I can’t stop laughing at this. I’ve read it over and over and it’s magnificent….brilliant. The speaker, quoted in USA Today, is Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theaters, a 16 theatre Southern California chain. “The movie business is a little like the drug business. We are the pushers, and our customers are the users. Even if business is good, you have to keep giving people what they want.”

Thanks to MCN’s “the Reeler” for his unqualified support in the all-important New York Times vs. Hollywood Elsewhere “beep beep” vs. “meep meep” debate, which came to a head in this space on Sunday, 3.19.

There’s a stinky sulfur cloud hanging over Werner Herzog‘s Rescue Dawn, a Vietnam-Laos escape-from-a-POW camp film set in the mid ’60s and costarring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies. It’s no secret to anyone who’s taken the time to read the chat boards attached to Rescue Dawn ‘s IMDB page that the odor in question has nothing to do with Herzog or the film itself, which no one has seen because it hasn’t yet been cut into viewable feature-length form, but from a pair of hotshot L.A. operators — funny-money financier Elie Samaha and a young wannabe producer named Steve Marlton who runs a production-finance company called Gibraltar Films) and owns a West Hollywood club called Pearl. The long and the short is that Rescue Dawn was financed as some kind of tax-shelter deal (nothing wrong with that, happens all the time), but at some point the scheme collapsed due to unpaid loans and the actors and crew who finished work on the Vietnam war film in San Francisco last fall didn’t get paid themselves, and now an oily, AFM-member distribution company Conquistador Entertainment (beware of any distribution company that features disco club music on its website!) is raising money to pay for post-production by pre-selling worldwide distribution rights. (Variety says Conquistador principals Pascal Borno and Scott Karol have sold undetermined distrib rights to Pathe UK and to several other distributors and territories.) Rising Star Holdings is listed as one of Rescue Dawn‘s production entities (the word “holdings” usually refers to a tax shelter deal), along with Top Gun productions, by all appearances some kind of flim-flam outfit whose only apparent previous credit before Rescue Dawn is the 1959 Henry Fonda TV series “The Deputy”. Samaha and Marlton are listed on the Conquistador site as Rescue Dawn‘s executive producer and producer, respectively, along with at least one basketball player, the L.A. Clippers’ Elton Brand, and possibly another — a guy named Gerald Green who has the same name as Celtics’ Gerald Green — also taking producer credits. I’ve been asked not to mention this whole magilla, but any sentient person in Kabul, Osaka and/or Terre Haute can read the whole sordid saga in pieces by just searching around on the IMDB and the various pertinent company sites. Directed and written by Herzog and based on his 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Rescue Dawn “recounts the true story of German-born Dieter Dengler, who dreamed of being a pilot and eventually made his way to the United States, where he joined the military during the Vietnam War era,” says the Conquistador website. The story’s about Dengler (Bale) being shot down on his first mission and crash-landing in Laos. While the rest of his squadron searches for him, Dangler is captured and tortured by Pathet Laos troops, eventually landing in a camp with other American POWs (Zahn among them). To escape certain death, Dengler and the other POWs make a daring escape through the jungle and build a raft to take them downriver. After Duane (Zahn), his last fellow escapee, is beheaded by a local villager, Dengler finds himself alone once again. After 22 days struggling to survive, Dengler is finally rescued by a U.S. plane, only to find himself under scrutiny by the CIA because of his knowledge of the illegal incursion into Laos.”

Of the 24 films in this generic N.Y. Daily News spring-preview piece, you can take two to the bank, and they’re both from Universal: Spike Lee‘s Inside Man (opening Friday) and Paul Greengrass‘s Flight 93 (opening 4.28…only six weeks from now).

Time‘s Tim Padgett has visited the Yucatan peninsula set of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (Touchstone, 8.4), and discovered that the movie’s message will likely be embraced by the followers of “liberal Hollywood’s bible,” and that it might play like some kind of wild-ass companion piece to Al Gore‘s anti-global warming film An Inconvenient Truth, which is opening this spring. “Wacko Mel”, as he is generally thought of and/or referred to in liberal circles, has made a violent and very bloody film with human-sacrifice scenes, okay, but it’s also a metaphorical warning piece about how the Mayan civilization self-destructed due to ecological abuse and war-mongering. “The parallels between the environmental imbalance and corruption of values that doomed the Maya and what’s happening to our own civilization are eerie,” says Gibson’s rookie co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia. Gibson puts it more bluntly: “The fearmongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys.” After reading this piece, frankly, I’ve started to feel a subtle shift in my attitude about Gibson. Tell you what…I won’t use the term “wacko Mel” any more. That wasn’t nice to begin with.

Padgett also writes in his Time magazine Apocalptyo piece that “criticism of Apocalypto is expected from Mexican nationalists …since it touches on the raw issue of human sacrifice, which scholars don’t believe was a prevalent Maya practice until the post-classic period, after A.D. 900, when fiercer influences like the Toltecs and Aztecs arrived. It is in that period, not coincidentally, that Apocalypto is set.” Padgett also writes that “if there are complaints about Apocalypto‘s portrayal of human sacrifice by the Maya, whose mostly impoverished descendants today are a cause celebre for liberals, Gibson says he won’t care. ‘After what I experienced with The Passion, I frankly don’t give a flying fuck about much of what those critics think.'”

A crisp, perceptive take by Newsweek‘s Andy Dehnart on Tony Soprano’s coma dreams and existential wanderings via an alternate identity (i.e., salesman Kevin Finnerty) in episode #2 of The Sopranos. “I’m 46 years old,” Soprano/Finnerty says in a hotel bar to some sales execs he’s recently met. “Who am I? Where am I going?” To which costar Sheila Kelley, sitting across from him, says, “Join the club.”

Robobos has cut another excellent faux trailer that spins a dark melodrama into a piece of easily digestible pop-fluff, in the vein of that popular Shining trailer from last year. This one takes Dennis Hopper‘s ferociously insane Frank character from David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet and turns him into…a wild and crazy guy!

A penniless Anthony Pelicano is looking to part ways with his pro bono defense attorney and is planning to make a motion in court today to defend himself, according to L.A. investigative journalist Ross Johnson on his just-launched L.A. Indie website. “Pellicano wants to go quickly to trial and is willing to do it without the help of a federal public defender,” sources are telling Johnson. “In this scenario, Pellicano might use the trial as a forum to expose what he feels is the duplicity of the various state and federal prosecutors who’ve earlier used his testimony at trial and in sworn declarations after hiring Pellicano for his abilities in forensic audio analysis, said one family member. The theory is that Pellicano, if convicted at trial with himself as counsel, will have to do the same prison time as if he pled guilty, say the sources. If found guilty, federal sentencing guide lines might limit the P.I.’s imprisonment to as little as five years. ‘The government will give him eight because he’s Tony. But he’s got a temper, and if he goes Saddam in the courtroom, it could get ugly,’ says a family member.”

A Sunday (3.19) profile by the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Vicky Haddock of controversial anti-Iraq War activist Cindy Sheehan (the mother who last year camped out in protest near President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, following the death of her soldier son Casey in Iraq) mentions that Sheehan had recent plans to “breakfast in Manhattan with actress Susan Sarandon, who is set to portray her in a biopic movie.” Haddock doesn’t say if it’s for cable or theatrical, but the former sounds a bit more likely. If anyone knows anything…

Charles Solomon‘s N.Y. Times piece about how annoyingly verbal animated features have become refers to Chuck Jones’ Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as an example of the non-verbal, all-visuals approach that used to rule in the old says. But hold on…Solomon says the Roadunner cartoons “took place in a silence broken only by music, sound effects and an occasional ‘beep-beep.'” Inaccurate, dawg. The Roadrunner sound is an unmistakable meep-meep. Listen to one closely. At no time do you hear the “b” consonant — it’s totally an “m” thing.

Hold up on that V disappointment stuff. The Warner Bros./ Wachowski Bros. flick had a pretty good Saturday….an encouraging 19% Friday-to-Saturday jump and a $10,028,000 haul. We seem to be looking at a likely weekend tally of $23.9 million, although WB will probably report $25 million (which is what tracking had earlier projected).