I’m sitting in a pleasant reverie at my desk when the phone explodes with a call from Peggy Siegal, New York’s publicity diva, who’s flacking Peter Weir’s new movie, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” based on the Patrick O’Brian seafaring series.

“Tina!” she yells. “I need your name! NO! Wait a minute! Harry’s name!” (Harry is my husband.) “‘Master and Commander!’ Russell Crowe! Shot in the same tank as ‘Titanic’! I’ve got all these boat guys hosting! Writers! William F. Buckley! Bartle Bull! Peter Matthiessen! Harry’ll love it! Could he do it on the 9th? Or he could do it on the 3rd? Or the 6th? Or he could just show up at the Yacht Club on the 1st with Walter Cronkite?!”

Other P.R.’s come on with a subtler approach. The one that begins, “There’s this wonderful little Irish movie we’re very worried will get overlooked.” I’m a sucker for creative sob stories, so before I know it I have spent an hour combing my Rolodex for brand-name leprechauns or historians of the potato famine who might be willing to stoke the word of mouth.

The “screener” ban, which Valenti mandated in an attempt to foil DVD piracy, has ended up being torture for him. But his belated attempt at a truce will only create him more aggravation. All he’s done has created a new caste system. If 6,000 Academy voters are allowed to receive the screeners but not the other creative shops, then the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, the Critics Circle and that louche fraternity known as the Hollywood Foreign Press have in effect been told they’re not to be trusted. In the new scheme of things they are just rabble, outlaws, garlic-breathed Pirates of the Caribbean.

It was always such a great opportunity for lordly condescension among movie execs to be able to send out beribboned boxes of the latest Christmas movies to 500 of their closest Botox artists, dog walkers and Kabbalah gurus. And for otherwise perkless recipients it was a nod that you were an insider. You might be a miserable entertainment scribe eating Chinese takeout in a socklike apartment, but a box of Oscar screeners arriving by FedEx told you you were cool. These guys know they’ll never get back on the list.

The P.R. amazons like Siegal whose task it now is to get these grumpy buzzocrats out of their TV chairs into a theater are not helped by the fact that this year’s movie crop is so heavy on downers. It’s a tough sell to ask a bunch of friends over for a drink and a look at, say, “Elephant,” Gus Van Sant’s grim real-time reconstruction of the hours before a Columbine-style school massacre. After viewing five impending releases on five straight days the only laugh in the theater all week was during “Sylvia,” when Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Sylvia Plath, brightens the mood of a romantic rowboat excursion with the poet Ted Hughes by suddenly intoning in her flat “literary” voice, “I tried to drown myself once.”

Academy members themselves can’t be solicited to host screenings. That’s why the hunt is on for any other genre of person with a Rolodex to host a preview that might fan the hype. Writers are in particular demand because they add credibility. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein may have been the first moviemaker cum marketing genius to come up with this method of collecting interest on borrowed intellectual capital. When we were in business together at Talk magazine, I always sensed that he was wondering why the hell I couldn’t produce J.D. Salinger for an opening. Now the practice of writer-hosted screenings is so rampant I expect any day to get an invitation from Gabriel Garcéa Marquéz and Thomas Pynchon inviting me to a preview of “Elf.”

The trouble with approaching “real writers,” as Hollywood likes to call them (meaning, I suppose, writers who write books, not “pages”), to host these promotional events is that the more seriously talented they are, the weirder they tend to be. Real writers also are prone to having real opinions. And they become “difficult” when required to suppress them.

The writers you see at parties are not usually the “real” ones. Real writers are usually sitting in a chaotic farmhouse somewhere with a five-day growth of beard and a stained T-shirt in an onanistic trance at their computers, or else trying to kill themselves like Sylvia Plath. They don’t like to be disturbed.

If the DVD ban gets repealed, though, it will be because of the most powerful lobbying group of all: not filmmakers or executives, but their kids. They’ve all been in meltdown about being deprived of having friends over to view their big-shot dad’s Oscar screeners. Hollywood is full of New Age fathers who are happy to blow off corporate lawyers and each other but will never say no to their kids.

“These two didn’t win the jackpot. They stole it. They had an obligation to tell the board of directors. They didn’t,” says prosecutor Kenneth Chalifoux. “These defendants were the gatekeepers. They had the power to take the money. But not the authority.”

The prosecutor’s low-key delivery must be especially deadly for Kozlowski’s amour-propre. It’s one thing to be taken apart by some big-time legal showboat. It’s another to have to listen to a quiet, patient, supremely effective demolition by a conscientious, friendly-eyed, salaried public employee like Chalifoux. By the time we enter the second hour of his remarks, Kozlowki’s pastel-pink head has turned a deep, throbbing magenta.

I wonder what role height plays in a sense of entitlement. At its best it can give the sublime grace of the much-mourned George Plimpton, whose sunflower presence I kept searching for Tuesday night among all the other tall, patrician, white-haired men who circulated at the packed Paris Review 50th anniversary. (There were so many I wondered if it was George’s last prank, providing the literary version of multiple Saddam Husseins.) George’s loftiness, however, was never aloof, which seems to be the rap on Sen. John Kerry when people are looking for a reason he shouldn’t or won’t get the Democratic nomination.

But in the steroid-pumped age of Arnold Schwarzenegger it might be great counterprogramming for the Democrats to have a long, cool glass of water who could look down his French nose at Republican gaucheries and show off his impressive mastery of facts. Last spring, when I first saw him talk to a bunch of New York players and money guys, I thought he came off as unacceptably Olympian. But maybe that was because he chose to address that hard-nosed group from halfway up the staircase of a private club, and we had to shout our questions from below in the prayer position.

A lot has happened since then. Like desperation. In the CNN debate in Phoenix Kerry suddenly looked terrifically presidential when he came out on his stilts from behind his podium and started leaning over toward the audience, gesturing with his big bony hands. Team the elongated Kerry with Gephardt’s sandy brush-fire eyebrows and proletarian back story, and the two of them might have a show they could take on the road.

There’s no doubt that height is a useful weapon of effortless intimidation. Reagan used it on Carter, Bush I on Dukakis. It promises to be an increasing problem for Howard Dean in the long term. For an out-of-nowhere contender it’s not a bad thing to be a feisty little spitfire, but in the last days of a vicious race there will be too many photo ops he’ll have to avoid. Male or female, when Clinton flops that big blond paw down on a recalcitrant shoulder it always brings another vote around. The junior Bush, one feels, though of respectably average height, would not be so dependent on that pickup truck or landing on aircraft carriers in basket-flashing flight suits if he were three patrician inches taller, like his dad.

The size question, in more ways than one, is clearly a factor in the Kobe Bryant case. If the defense team’s new panty evidence is right, he may be exonerated after all. But the dog that hasn’t barked in this story is the mystery of Kobe’s sex life. He’s a great-looking, rich, human skyscraper of an athletic demigod in Los Angeles. He should have had a lot of sex before he tied the knot, right? So where is it? Every talk show has wheeled out a cast of undishy acquaintances from his past who say he was the perfect gentleman. The worst was the roundfaced high school sweetheart Jocelyn Ebron whom Kobe not only dumped but allowed to learn about his marriage to Vanessa by seeing it on TV. Larry King nearly had a stroke trying unsuccessfully to wring something salacious or vindictive out of Jocelyn and her memories of five years with Bryant. Given the fun that other athletes have over the backs of chairs when the game’s over, it’s Kobe’s apparent lack of it in the past that gave the first accusations we heard an extra wallop of hidden weirdness.

Kobe has not been helped by the fact that in the sports world he has no real constituency. According to my friend Chris Connolly of ESPN, the people who liked Kobe best were media types, because he was so friendly and cooperative and eager to please. But sportswriters have daughters, too. Now they felt betrayed. Bryant wasn’t popular with other players, or with his coaches all that much, or with fans in other cities — he got booed in Philadelphia at an All-Star game. The street ballers didn’t like him because he was too high-class and well-mannered, with his Italian upbringing and me-against-the-world reserve. Kobe’s lack of a fervently loyal base gives him something in common with, well, Gray Davis. And we know what happened to him.

It gives Democrats pause about Wesley Clark. He looks so perfect on paper. The four stars. The keen mind. The neat head. But where’s his baggage? The great thing about having survived a media gangbang is that it quells the need to answer questions. Anything bad can be dismissed as an old story.

New York’s “progressive” Democratic power players are getting frantic. Until a few months ago they were still numb from the one-two punch of 2000 and 9/11. Bush’s decline in the polls jerked them awake. Their loathing of Bush has risen to such a crescendo they will take any candidate who looks like a winner. A lot of them are excited by Dean, but they’re ready to ditch him the minute he looks like a loser. They don’t want to dick around with noble lost causes. They don’t have time for self-appointed Seabiscuits. They want a War Admiral — and they trudge from chic little soirees for Wes Clark to gilded breakfasts for John Kerry hoping to find one.

At a “political brainstorm” supper the other night, hosted by a brand-name author who’s also a Democratic activist, a bunch of West Side legends with plenty of cash to spare sat with dinner on their laps and harangued each other about the need for action. In truth, the host had convened them so he could put the arm on them on behalf of the DNC, but they wouldn’t have come if he’d told them that. “Money’s not the issue here,” one of them thundered (to the host’s chagrin). “Everyone in this room has given at least half a million bucks to the party in their time.” No, they wanted to talk ideas. They wanted to talk tactics. Most of all they wanted to talk winning.

One recurring theme was the longing for a rapid-response war room to beat off Republican “disinformation.” When Rush Limbaugh’s OxyContin habit hit the airwaves, for instance, Democrats lacked what Republicans would have had in their shoes: a ready-to-go bullet-point list of all the times Rush had mouthed off about how drugs are all the fault of permissive liberals. “I’m happy to give money to that!” shouted a theater producer.

“We don’t have a bulldog to run it!” cried a former prime-time star. “We need a bulldog!”

“Why can’t we get James Carville back?” demanded a Broadway actress.

“He’s doing ‘K Street’,” replied a screenwriter, matter-of-factly.

“Another James Carville then!” said the actress, rising restlessly to her feet and pacing the room.

“Another bulldog!” cried the prime-time star.

Al Franken has become the Democrats’ messiah. His well-publicized row with Fox’s bloodhound Bill O’Reilly — as much as anything to do with Iraq — was the magic wand that broke the Republican spell and turned Roger Ailes back into a frog. Any Manhattan dinner party you show up at these days feels like a Franken publishing party, with a pile of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” sitting on the hall table as a shiny guest giveaway. Franken was the star — greeted with shrieks and yodels of delight — who followed Al Sharpton’s Little Richard routine at the DNC dinner at the New York Sheraton after the Pace University debate.

At Bruce Springsteen’s tour-climaxing concerts at Shea Stadium last week, the Boss prefaced “Born in the USA” by telling the mammoth crowds, “Pick up Al Franken’s book!”

New York Republicans talk privately about the need to crank up the other big stars on the GOP bench if Bush keeps heading south. Arnold may be the biggest of them all by the time of next year’s convention in New York — or else he may be the party’s biggest embarrassment.

Meanwhile, there’s Rudy Giuliani — and, unlike Arnold, Rudy is constitutionally eligible for a spot on the national ticket. Friends wonder if Rudy is gearing up to be ready when — O.K., if — Bush dumps Cheney. His friends say he spends an inordinate amount of time on the phone with Karl Rove. Rudy would be W’s ace in the hole, should he get scared (and brave) enough to play it.

The current V.P.’s ominous scowl doesn’t do much to lift the nation’s spirits. On “Meet the Press” he looked so freighted with administration secrets he seemed to be addressing Tim Russert from a low crouch position. Cheney’s Halliburton connection clings to the administration like a gust of halitosis. Rudy would be political Binaca. And his 9/11 halo would help the president shift focus away from Iraq misadventures and back to fighting the terrorists who actually attacked us.

Rudy stands in the public mind for lionhearted crisis management. His new Churchillian receding hairline gives him more gravitas than ever. As V.P. he could bigfoot the homeland security portfolio without the political hazards that have sidelined Tom Ridge. And as the corporate scandals revive with a slew of high-profile trials, Rudy brings credentials as a Wall Street crime buster.

Maybe New Yorkers love the Giuliani-for-veep scenario because of what it promises for the presidential election in 2008 — a revival of Rudy vs. Hillary. (The original version of that show closed in out-of-town tryouts, though the female star triumphed with a solo act.) The two of them may have more baggage than the hold of a 747, but they have prevailed.

Most of the new sensations combine two great American obsessions: shopping and dating. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is all about inducing a new demographic to spend money. The Kobe Bryant scandal is a spendathon too. No sooner had the not-that-long-suffering Mrs. Bryant appeared at Kobe’s side looking all wounded and gorgeous after her husband’s indictment than she was gifted for her support with a $4 million rock. Superstar bad behavior can usually be papered over with expensive baubles — cf., the amount of designer stuff Ben and J.Lo keep raining down on each other whenever there are bad reviews or a tiff.

Meanwhile, the abruptly penciled-in California gubernatorial race is an obvious foray into the territory of Match.com. With 150 faces to choose from, including a frisky granny who says she’s running “because I’m 100,” the pornographer Larry Flynt, the clapped-out TV actor Gary Coleman, a sumo wrestler, and a radio personality, Jim “Poorman” Trenton, who had the candor to say his campaign is “a good way to meet women,” office-seeking is the new interactive leisure activity.

It’s great for Arnold that he has solved the problem of his third act. Now that it’s clear you don’t have to put years into building political credibility like role model Ronald Reagan, other rusting blockbuster stars are sure to follow. Wouldn’t a run for the Senate be a better way for Kevin Costner to rinse off his murky career since the 1995 “Waterworld” disaster than hitting the road to promote his embarrassingly modest new movie? Wouldn’t secretary of education be a more dignified route for Demi Moore to express her interest in the young?

Arnold had some torpid years sitting around his big house in the hills with the statues of the kids in the garden and the gym filled with bodybuilding memorabilia, hustling his agent to get the third “Terminator” made in an increasingly twinkie culture. The movie has grossed $145 million, but after the insane marketing costs, that’s not enough to impress the corporate culture of studio heads wowed by nimble, low-budget hits like “28 Days Later.” So a career switch makes sense, and he’s managing to finesse the problem of the uncomfortable scrutiny of a movie star entering politics by choosing an election where the campaign is as short as the average promotional junket and the platform is as much about Gray Davis’ charm deficit as his fiscal one. California, above all, is the state of the body beautiful, the switchback abs, the Botox babes. Davis couldn’t get rid of his prison pallor in a solarium. California was never his glass of Pellegrino.

The conventional wisdom is that when Arnold is forced to “discuss the issues” the Terminator will terminate, but Arnold will probably follow Newt Gingrich’s advice on Fox News this week: “Stay away from the details.” Anyway, when did the media ever have to be forcibly steered away from the substantive in favor of the trivial? As a veteran of movie-promoting interviews in which he never bothered, like more naive actors, to talk earnestly about his “art,” Arnold “gets it” in a way that Al Gore never will. The people’s choice surfaced at last in New York to make a long overdue kick-ass speech suggesting we fire George W. Bush, but it was Arnold’s day, so he was drowned out, natch.

Perhaps Gore could have a sex change. It would solve the image problem once and for all. In the current climate he would become a folk heroine. Which is strange, because if he had been allowed to take office after the 2000 election we might not have seen the current gay explosion. Conservative or repressive regimes have always been good for alternative cultures. Ike gave us Elvis, Lenny Bruce and Allen Ginsberg. Mrs. Thatcher midwifed the Clash and the Sex Pistols. Reagan ratcheted up rap. Brezhnev begat Havel. The more the Vatican and the Bush cronies wag their fingers, the more the gay lobby accelerates. But the flamboyance of gay images in popular culture looks more and more like a beard for the consolidation of lavender bourgeoisification. What, after all, do gays want these days? To flounce? Come on — that battle was won long ago. What they want is to settle down, get married, move to the suburbs, adopt a couple of kids, and get into some serious fellowshipping at the local Episcopal church.

Meanwhile, the Republican torch is being passed to an oiled-up, pumped-up, concrete-coiffed former Mr. Universe who, stereotypes to the contrary notwithstanding, happens to be heterosexual (and how!). Political polarization, meet cultural convergence.

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