I had about twelve minutes with Fair Game director Doug Liman about an hour ago — not long enough. We talked a bit and I recorded it all (which I’ll either post as an audio file or use as the basis for another piece), but it seemed as if we barely got going before Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale was being ushered in for his quickie session. The quote that sticks in my head was Liman saying “I’m tough on myself.” Down with that. The more demanding you are on yourself, the better it is for your audience.

Fair Game director Doug Liman on 10th floor of Manhattan’s Four Seasons hotel — Saturday, 10.2, 2:45 pm.

I understand why government guys and security people always drive officials and/or clients around in big, black, gas-guzzling Escalade SUVs. It’s because these vehicles say “macho badass,” “king shit,” “armour-plated,” “no messing around,” “heavweight,” “formidable,” impenetrable” and all those other studly statements. I am nonetheless sick to death of the sight of them — sick of watching SUV convoys cruising through big-city streets and down big highways in action thrillers. I’m looking for a variation of any kind…anything.

Let Me In‘s $1.9 million Friday earnings and likely $5 million weekend tally is a shocker. One of the finest films of the year hands down and easily one of the best vampire flicks of all time — so far above above the level of the Twilight films that they’re not even in the same ballpark– and Joe Popcorn has…what, blown it off?

Why does quality never seem to figure in Eloi determinations about what to see? The better reviewed a film is, the less Average Joes want to see it — is that the equation these days? Was it the one-sheet image of Chloe Moretz lying on her side in a semi-tuck position, which alluded to something semi-delicate and/or atypical? The trailer advertised a straight horror experience, but the fact that Let Me In is a much more sensitive and multi-layered thing shouldn’t have gotten in the way. I understand modest returns on a film like this, but $5.5 million? What happened?

My second viewing of Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (Summit, 11.5) convinced me all the more that it’s one of the best made adult-level political thrillers of this century. Really. Liman’s chops are Pakula-plus. The shooting, pacing and cutting are as good as this sort of thing gets. And like I said during the Cannes Film Festival, there’s immense comfort and satisfaction for guys like myself in any smart, well-jiggered film that eviscerates rightie scum.

Fair Game star Naomi Watts, director Doug Liman during this morning’s press conference at Manhattan’s Four Seasons hotel — 10.2, 11:50 am.

Fair Game “is a stirring, suspenseful and immensely satisfying adult drama, brilliantly directed and written and acted, especially in the latter case by Sean Penn and Naomi Watts,” I said last May.

“I’ve been hoping to like it all along, but the complexity and intelligence brought to bear upon the story of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame vs. the Bush administration — a tale of courage, cowardice, betrayal and bureaucratic denial all wrapped up into one — still came as a surprise.

“I really and truly wasn’t expecting it to be quite this deft and assured. It seems to me like a revival of the spirit of the paranoid Alan Pukula of the ’70s with governmental-spook flavorings that harken back to Costa-Gavras and John LeCarre (or, more particularly, the British TV adaptation of Smiley’s People).”

The American moviegoing public has decided to give The Social Network a first-weekend tally that’s either (a) a little bit better than Wall Street 2, or roughly a three-day tally of $21 million, according to box-office analyst Steve Mason, or (b) closer to $25 million, based on reported Friday earnings of $8.5 million, according to a box-office analyst Nikki Finke.

$25 million is cool, but it still doesn’t fully calculate given universal hosannahs from every critic (except Armond White and a couple of others) and talk in every corner of the room of The Social Network being the Best Picture contender to beat. None of that means diddly squat to Archie and Reggie and Susie Creamcheese in Flyover, USA.

What’s happening? A lot of people out there are saying what a youngish woman told me in a Lincoln Center-area Starbucks about a week ago: “I spend too much time as it is on Facebook…I’m not sure I want to see a movie about it.” And if there’s one guiding principle that many younger filmgoers live by, it is to not read reviews or even follow the lead of the aggregate numbers at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and go only by their gut (and what their friends say) in deciding what to see.

$21 million isn’t bad — it’s fine — but $25 million would be better. A significant portion of the public (i.e., the smarter, big-city, more engaged sector that reads reviews and picks up on what’s happening) is obviously responding. And there’s always the chance that The Social Network business could uptick today as it’s skewing a bit older and the 25-plus crowd tends to wait until Saturday or Sunday to see new films.

Finke reported last night “the reason may well lie in the film’s elitism which may be keeping more mainstream audiences away.” Elitism? As in “not dumb enough”? “Left coast, right coast, and a smidge of Chicago only,” a rival studio exec told Finke late last night. “The rest of the country could care less.”

Fandango numbers on 9.29 (with Social Network advance sales accounting for 32% of the total) suggested a weekend tally in the low 20s. “If it was selling 50% to 60% of the total right now, we’d be looking at the mid to high 20s,” an analyst told me. “But a lot of openings have been mild recently. Wall Street 2 only did $19 million or thereabouts, so I wouldn’t forecast too high a figure for Social Network — I’d pull back a bit.”

My 9.29 conclusion: “In Planet of the Earth terms, The Social Network is a movie about orangutans that was made by orangutans, and which is aimed at an orangutan and chimp audience. What Fandango is telling us is that so far the gorillas haven’t gotten on board.”

Just a reminder to go to iTunes and subscribe to Oscar Poker (podcast #2 coming up next Sunday night) and perhaps leave a rating. “He readers doing this will help your visibility within iTunes,” my tech guy says. If the previous link doesn’t work, try this one.

What are the ten most damaging takedown strategies that The King’s Speech distributor Harvey Weinstein could launch against The Social Network, his film’s current chief competitor for the Best Picture Ocar? The relentlessly-on-the-case Vulture has come up with a half-serious, mildly amusing checklist.

The two funniest suggestions: (a) Do a Norbit on Timberlake — Just before the nomination deadline, remind the industry that Social Network Best Supporting Actor contender Justin Timberlake has a voice role in Yogi Bear, which will presumably give King’s Speech Best Supporting Actor contender Geoffrey Rush an advantage. And (b) Do a Mo’Nique on Jessie Eisenberg — “In recent interviews,” the rationale goes, “The Social Network‘s Eisenberg — competition for King’s Speech‘s Colin Firth for Best Actor — has hinted that he’s slightly uncomfortable with all the attention the role is getting him. Does he even want an Oscar? Is he the next Mo’Nique? Questions that must be asked! Preferably by complicit Oscar bloggers!”

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that Fox 2000 and Universal are making seven-figure bids on an original Beach Boys musical, based on a pitch to be written by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich). Pic will reportedly “craft a storyline with the surf and fun prevalent in the band’s many hits.” In other words, a Beach Boys version of Across The Universe? Fleming’s kiss-of-death closer: “The template for the film is to do with the Beach Boys catalog what Mamma Mia! did with Abba.” Good God.

One thing about Let Me In (Overture, opening today) that’s getting through to moviegoers who read movie blogs or reviews is that it’s only superficially a “horror film.” The horror genre belongs to the wallowers and the animals and the Eli Roth-fiends, and this is a film that some genre fans are going to feel confused by. Why aren’t there more boo scares? Why isn’t there more of a sense of an accelerating nightmare? Why do the characters speak so softly to each other?

Let Me In is too good, too classic-minded, too well acted, too sensitive and too gradually paced to qualify as a “horror film,” or at least what that term tends to mean in the minds of most moviegoers. It uses the trappings of horror — vampires, drinking of blood, killings, ominous atmospheres — but it’s about love and loneliness and the needing of emotional comfort by children (okay, tweeners) whose families have fallen away and failed to provide.

Please take note of this, Academy members. There hasn’t been a “horror film” nominated for Best Picture since The Exorcist (forget the feminist-minded psychological FBI thriller The Silence of the Lambs), but the time has come to go back to this dark well and let a horror film “in” by nominating it for Best Picture. You can refuse to consider this film because it adheres to conventions of what you regard as a disgraced genre, but you really, really shouldn’t do this. Not this time.

Boiled down, Let Me In is a highly unusual and deeply affecting young-love story. It’s been made with restraint, sensitivity and high levels of intelligence. Please open your minds and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Director Matt Reeves has created a distinguished exception to the rule.

Again — how fresh or stunning can a presumably better, more delectably photographed, Charles Portis-novel-adhering version of True Grit be? Okay, better than Henry Hatahaway‘s 1969 film…and? No matter how righteous the Coen Bros. sheen, it’ll still be True Grit — raunchy blowhard Reuben (not Rooster) Cogburn matching wits with Mattie Ross. I expect nothing but quaalude highs, but what can it finally add up to? People are having advance heart palpitations, and I’m not so sure. (Kris Tapley‘s In Contention had it first.)