The word on Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23) is gaining, building…taking a surprising turn. And right at the top of the really-recommended list is the performance by Fat Clooney. I love that name…that’s what’s been missing all along…a pot belly…a belly like a bowl of jello…tell him to drop the “George,” stay fat as a cow and totally become this other guy. “Fat Clooney is one of the greatest things you’ll see in a movie all year,” claims a reputable journo- acquaintance. “They’ve had some Syriana screenings…at least two that I know of”…Cynthia Swartz says it’s been shown only to people who can’t wait…”and I thought the film was fucking fantastic. F.X. Feeney tells me it’s his favorite of the year so far. It struck me as Traffic before the script got developed and slightly defanged. It’s political, as you said, but more than that…it’s angry. Very, very angry.”

I haven’t laughed out loud at anything in days, and along comes this little New York Daily News story and…it happened. Each and every kid who was in that theatre — boy or girl, no matter how old — probably has the memory of that young guy hanging himself burned into their brains now…for life. The cruelest jokes are the funniest. (Mort Sahl said that.)

It’s called The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Disney, 12.9). Fine. And I’m supposed to give a shit because…? I’ve read Lorne Manly’s N.Y. Times article and I’m still shaking my head. Narnia would be another take-down movie if I cared enough to get into it.

If I were given to cynicism I would say it’s far more usual than unusual these days for big-studio marketing departments to distort, misrepresent and otherwise lie about what an upcoming movie is like, or is even about. If you wanted to really get cynical you could say it’s not movie quality (and I don’t mean esoteric Jim Hoberman-type quality, but quality your mother would recognize if she could be dragged out of her house and down to a multiplex) …it’s not quality that determines success these days, but to what degree big-studio marketers are going to fuck things up for you. That’s the determining factor…will marketing execs re-imagine and re-edit what your film is to a mild degree (like Fox has with those Sarah Jessica Parker-obsessed trailers for The Family Stone), or will they misrepresent your film all to hell in order to sell it to The Stupids and get the big opening weekend numbers no matter what? The result of which is that long-term nurturing and appreciation of your film is pretty much left to chance.

Let’s take the kids to Chicken Little. Supposed to be kinda crappy …screw it…take ’em anyway. Give Disney the $30 million weekend it doesn’t deserve. I read Jarhead blows also…let’s go see it! Way of showing support for the troops in Iraq…sorta kinda. Boring movie…nudging $30 million by Sunday! Seen Saw II yet? Blood, dismemberment, piece-of-shit…I’m there! The Legend of Zorro movie is cruddy also…let’s pay $20 plus parking, popcorn and drinks to see it and help encourage lazy Hollywood producers to make more like it! As long as I don’t have to sit through a good film, I don’t care.

The only thing I’ve heard about Steven Gaghan’s Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23 limited) that’s sunk in to any degree is that it’s “very political.” In other words, the person who conveyed this view feels it doesn’t deliver as well in emotional, beating-heart terms. Ignore it…blue-state-persuasion people really want this movie to work. The excellent trailer suggests that the aim of Syriana (a really annoying title) is to be a Traffic-type exploration of the who-what-why behind 9/11..a probing of the politics of Big Oil, Middle Eastern subcurrents, radical Islamic rage and alienation…the whole magillah. One of those tapestries with several different characters and storylines in which “everything is connected.” Gaghan’s Oscar-winning Traffic screenplay showed him to be a superb converter-transposer of gritty real-world mucky-muck into highly absorbing movie material (okay, with Steven Soderbegh’s modest assistance), and the first film he directed, 2002’s Abandon with Katie Holmes, was certainly tolerable…stylistically assured, engaging here and there. The first Syriana press screening happens on 11.9 or thereabouts, and I’m psyched. But why am I getting this feeling of hesitancy from Warner Bros. publicity? Are they feeling antsy about the political content and feel it might be safer on some level to sit on the film until a couple of weeks before the 11.23 limited opening…or are they exuding this dithering vibe for some other reason? Pic opens wide on 12.3.

Hypothesis: Comedy Central or HBO or Showtime runs a series called “The Avengers,” about a squad of vigilantes, their activities funded by some secretive billionaire, who go out and find tech- support staffers who pick up the phone for various manufacturers of computer-related products like IPAQ handhelds and Norton Antivirus…both the out-sourcing morons in India and their U.S. counterparts…and then take them to remote warehouses, tie them down and coolly and methodically torture them in ways that would appall the Marquis de Sade, gradually inducing in each victim a ghastly, horrible, beyond-painful death. I’m just saying in a very calm and loving and Christian way I would not only watch this series, but I would send in regular cash donations to the producers.