Which is why this race is between Helen Mirren and Jennifer Connelly.

The academy likes actor’s actors of “a certain age.” On the other hand, Mirren’s still best known in this country not for movies but for the TV series “Prime Suspect.” Sorry, but they see TV as declassé.

Which is why Connelly will win. Not only is she gorgeous and grateful, but more important, she has handled herself appropriately while campaigning on Leno et al. As ridiculous as it sounds, that counts for a lot to the Academy.

Best supporting actor

Forget Ethan Hawke — he’s already lucky to have Uma Thurman as a wife, in the view of voters. And discount Jon Voight because the Academy will be blaming him for years for having been responsible for that hell-on-wheels Angelina Jolie. Though Ben Kingsley gave the year’s best supporting performance, it doesn’t matter: To voters, he will always be that guy in the diaper.

So now it’s down to Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent. Surprisingly, McKellen isn’t given much credit for being openly gay. But everyone knows he was robbed in 1998 when he should have won for either “Gods and Monsters” or “Apt Pupil.” But even voters were impressed by the way he elevated “X Men” with his portrayal of Magneto.

McKellen would be a sure thing if it weren’t for Broadbent’s appearance in this category as well. Voters and critics fell all over themselves to reward “Enchanted April” and “Topsy Turvy,” two films where Broadbent excelled. And the Academy clearly loved “Iris” because, for this mostly geriatric membership, a movie about Alzheimer’s hits close to home. It’s almost a dead heat, but Broadbent wins.

Best director

David Lynch is not just the dark horse in this category; the voters barely know who he is. And Ridley Scott’s nomination comes on the heels of his sweep last year for “Gladiator.” Although Peter Jackson is now on the radar of the voters, they won’t reward him for the first movie in a three-film series: too risky, since it’s still possible that No. 2 or No. 3 could be stinkers.

Which leaves Robert Altman and Ron Howard. Altman has the Bacall problem: He pissed off a lot of industry people in his very long career, and that haunts him even now. In a fair world, Altman would win. But this is Hollywood, a more vicious version of high school. The voters will compromise with Howard: Even though he’s the class president and football quarterback, he’s still liked by them because he’s bald.

But if Howard doesn’t win, then the membership is sending him the same message they sent Steven Spielberg for years: Surprise us with a departure from your usual saccharine directing style. Howard has yet to make his “Schindler’s List.”

Best actress

According to one of her minions, Renée Zellweger has been AWOL during this Oscar campaign because she convinced herself she couldn’t win. Too bad, because the voters really like her. Nicole Kidman could have milked her “this was a really awful year for me personally” status but didn’t, so Academy tears have dried for her. Besides, they resent the fact she’s now loaded thanks to Tom Cruise divorcing her.

More Academy members have told me they’ve voted for Judi Dench in “Iris” than anyone else in this category for the same tasteless Alzheimer’s joke I made before. Could signal a trend. But then again, Dench won an Oscar too recently.

That leaves Sissy Spacek vs. Halle Berry. Both want it, both campaigned like heck for it and both will be appropriately humble. But Spacek is too much of a loner: She lives with her family in a place that’s not Hollywood or New York and hasn’t been around to suck up to Academy members.

Berry is considered too new, too beautiful and too white (yes, that matters to the Academy if you’re a black actress). That car accident didn’t help, nor did the announcement that she’s the next Bond girl. Still, she’d have been the shoo-in if she’d only dressed up in the movie like a man. But she’s paid so much homage to Oscar these past weeks that it’s impossible for the academy to ignore her. She wins.

Best actor

Every year, it seems, the academy honors Sean Penn with a nomination, and every year he doesn’t win. This is a case where they love his work but hate him. Few voters sat all the way through “Ali,” so Will Smith never had a prayer. And Tom Wilkinson is still unknown to the Academy, so he’s out of contention as well.

The membership already has called several strikes against Russell Crowe: He won last year, he behaved badly at the British Academy Awards (pushing around people, though apologizing for it), and he dumped that darling Meg Ryan — though perhaps after her noisy role in “Kate and Leopold,” they forgive him now.

But Crowe is the new Brando, warts and all, and the voters can’t deny talent.

That, too, is true of Denzel Washington, who is Crowe’s only competition. He may mouth off about race much too often for the Academy’s comfort, but this year’s Oscar nominations show it’s cool to be black. So Denzel has an edge on Crowe there. But Crowe will pull it out in the end because he’s got the ultimate Oscar sucker punch: He plays — sniff, sniff — a man with a terrible infirmity. Unbeatable.

Best picture

“In the Bedroom” went into Oscar’s early contest with the usual Miramax hoopla. But now voters have had time to see the movie and decide it didn’t live up to the hype. “Gosford Park” also suffered from viewing; it wasn’t quite as much fun as everyone in the Academy had been led to believe.

“Lord of the Rings” was not as familiar to voters as it was to moviegoers; the advanced age of the Academy’s membership meant they did not have Tolkien on their must-reading lists as teens. That Baz Luhrmann was aced out of a best director’s nomination has actually helped “Moulin Rouge” win voter sympathy in these final weeks of Oscar campaigning. But the critical response to the movie was mixed, and the Academy is wary of such nonuniformity.

That wasn’t the case with “A Beautiful Mind,” which received lots of rave reviews — though naysayers complained that it was an untruthful biopic.

Still, more times than not, one movie sweeps the Oscars, and that’s a likely possibility for “A Beautiful Mind.” If it doesn’t, then the voters really were swayed by all the rival studio backbiting against “Mind” in the media and on the Internet.

But I still don’t think the choice will be the epic “Lord of the Rings” or the flashy “Moulin Rouge.” The Academy is a sap for simple stories that say something about the human spirit. So “Mind” wins.

At stake is the integrity of a process that purports to honor Hollywood but that now dishonors everyone and everything associated with it. Even on its own Web site, the motion picture academy bizarrely boasts about “Oscar Fever” as “an election campaign commencing that rivals, at least in Hollywood, the passions and sometimes the excesses of the quadrennial race for the nation’s presidency.”

Given the gazillions of dollars spent to make and market the world’s most exportable cultural product, the film industry’s governing body owes a guarantee of a fair and honest contest to the estimated 1 billion people in as many as 150 countries who will watch Sunday’s 74th annual Oscar telecast.

But it’s only entertainment: Who cares?

Evidence is abundant that the worldwide moviegoing public is not just aware of this Academy Award campaigning thanks to the Internet but consumed by it. A startled Canadian newspaper columnist covering this year’s pre-Oscar scandals recently wrote about receiving a deluge of e-mails and letters from as far away as Taiwan.

Even in this country, there was a national howl over the 1950s corruption of the TV quiz shows. Yet as the motion picture academy allows its international awards spectacle to be increasingly manipulated by a small clique of movie and media professionals, its own outcry is barely above whispering level.

True, the academy every so often amends its rules to try to contain an ever more creative series of cunning and calculated Oscar campaign maneuvers. But this is at best a Band-Aid approach. What’s needed from the academy is more the regulatory equivalent of a full-body cast.

Here are my suggested reforms, which could be enacted immediately by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to untarnish their golden boy.

1) Tame the cash monster

Every year, it’s the same complaint by the movie and media elite: Too much money is spent on Oscar campaigns. And, just as in politics, the argument can be made that the money perverts the election process. But the counterargument follows that there’s no way to control what studios, production companies, distributors and sometimes even the talent themselves spend to push their product or performance for an Academy Award. On the one hand, there’s the free-speech, free-market dilemma. On the other, there’s the controversy over why it’s impossible to know specifically how much is spent to promote a movie for an Oscar, and how much is spent to promote the movie in general.

Given that only movies shown during a given calendar year are eligible for Academy Awards consideration, it would stand to reason that the film industry would spend all its general promotion and advertising dollars by Dec. 31. Not so. Even on its own Web site, the motion picture academy establishes that Oscar campaigning kicks off each November and continues through the day in March of the next year when final ballots are due.

For instance, certain pictures in December are platformed (translation: shown in just one or two major markets, usually New York and Los Angeles) in order to be eligible for the Academy Awards, but then aren’t opened wide (translation: in a theater near you) until after Jan. 1. In other cases, Oscar-eligible movies that opened earlier in the year now have video and DVD versions hitting the marketplace after Jan. 1. And none of this includes the various contractual obligations, made to satisfy the egos of “talent,” that force studios and others to spend large amounts on Oscar promotion for even the year’s worst films.

Given the money murkiness, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stands idly by watching the spending levels soar. But even allowing the studios their free hand with general promotion, there is indeed a way for the Academy of Arts and Sciences to place a specific cap Oscar campaign spending. The key lies in the registered trademarks and copyrights owned by the governing body for phrases like “Oscar,” “Academy Awards,” “Oscar Night” or the statuette itself.

All the academy has to do is enact new rules differentiating between general media publicity and Oscar-targeted media publicity between Nov. 1 and the following March, and then decide on a set maximum figure for Oscar-specific promotion to be spent on any one film. This differentiation could run the gamut from network TV, cable, radio, newspaper, magazine, and Internet advertising to media kits, books, toys, gadgets and all the other ancillary crap that pours out of Hollywood only to end up in landfills or on eBay.

Since most of this campaigning is concentrated on academy voting members living in Hollywood and New York, a small team of academy-hired accountants could easily keep track of the spending for every film (this year there were 248 eligible feature-length films) — although admittedly it does get trickier when those big media companies employ synergistic cross-promotions for their movies.

On the simplest level, say a studio buys a full-page ad in the New York Times for “Big Budget Extravaganza” on Jan. 15. If anywhere in that ad, the registered trademarks and/or copyrighted property belonging to the academy are mentioned or pictured, then the media buy counts as Oscar campaigning. If not, it’s general publicity. (To work, this would have to include publicity containing quotes from film journalists and critics that mention the academy’s trademarks and/or copyrighted property.)

Penalties for going over budget would be determined by the academy, which needs to put more teeth in its punishments anyway. Simply taking away Oscar ceremony tickets isn’t that big a deal: Most people in the industry dread sitting through that interminable show anyway and welcome any excuse to miss it. But threatening to remove a film from Oscar consideration might not be too draconian.

2) The buck stops where?

The nanosecond that the final Academy Award envelope is opened and the best picture announced, the jockeying for the next year’s Oscar officially begins. After all, key ad placement for the Hollywood trade papers is practically booked the day after. By summer, strategies are at full throttle. In the fall, hours if not weeks of discussions take place among film company executives, producers, agents, managers, lawyers and publicists about which talent should be nominated in which categories. And so on, ad nauseam.

It is understandable, then, that Oscar campaign teams are bigger than Third World armies, consisting not just of in-house publicity machines but outside public relations and marketing consultants or agencies ranging from one-man offices to worldwide combines.

Depending on who won and who lost last time out, the best and brightest of these promoters-for-hire are put under contract within days of the Oscar telecast. It’s the same clique year after year. Some are young and hungry go-getters who attack Oscar with the same no-holds-barred manner that wild animals go after fresh meat. Others are geriatric flacks whose heydays were in decades past, who can’t see a film all the way through without catnapping, and who are employed merely because they’re contemporaries of the geezers who make up a too-substantial portion of the academy’s 5,732 voting members.

In recent years, whenever a studio has been accused of an Oscar campaigning sin — like bad-mouthing someone else’s picture or floating a false rumor — the first response has been deny, deny, deny. Then it’s blame, blame, blame. Inevitably that falls first on the executive who complained about it, or the journalist who uncovered it, instead of the person who committed it. Too often, the culprit is an outside independent contractor demonstrating what is described as “overzealousness.” An apology usually follows.

As a result, the studios’ paid outside agitators promulgate a vicious cycle of dirty tricks, while the executives get to keep their hands clean. At the very least, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should decree that each moviemaker is responsible for the actions of everybody on a film’s payroll, including anyone who transgresses. In other words, the movie’s studio will be penalized even if wrongdoing is unmasked by an outside independent contractor. In a situation where two films may be involved — say an actress hires a personal publicist to campaign for her performances in two movies she appeared in that year — both studios must accept punishment. Part of the penalty assessed must include a public announcement of the wrongdoing to the media.

If this sounds like a sneaky way to start limiting the use of outside publicists and marketers in Oscar campaigns, it is. Sure, they’re allowed to earn a living just like everyone else, but some are truly out of control. It’s time to rein them in — and the only way to do that is to make the studio that hired them pay for their mistakes.

3) Those who vote must also sit and watch

You might think that, given the film industry’s reputation for cutting-edge technology, the academy would by now have developed a foolproof system to ensure that its members have properly screened all the Oscar-eligible feature films. In fact, there’s none in place.

Instead, the academy lulled itself into a false sense of security by agreeing that its voting membership can judge the movies by watching them on videocassette, and now on DVD, in the comfort of their homes, instead of in the theaters where they were intended to be viewed. I know too many Academy members who all last year did not set foot into a cineplex — not because of age or infirmity but because of laziness and privilege. This noxious habit of judging Oscar worthiness based on how a movie plays on a TV screen is an affront to the motion picture art form.

The videocasettes were first allowed in order to encourage academy voters to see as many of the eligible films as possible. It hasn’t worked. At least during an academy-sponsored theater screening, voters must overcome the public shame of walking out in the middle of a film in front of their academy colleagues; but in the privacy of a voter’s home, who’s to know if that videocassette was ejected after 10 minutes, or even never put into the VCR at all?

Then there’s the problem that all the cassettes descend on the voters all at once. With this year’s 248 eligible feature-length films, that could mean as many as 100 or more videos (not every moviemaker can afford this Oscar campaign perk) to watch in just over six weeks’ time — difficult even without the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Thanks to this glaring failure, the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes may well be fairer than the Oscars. The time has come to make the judging process as rigorous as the ballot-counting process.

The academy already has taken baby steps in this direction. For instance, it cleaned up the nominating process in its short film and documentary categories. (Sources tell me that, at one point, the situation was so bad that academy members voting on documentaries would arrive at the theater with flashlights, then shine them 15 minutes into the running time of an entrant in a sort of Gong Show-like yea or nay on whether the screening should continue.)

The academy needs to devise a high-tech way of policing its members. Smart cards with photo IDs could ensure that all the movies were screened by each academy voter. Videocassettes and DVDs could feature special chips that tattle on anyone trying to take shortcuts. The videocassettes or DVD could be distributed all year long, as soon as the eligible movies open, in order to space them out for the benefit of voters.

Alternately, there’s the most obvious solution of all: demand that voters see the movies in real movie theaters, where big-screen epics will be seen as they deserve to be, and attendance can be taken.

4) Formalize the ballot

A rash of rumors swirls every year about Oscar voting irregularities. These range from unsubstantiated scandals about down-on-their-luck academy members selling their votes to the highest bidding studio, or just handing over their unmarked ballots for promises of employment, to less tawdry tales about assistants voting for the boss, or kids marking up Dad’s ballot.

Too much doubt and suspicion already undermine Oscar results. Who hasn’t heard the urban legend that Marisa Tomei’s name was said by mistake and someone else really won in her best supporting actress category? (Not true.)

Just as in a political election (or for that matter, the recent Screen Actors’ Guild debacle), the more safeguards the better, even when it concerns Oscar. The academy should stop letting its members fill out the ballots so informally. Instead, it should set up polling centers around the country and overseas so it can confirm each voter’s identity and ensure that each voter fills out his or her ballot. This needs to be done for both nominations and final balloting. Members unable to go to the polls two years in a row would lose their voting status.

5) Justice, Oscar-style

Spokesmen for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences repeatedly tell reporters that its honchos only investigate Oscar wrongdoing if they learn about it, and that in most cases they depend on journalists to alert them to it. But so far this year, despite all the Oscar trash-talking in the media, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences remains near-mute — save for one “Important Note” published on its official Web site from the board of governors:

“This year as in the past, you may be importuned by advertisements, promotional gifts, dinner invitations and other lobbying tactics in an attempt to solicit your vote.

“Though the crude solicitations that occasionally surfaced in early years seem to be a thing of the past, we would ask each individual Academy member to be on guard against inappropriate attempts to influence your vote, and to register your displeasure with anyone who might make such an attempt.

“The more emphatically that all of us can convey to the industry and the wider public that excellence in filmmaking is the ONLY factor we consider on casting our Academy Award votes, the more reason the world will have to respect our judgment.”

Pathetic, no? Time and time again, the academy has fought for its registered trademarks and copyrighted property and broadcast show more fiercely than it ever has for the Oscar process. There are the annual brouhahas over who is daring to sell a statuette, or which advertising is inappropriate. But where are the slapped wrists of those Oscar wannabes who break the rules?

Instead, Oscar’s painful punishments are reserved for the messengers in the media. A few reporters covering the Oscar campaigns are privately complaining about being harassed by movie industry moguls with powerful publicity machines, or by Internet columnists, or even by other journalists.

The academy need only look to itself for the reason why there’s so much bad publicity surrounding the Oscars right now. It’s time for it to name its own version of a special prosecutor: a three-person jury that can act as an ombudsman to investigate and rule on any and all charges of Oscar misdeeds in a timely fashion. Any findings of wrongdoing by the jury would be made public. To avoid conflicts of interest, jury members would recuse themselves from matters involving anyone they’ve worked with within the last three years.

All complaints of impropriety could be made to the jury, who would know the names of the accusers but not reveal them to the membership at large or the public. The jury also would examine all media on a daily basis for Oscar transgressions and act on them as seriously if they were a formal complaint. Oscar justice could finally be done.

The crush of rejections by Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Warner’s and Universal is particularly embarrassing for Ovitz because this is the first Crichton novel Ovitz has circulated under the new relationship. Last month, Ovitz stole Crichton away from Creative Artists Agency, which had long represented the writer, and brought him over to his fledgling Artists Management Group. Increasing the humiliation is the fact that when Crichton was at CAA, all of his recent novels were immediately bought up by the studios and turned into big-budget films, often with big-name directors and big-salaried stars, including in recent years “Jurassic Park,” “Sphere,” “Congo,” “Disclosure” and “Rising Sun.”

Reliable sources also confirm that Ovitz is having trouble setting up another big-ticket, big-name project — director Martin Scorsese’s pet project about New York’s Irish toughs, titled “Gangs of New York” and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Yes, that’s right — King Leo! Ovitz’s AMG represents both DiCaprio and ex-CAA client Scorsese, a duo heralded by the management company as the dream team to make the movie of the decade. So far, however, no major studio has shown more than a passing interest in the domestic rights to the expensive ($90 million-plus) project. (Disney only wants international.) And the murmuring is that the movie is in real danger of never getting a green light.

The big question making the rounds of Tinsel Town is: Who is to blame for these debacles? Crichton for writing a dud? Scorsese for coming up with yet another dark and violent plot? DiCaprio for squandering some of that post-Titanic star power? Or Ovitz, once the most feared man in Hollywood, for sowing so much ill will among studio executives for his past abuses of power that they’re taking revenge on his AMG clients?

The odds-on favorite for bjte noir is Ovitz. (AMG did not return a request for comment by deadline.) Meanwhile, CAA agents have been enjoying Ovitz’s and Crichton’s and Scorsese’s defeats in the movie marketplace. Not only were the agency partners blindsided by Crichton’s and Scorsese’s betrayals, but they also continue to be locked in a mano-a-mano battle with Ovitz to retain clients. Ovitz co-founded CAA and ran it until 1995 when he jumped to Disney to become president and sold the agency to its employees. Fired from the Magic Kingdom 14 months later, in 1998 Ovitz started AMG; for months now he has been slowly picking off those clients from his old agency with whom he had long and special relationships, including Robin Williams, Barry Levinson and Sydney Pollack, as well as Crichton and Scorsese, who was one of the first big names to split CAA for AMG.

In retaliation, CAA has declared publicly that it will not share clients with AMG, even though that’s common practice among agents and managers, and accuses Ovitz’s firm of acting more like a rival agency than a traditional management company. If Ovitz’s AMG were an agency, it would become subject to Hollywood guild conflict-of-interest rules preventing it from finding work for its clients and also producing their projects. So far, at least, the guilds have not formally pressed the matter.

Further setting tongues wagging was the unorthodox way Ovitz submitted “Timeline” to Hollywood. First, in a deliberate breach of protocol, under tight wraps he showed the secret manuscript — whose publisher, Knopf, is not slated to send it to bookstores until Nov. 16 — to a handful of CAA’s top directors, including Steven Spielberg, without going through the agency. Clearly, Ovitz was hoping one of them would become interested in the project, but they all passed. One CAA agent speculated that Ovitz was using Crichton’s book as “bait” to try to sign more of CAA’s high-end director clients.

Then, Ovitz breached protocol again in the way he sent the book to Hollywood studios. It’s customary that when a major novel is going out to the majors for a first look, it goes out to all the majors at the same time. In this case, however, Ovitz did not submit the book to Universal on Sept. 24 when he presented it to the other entertainment giants. Only on Sept. 27, after word was received that deep-pocketed studios like Sony and Disney were rejecting the manuscript after a weekend’s perusal, did Ovitz’s AMG send over the novel to Universal — a full three days after rival studios had received it.

On the surface, it seems bizarre that the studio home of Crichton’s biggest money-maker ever, the “Jurassic Park” film series, would be left out of the process. One Universal production executive even went so far as to call up AMG to wonder why the submission was so late. (AMG didn’t have a good answer.) But Universal executives, while livid, were hardly surprised by the slight.

The reason is rooted in Hollywood history. Back in 1995, Ovitz was negotiating with Universal’s parent company boss, Seagram’s CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., to become chairman of the studio (then known as MCA). But when the bargaining broke down because of Ovitz’s excessive demands, Bronfman hired Ovitz’s CAA No. 2, Ron Meyer, to become Universal’s president and COO, which left Ovitz out in the cold. It’s a well-known fact in Hollywood that, ever since then, there has been no love lost between Ovitz and Bronfman or Meyer. “The last thing Ovitz would want is to give it to Ron or Edgar,” one Universal executive explained. “Sure, Crichton gets screwed by it. But when has that ever been a problem for Ovitz?”

In the end, Universal, like the other majors, is deciding to pass on the project. “It sounds expensive and boring,” one top suit at the studio muttered. “It’ll end up a TV miniseries.” (TV miniseries pay less for books than movies.) In fact, those who have read the Crichton manuscript admit that “Timeline,” which is about a bratty tycoon who invents a time machine as the cornerstone of a chain of historically accurate amusement parks, then uses it to travel back to 1357 France, where he gets trapped — may not be compelling subject matter for the movies. “The provocative thing about Crichton is that he’s always able to tap into the Zeitgest of popular culture — cloning, anti-Japanese sentiment, sexual harassment,” one studio executive commented. “This book has none of that.”

Several film executives who’d perused the manuscript also pointed out that the period nature of the book turned them off because it would cost a fortune to reconstruct the castles, armies and other accoutrements of medieval times. Besides, one movie wag snickered, “Do we really want to see a film filled with defrocked monks?”

Ovitz, no doubt, will take the Crichton book to second-level moviemakers before offering the project to the networks. It is almost inconceivable that a Crichton book would not be made into a movie (his previous book, “Airframe,” represented by CAA, was sold immediately to Disney), but then again anything is possible during these belt-tightening times in Hollywood.

That also may be the fate of Scorsese’s project. His movies have barely, or not even, made a profit in recent years. They also have been troubled by either controversial subject matter, like “Kundun,” whose Tibetan theme angered Chinese officials who held up joint ventures with distributor Disney, or repetitive subject matter involving the Mafia or urban crime. In fact, at a recent media and industry pre-release screening of Scorsese’s last film, “Bringing out the Dead,” starring Nicolas Cage, at least four members of the audience walked out during the gritty film about a New York City ambulance driver having a nervous breakdown. The buzz on the movie prior to its opening this fall has ranged from lukewarm to terrible.

As for DiCaprio, he has become more known for his nightclubbing with pals than acting on screen post-”Titanic.” The opening of his next movie, “The Beach,” was just pushed back from Christmas 1999 to February 2000 by 20th Century Fox amid whispers that the film is disappointing.

The day-to-day rigors of being an agent can wear on even the most successful practitioner of this curious craft. It’s a world filled with intrigues, betrayals and, alas, 2 a.m. “emergency” phone calls from clients kvetching from luxury hotel suites halfway around the world. In return, agents get something virtually no one else has in Hollywood: job security. Wiatt was one of the town’s best agents — with clients such as Eddie Murphy, Nora Ephron, Sylvester Stallone and Tim Allen — and one of the most popular inside and outside his agency. It was difficult not to imagine the 53-year-old Wiatt, with two ex-wives and a baby on the way from his third marriage, staying on at ICM well into his dotage.

But that was not to be. Wiatt wanted a lot more money and a higher public profile. “He kept griping that no one in the media was writing articles about him,” one source explained. The reason was simple: Reporters were focusing instead on ICM’s No. 1, Jeff Berg; or ICM’s highest-ranking woman, Nancy Josephson (who, as handler for Bright/Kauffman/Crane, oversaw such TV fare as “Friends,” “Jesse” and “Veronica’s Closet”); or ICM’s star agent, Ed Limato (whose celestial client list includes Mel Gibson, Winona Ryder, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington and Richard Gere).

ICM did what it could. In an uncharacteristic gesture of generosity, chairman Berg tried to assuage his longtime president’s ego by agreeing to share his title and power with Wiatt. Yet in return Wiatt gave the agency only a one-year extension on his contract; the rumors of his imminent departure continued. Then, ICM expanded its uppermost management ranks to include Josephson and Limato — a move that Wiatt felt marginalized his leadership of the agency. That, combined with a salary demand for at least double the $1.5 million upfront money on his current contract, made Wiatt’s recent contract talks arduous.

The feeling among Hollywood players was that this was merely a game of chicken between Berg and Wiatt to see who would blink first. After all, Berg and Wiatt were considered a great team, with Berg the far-sighted cerebral manager and Wiatt the glad-handing consensus-maker. Wiatt also had to consider his 10 percent equity stake in ICM; that would have been worth a small fortune when ICM, recovering from a bruising leveraged buyout, turns profitable next year. Sources say that as late as last month, Wiatt’s attorney was urging his client to take the big pay raise ICM was offering. But Wiatt was reluctant.

After three months of nonstop chattering about Wiatt’s future, Berg felt he had to put an end to it once and for all and set a deadline. On Friday morning, phone calls were exchanged, and Berg sent an “It is with great regret …” e-mail to the staff about the collapse of his contract talks with Wiatt. Both Wiatt and “Iceberg” were emotional over the abrupt end of their long and successful partnership. “Change is tough for everyone,” explained Wiatt.

Technically, Wiatt left ICM without another job in place. But, in truth, he had been exploring his options and taking meetings with possible employers for some time. First he had to decide if he would stay as an agent or turn manager, following the latest fashionable trend in Tinseltown. (Legally, managers are allowed to produce TV shows and movies for their clients; agents aren’t.) After long walks and many meetings, all the while fielding dozens of calls from the same reporters who previously had all but ignored him, Wiatt opted to remain a traditional 10-percenter. That decision made, the only logical place for him, and the only place that could really afford him, was the William Morris Agency, Hollywood’s oldest and richest agency. By late Sunday, an agreement was firmed up. So quick was the deal that Wiatt doesn’t even have an office; he’s using a conference room as temporary digs.

In fact, WMA had approached Wiatt a year earlier, but at that point Wiatt wasn’t ready to defect. The company has been looking to damage ICM as payback for a 1990 raid against Morris, in which ICM took several female agents, including the negotiator for Julia Roberts. And just three years ago, WMA made an unsuccessful play for ICM’s Limato. Fortunately for Wiatt, Morris’ governing board has been deeply concerned about its movie division. While the company is the undisputed No. 1 in the television business, its big-screen star power lags behind its two bitter rivals, ICM and Creative Artists Agency. Seven years ago, WMA enlisted Arnold Rifkin, best known as Bruce Willis’ agent, to effect a turnaround of its motion picture division. But Rifkin — as enigmatic and tempestuous as he was hard-working — turned out to be a disappointment. He created more personnel problems than he solved, and he turned out to be not nearly as well-connected within the industry as WMA had thought. It was clear that neither side was keen to renew his five-year contract when it expired next year.

Exit Rifkin — and enter Wiatt, whose arrival at Morris was announced with another e-mail. Wiatt’s deal includes a reputed $5 million salary and a seat on the 11-member WMA board as well as a token amount of agency stock and a wealth of perks. Wiatt starts his new job with assurances that all of Morris is his to run — but then again, the Morris board is not known for its hands-off governing style. It may just turn out that Wiatt has swapped one boss — Berg — for 11 new ones.

So is this the first wave of an all-out agency war? It might be, particularly if Wiatt starts bolstering Morris’ lineup by stealing rival agencies’ clients. But right now, the other companies aren’t losing a lot of sleep. CAA has experienced remarkable stability since 1995, when both agency chairman Michael Ovitz and president Ron Meyer jumped to studios. Besides, CAA has its hands full in its current feud with Ovitz’s new management company, Artists Management Group: CAA declared it wouldn’t share clients with AMG after Ovitz stole away Robin Williams. Since then, directors Sydney Pollack, Richard Donner and Barry Levinson, among others, have left CAA for AMG. Nor is stalwart ICM worrying who might follow Wiatt out the door. Wiatt’s own client list, with a few exceptions, isn’t exactly white hot: Besides Murphy, Stallone, Ephron and Allen, there are actors Tony Danza and Don Johnson; directors Donner, Penny Marshall, Renny Harlin and Kevin Williamson; producer Lorne Michaels and writer Neil Simon. Ironically, most of these clients are booked for the next year or two, and ICM will reap the commissions for the work landed on its watch.

But ICM will sorely miss Wiatt’s ability to get people who don’t like each other to work together as a team, a trait that should benefit WMA. It’s also expected that one or two ICM agents might follow Wiatt to WMA when their contracts run out. Wiatt’s
other principal strength is his relationships in town; a party animal, he is one of the most social agents in Hollywood, friends with everyone and anyone. Now he is counting on a lot of loyalty, and perhaps even new clients, courtesy of his many pals.

So who will lose by Wiatt’s jumping ship? The studios. In their heyday, in the 1980s, the ultracompetitive agency shark tanks produced higher paydays for actors, directors and writers. This in turn inflicted enormous financial pain on the Hollywood studios. They were caught in the crossfire and forced to absorb the higher costs of making movies — a hit that today’s stagnant Tinseltown stocks can ill afford. Now that a Great White has moved its feeding ground down Wilshire Boulevard, don’t be surprised if, for the next months, Hollywood talent agencies hang signs on their doors that say, “Gone fishin’.”

Anyone have a spare rod?

As Salon reported in June, “Lambs II” was running aground on a number of Hollywood shoals, among them impresario Dino De Laurentiis’ involvement in the project and the expected eight-figure paychecks to Foster and Hopkins. “Lambs” Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme was an early casualty. It appeared Universal might be as well.

Sources tell Salon Media that, given the movie’s apparent prospect of a hefty price tag and the U.S. government’s avowed scrutiny of media violence, the studio had to think long and hard whether to go ahead with the film. In Hollywood, after all, executives lose their jobs for passing on the wrong projects, like nixing “Star Wars” to make “Starman,” as ex-mogul Frank Price did some years ago. Yet, in Wall Street’s eyes, greenlighting a sequel to an Oscar winner seems like a no-brainer, and Universal wants to do everything within its power to get analysts bullish on its stagnant stock.

But Universal in the end was persuaded to make the deal with De Laurentiis because of the novel’s huge success with the public and critics both in the United States and internationally. The fat tome was released June 8th and debuted in the No. 1 slot on the New York Times bestseller list and hasn’t budged since. It’s also been a massive bestseller in the U.K. and the rest of the English-speaking world. Random House says that over 1 million copies are now in print worldwide. And despite nearly universal recognition of its absurdly convoluted plot and high gore quotient, Harris’ 10-years-in-the-making novel received some delicious reviews, notably from ghoul writer Stephen King in the New York Times. (Though Martin Amis does eviscerate the novel in the new Talk.)

As for De Laurentiis, who produced “Manhunter” (the 1986 film adaptation of Harris’ first novel featuring Lecter, “Red Dragon”) and as a consequence controlled the rights to both the “Hannibal” book and character, sources say he surprisingly scaled back his famously overaggressive persona and demands in his dealings with Universal. And on the budget front, Universal may be aided by foundering MGM whose new vice chairman, Chris McGurk, is a Universal alum desperate to have his new studio co-finance the project.

A-list director Ridley Scott’s decision to helm the picture also eased many of Universal’s concerns created by Demme’s surprise withdrawal in May. Sources say that Scott, who hasn’t had a hit in recent years, decided he couldn’t turn down such a high-profile project. As for Hopkins and Foster, their futures with the movie won’t be decided until at least a working draft of a screenplay is ready. Playwright David Mamet, among others, has expressed interest in penning the script in the months since “Lambs” scribe Ted Tally pulled out with Demme.

Still it’s unclear exactly how Universal or Scott plan to solve the central problem presented by “Hannibal,” namely its gruesome gore. Among other bloody touches, the book features a scene with Agent Starling feasting on human brains. But an enormous optimism is fueling the project right now, with everyone involved envisioning a potential blockbuster. The dramatic turnaround is not that unusual in Hollywood, where failure is an orphan but success has many fathers. Given the book’s ubiquity on beaches this summer, executives who were initially grossed out by “Hannibal” in the wake of the Columbine massacre are now warmly embracing its content.

“Who knows what will happen by the time this movie comes out in the year 2001?” mused one senior executive involved. “Maybe it will seem tame.”