· The week started with ex-Miramax/present Film Department topper Mark Gill declaring at length to LA Film Festival attendees that, "Yes, The Sky Really is Falling":

The marginally good news is it won't hit the ground everywhere. The strongest of the strong will survive and in fact prosper. But it will feel like we just survived a medieval plague. The carnage and the stench will be overwhelming.

Of course, it's fashionable to bitch in the independent film world. It's what we do. We brood. We wear black. We drink too much coffee, followed by too much alcohol. And we bemoan a future devoid of real culture, homogenized to death by unfeeling conglomerates, and increasingly determined by ADD-addled 14-year-olds with nothing but internet porn and Grand Theft Auto on the brain.

Gill tried to end on a positive note ("If you really want to make movies—even after all the unvarnished bad news I've dumped on you today—then by all means do it"), but by then the place looked like Jonestown. By most accounts around the festival this week, it still does.

· Production on Nailed shut down for the fourth time as David Bergstein's Capitol Films once again failed to meet payroll on the set.

· Capitol's sister company, ThinkFilm, is on the defensive against director Alex Gibney, who initiated a lawsuit to reclaim his Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. They hate each other — in public.

· Variety's resident indie coroner Anne Thompson counts off more dumb money in various stages of decompostion, including Philippe Martinez, Sidney Kimmel and Crash financier Bob Yari.

· Edgy horror and foreign-fare distributor Tartan Films shut its doors permanently on Thursday.

· Toby Emmerich has downgraded from a Mercedes to a Lexus hybrid. Indeed, repent — the end is near.

[Photo Credit: IndieWIRE]

And while we think that fantastic idea is a second film in itself, read on to see why Tolkien geeks and studio suits alike may be shuddering this morning.

"We believe there is a second movie," del Toro said during a discussion at the Majestic Crest. "If there isn't, there will not be. If we find it, we will shoot it, but by God, if we do not find it, we will not shoot it. I am anxious to shoot the book, and I'm willing and able to dedicate myself to shooting the [second film]."

Not very reassuring, we don't think — especially for MGM, which needs the prestige and profit of a Hobbit two-fer, like, yesterday. It's trickier than it sounds, though; the second film, which would apparently bridge the gap between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, can only draw on the novels to which Jackson holds the rights. The rest of the background or ancillary literature (and there's a lot) is off-limits. "In the four books that are in the domain of the copyright, there are appendices and ideas and things that can be traced without risk," del Toro said. "But I have to be careful not to overstep. We believe there is a way to create this film and make it interesting, but it's too early."

Whatever. With del Toro or without him, there's too much at stake not to shoot both films, but either way, the filmmaker later alluded to how difficult he'd love to make things for the establishment. "Look, if I hadn't been a filmmaker, I would have loved to be a bank robber," he said. "I hate institutions. I hate banks. I wish they'd burn to the fucking ground. I hate lawyers. I hate anyone who fucks us every day and wants us to thank them. I used to want to plan bank robberies. I was fascinated by Rififi or any bank-heist movies. You give me Ocean's 11 or Rififi or whatever you want — as long as they're fucking a banker.

"And in my mind, those [robberies] would be creative endeavors, you know?" he continued. "They would need to plan them like a movie shoot, and they would organize a crew, and they'd probably make more money. I do have antisocial impulses, especially toward institutions, but I channel them toward my movies. People who like my movies would agree." Great! We look forward to seeing what he does with his flamethrower.

[Photo Credit: Jeffrey Wells]

It was largely hit or miss (though the otherwise outclassed Hannigan killed telling the first joke she ever heard: "What do ghosts say to each other? 'Do you see people?' " Ha!), but one inquiring mind finally picked up the slack during the audience Q&A: Where the hell are all the women late-night talk shows?

It took a beat longer than you'd think for someone to invoke Chelsea Handler, who drew general praise among the panelists. Steinberg shrugged. "I don't think there's any reason it hasn't happened," he said. "It's an old habit to think that late-night television gets more viewers and more response than a show like The View or Oprah or Ellen. ... I don't think there's any blocking anywhere at this point. It's just a question of how things are."

"I think if Ellen were on at night, she'd be bigger than all of them," Hannigan said.

Garofalo bristled. "I think there is a blocking."

"I think so, too," Tilly said.

"It's like a bad habit" Garofalo continued. "I know that for a while Amy Sedaris was considered; I know Letterman is a big booster of hers, and I think she herself didn't want to get into that. But I think when people were asking, 'Who's going to replace Johnny [Carson]?', I don't think any female names were ever taken seriously. It's like, 'Don't walk under a ladder, it's bad luck.' It's not true, but you still walk around the latter. It's false wisdom to say that women won't work in late night. It's a business run on fear, right? Very few people in television are willing to take chances, and I think they think, 'If we take a chance on a woman, and it doesn't work...' Because there's this false demo — this elusive 18-35 male we mentioned. Does that really exist?"

"It's not just a habit," Steinberg replied. "They call on people who have the experience who are out there, so it's Conan O'Brien [for The Tonight Show]. If Ellen wanted to do The Tonight Show, she could have gotten in the running."

"I don't believe that," Tilly said. "I think among the networks, it's like, 'Women like to watch women while they're at home washing the laundry, with the Tide that gets laundry whiter than white. And at night people want to watch edgy guys.' Didn't you experience that, Janaene, when you were at Saturday Night Live? That there was a tremendous sort of... not misogyny, but a sort of boy's club?"

"It's a show that rises and falls over the years," Garofalo said. "When Tina Fey came in as head writer, it was fantastic, and the women over the last eight years or so have been just amazing. They're too numerous to mention. But when I was there, the show was just awful. It didn't matter if you were a guy, girl, transvestite, transgender — whoever you were, that show just sucked it that year. ... I personally was awful. I failed miserably, plus I was a horrible drunk at the time; that's all my fault."

"I just assumed the man was keeping you down," Tilly said.

"The man and a woman," Garofalo said. "Me, myself, as a woman, kept me down."

But there's Feldman, dropping in again as vampire-killer Edgar Frog ("Did somebody order stake?") amid fireside lesbian kisses, gratuitous flashing and prodigious bloodletting. We mean, we know things have been better, Corey, but... Why?

"Has anybody heard the relativity of physics kind of spelled out through the transcripts of the biological study of ancient man?" he asked the baffled crowd, apparently invoking the new-age synonym for "paycheck." "No?" he continued. "OK! Then I guess we'll just go to the simple answer: It was a good script. All right, thank you very much."

More silence. Jesus, Corey, stop. Save yourself. Just—

"No, it was a long process actually," he said. "It was a long, complicated process because obviously this a film that the original was held in high esteem by many a fan out there, and as PJ [Pesce, The Tribe's director] so eloquently put it at the beginning of this, he didn't want to be held up with torches and ransacked."

"I still think no matter what, it's not like Citizen Fucking Lost Boys Kane," Pesce said.

"They gave me the [first] script, which was by somebody else, and it wasn't a very good script," Feldman added. "It seemed like they were just throwing it together, and I wasn't really interested in that. Not only that, but I wasn't too involved; they just had a cameo in it for me." Eventually, we learned, Warner Bros. hired a new "writer," reintroduced Corey Haim's character and gave them more to do. Feldman met with Pesce to "see where his head was at."

"The conclusion was that the people making it were fans of the first film and planned to do it with honor and hold it in high regard," he said. "It was quite a compliment; I was excited about getting into bed with people who were lovers of the film." Awkward pause. "Casting couch, that's all I'm saying." No shit. We could all use a cigarette right about now.

"I was really scared," he said. "I know how I felt about the children of famous filmmakers; that's how people would think of me. The perception is that you're talentless, you're a spoiled brat, and more often than not you have an alcohol or drug problem. So! That was the idea going in: 'This is what people are going to think, and they'll never think I deserved it.' Most people try to break from obscurity by going to film festivals; I was looking for obscurity. I wanted to be just another tape that got submitted."

He financed his first short, the kidney-theft comedy Operation, by selling advertising for dorm-room calendars at USC: "I thought, 'Could I ask my Pa for $8,000? I probably could, but if I do this calendar thing, then one day, if I'm at a panel on a film festival...' " Zing! Commercials followed, then Thank You For Smoking — the rest is twee history.

For the first time in years, though, Ivan topped his son: The producer/director spent 15 minutes elaborating about the development of Animal House, from its National Lampoon sketch roots to the script's first pass at Universal — which apparently could have gone better. "I remember we showed the first or second draft to the studio," he said. "They read it and said, 'This is the worst script we've ever read. This is horrible.' Nobody was interested in making this movie. We wrote about 15 drafts over a two-year period, and we kept saying, 'Look, you guys don't understand — this could be the funniest movie ever made.' Because what we thought in our young arrogance was that no one's speaking this language — the language of my generation. The Baby Boom generation had no comedic filmmakers; the closest thing we could sort of identify was M*A*S*H. ... It changed the way comedy was approached."

Reitman and company eventually wore the studio down with help from another comic. "There was some Richard Pryor movie that had a very good preview and that Universal also hated," he said. "So they said, 'Well, we hated that one, and it turned out OK; let's go make this Animal House thing."

"This is how the industry works," Jason replied. And we guess we can be thankful for that.

Wait, wait, wait — there's a sequel coming for The School of Rock?

White nodded. What's it about, we asked? "I can't tell you."

"It's a studio!" Hardwicke groaned.

"I literally just turned it in," White added. "It's a little too fresh off the boat for me to get into right now. And I don't even know if it's gonna be made."

White was a little more forthcoming about the process for returning to the original without succumbing to franchisee cynicism. "It was easier," he said. "Every time you're creating something, you're always thinking, 'What is the pleasurable part of this? What is the theme that's going to resonate with people?' I've had experiences where I loved what I did, and no one came. And times when I said, 'This could use some editing,' and everybody loves it. Our job is to pretend we know what everybody wants to see, but I don't know. So with this, you want to have a reason to go to the well again. You want it to not just be a reason so people can cash in. But at least now I have a better sense of what it was we created — what worked and what didn't. I can kind of reboot it."

We heard back in May that this was one of the titles that might seal Picturehouse's fate at WB; after it did, the studio brass's antipathy was later spun by Nikki Finke as thinly veiled institutional misogyny. An anonymous Finke source sounded a lot like English on Sunday, pegging the budget at a super-low $16 million and citing supposedly positive test screenings. Alas, the clip screened Sunday was leaden, cold and calculated in contrast to the crackling original that just preceded it; Eva Mendes is no Joan Crawford, but who is?

We asked English, who raised the budget herself after the original Ryan/Julia Roberts incarnation crashed back in the late '90s, about rumors Warners was sitting on the film and wouldn't pay to market it this August. She made a puzzled face and shook her head.

"We're going to have a proper release," she said. "They passed on our film, and they passed on Sex and the City as well. They have a particular kind of movie that they do really well, and this isn't their cup of tea necessarily. But they do understand how marketable this film is — they're not dumb, they absolutely do get that. After the success of Sex and the City, they're are currently re-looking at our marketing budget to take better care of us. ... The exception to the rule keeps happening."

Of course, The Women is obviously not Sex and the City — the clear beneficiary of a franchise following and almost unprecedented media support. Anyway, even if this isn't the chick-flick make-or-break we're being led to believe, we did learn from English that gay men are now unofficially the "fifth quadrant" of moviegoing audiences. All the easier to spread the blame in the aftermath, we suppose.

Alas, there they were: David Duchovny, X-Files creator/director Chris Carter, writer/producer Frank Spotnitz and cascades of withering shrieks inside the Majestic Crest. Oh, and two lightly spoilerrific clips — a couple minutes each, the longest sustained orgasm most of the attendees have had since the show went off the air.

And by lightly, we mean lightly: A guy gets it in the face and hand with a trowel, winds up in the snow. Crazy psychic Billy Connelly finds him buried. Enter special agents Mulder and Scully. Brooding follows — lots of it. And that's... all? See you in five weeks!

The rest of the night was pure subterfuge, unless you count Carter's faux-reluctant disclosure of a research trip to, ahem, Cleveland. He would barely talk about his means of secret-keeping, allowing only that his and Spotnitz's paranoia was such that ahead of shooting, department heads were allowed script reads only in a sealed room with a camera trained on them and no notes allowed. Duchovny said he had to beg for a screenplay of his own — a bit of a regression from the first film 10 years ago, when the red, Xerox-proof script pages simply made it hard to read his lines.

Once he got the script, Duchovny was still in the dark as to where Mulder had been since the TV show's run — which was fine by him. "When you look back at when Gillian [Anderson] and I first played the characters in 1993, the idea of trying to be that guy in reruns right now — as much as I'd love to — would be a little embarrassing," he said. "That's probably one of the most interesting things for an actor to try: to embody the same character as time goes by. Not wanting to be a cartoon character frozen in time, but a character who changes in time."

Like... how? "No," Duchovny said, shutting the door on yet another plot thread. "It's one of the reasons I wanted to continue playing this character; I wanted to take him on this journey he started in 1993. ... He's frustrated. He hasn't changed. He's a quester; he's always going to be looking."

To that end, Spotnitz plucked a few hundred gushing audience heartstrings by confessing how much he missed his characters. Duchovny one-upped him, recalling Carter's teariness the day of the first read-through ("Awwww!" again, right on cue) and citing a fan video screened on set north of Vancouver. "I just remember thinking, 'Oh fuck, I've gotta deliver,' " he said.

One fan asked when 20th Century Fox would be delivering on its own end — trailers? Teasers? Commercials? Anything? Indeed, awareness beyond fans isn't especially high, as Spotnitz inferred with Fox brass sitting right in the front row. "We had a big marketing meeting with the studio and they assured us that by July 25 everyone will know about this movie," he said. And in the event they take to it, it's set up for a third edition in the next two to three years.

Still, Night Watch director Timur Bekmambitov's English-language debut made for refreshing R-rated viewing after this summer's succession of lackluster action fare; even his most garish visual flourishes — particularly McAvoy's keyboard-smashing exploits yielding computer keys and a dislodged tooth spelling "FUCK YOU" in midair — seem more inspired, even heartfelt than their absurd CGI analogs in Indy 4 or The Incredible Hulk. But he can even shock with simplicity, such as a Jolie entrance we're loath to spoil. Then there's a train derailment for the ages, and... oh, fine. We kind of loved it.

We thought it over on the shuttle from the Majestic Crest to the palm-toothed maw of the after-party. Alas, we couldn't get our compliments and maybe a round of Five Questions in with the talent, which was sequestered off-limits from the drunken, unwashed public on Broxton. "Do you have a ticket?" a bouncer asked.

"A ticket for what?" we replied.

"You gotta have a ticket."

"No, but..." we muttered, looking down at our press badge. "What are you talking about?"

"Universal only."

"Do you know who the fuck we are?" we didn't scream, reaching for our phones. Minutes later our publicity contact left us hanging as well (memo to all: "Defamer" is not actually a literal means of coverage), forcing us back to the bar, where we drank away our perfunctory Russian lessons and scrolled a bit of other news to come out of the fest's first day:

—Gigantic Releasing picked up the competition documentary Must Read After My Death — a painstakingly assembled flash back to the '60s, when a "bold family experiment slowly and inexorably descended into a mire of confusion and turmoil, speeded along by a battalion of psychiatrists." A guaranteed laugh riot to start your weekend, Must Read premieres tonight the Landmark.

—Lance Hammer's acclaimed drama Ballast, which was one of the relatively few titles to leave this year's Sundance Film Festival with a distribution deal, opted out of its pact with IFC Films and jumped over to Strand Releasing. "The budget was big enough that it would be hard in the current model to see that money back," Hammer told Variety. "In the old days, when distributors gave a larger minimum guarantee, that would have been a totally different story. Nobody can afford to do that anymore." The parting was "amicable," we hear, which is no fun at all. More cataclysm, please, people!

WHAT'S NEW: For the second consecutive week, a pair of critical underachievers square off at the multiplex. But while the noisy, mostly terrible Get Smart is something of a masterpiece compared to The Love Guru, we expect both to lock in for decent opening frames; estimates below $40 million seem conservative for Smart, and Guru, almost-unilaterally loathed as it is, will still pull around $22 million from teenagers not knowing any better. Watch out, though, for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first film based on the popular doll brand; opening in limited release in markets featuring American Girl stores, this will eventually pull every 10-and-under girl (and her mother) into a theater near you.

Also opening: The Santa Monica parking ticket romance Expired and the arranged-marriage-in-London drama Brick Lane.

THE BIG LOSER: We may not actually have one this week, though were taking early wagers on The Love Guru's second-week plunge. We'll even sweeten the deal: Winning bets on anything less than 70% pay double!

THE UNDERDOG: The first weekend of the L.A. Film Festival offers a pretty diverse assortment of programming — and, alas, quality — but we'd be derelict in our underdog-reporting duties if we didn't single out the tiny, riveting Thai entry Wonderful Town (Saturday at 7 p.m., AMC Avco 4). Aditya Assarat's story follows a big-city architect dispatched to oversee a luxury hotel project in the ruins of the 2004 tsunami; culture clash and doomed romance ensue to ultimately shocking degrees, but Assarat's handle on melancholy (as well as the rich, hazy inland landscapes) thwarts the potential for melodrama. This will likely return in limited release from its distributors at Kino, but why wait? Plus it will make you that much cooler when eventually recommending it to latecoming friends.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's include Michel Gondry's sweding buddy picture Be Kind Rewind, the must-not-have Mashew McConauhdgrl/Kate Hudson collaboration Fool's Gold, Alison Eastwood's mildly underrated directing debut Rails and Ties, the Martin Lawrence offering Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, and Grant Gee's extraordinary, anecdote- and interview-heavy rock documentary Joy Division.

So are you getting Smart this weekend, or are you sucking it up for 100 minutes with Guru Pitka? Any LAFF recommendations we should take in? Will Be Kind Rewind be more ironic than ever on DVD? Be honest! Share your plans, and look us up if you're planning a Westwood festival sojourn.

We guess we'll wait and see, but meanwhile, we've scanned the program for a few daily recommendations you might consider through the end of the festival — from no-budget micro-horror to a primate-centric Charlton Heston tribute to a Reitman family gab session. See them all (and add your own tips) after the jump. And give us a ride, would you? We're quiet, clean and can probably fit in your trunk.

Tonight: Start the fest in style by crashing the premiere and after-party of Wanted; assuming she shows up, it's likely the only way Entertainment Tonight can be sure Angelina Jolie has not yet made twins.

Friday, June 20: Not to be confused with Alan Ball's execrable eye-terror Towelhead, the Duplass Brothers' Baghead is a nifty comedy/horror hybrid about four struggling actors who hit a cabin in the woods to hash out a screenplay for themselves. Creative tension gives way to sexual tension, which in turn gives way to a bag-wearing homicidal maniac. What, your writing partners never tried to kill you? Alternate: Swear-A-Long Scarface at the Ford Amphitheater. It is what it sounds like.

Saturday, June 21: After eluding their damn dirty hands in April once and for all, the late Charlton Heston receives a free tribute screening of Planet of the Apes outdoors on Broxton Ave. Alternate: Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson and his Cinematic Titanic crew return for a live-on-stage lampooning of Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman.

Sunday, June 22: David Duchovny and Chris Carter drop by the Crest to show clips from X Files: I Want to Believe and deflect amateur screenwriters' offers during the Q&A to write the franchise's next film. Alternate: The engrossing, Sundance-winning doc Man on Wire, about the wack-job who walked between the World Trade Center towers on a tightrope in 1974.

Monday, June 23: Ivan and Jason Reitman chat all things Canadian and nepotistic in a conversation at the Geffen Playhouse. Alternate: Guillermo del Toro chats all things monsters and Hobbit at the Billy Wilder Theater.

Tuesday, June 24: A late revival screening of The Lost Boys promises "special guests" (someone named "Corey" is a high-percentage guess) and a preview of the straight-to-DVD sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe. Alternate: Una Noche con Antonio Banderas at el Teatro de Guillermo Wilder.

Wednesday, June 25: We haven't seen Paper or Plastic?, but any documentary about a grocery-bagging competition in Las Vegas seems virtually guaranteed to soar. Alternate: Josh Safdie's kleptomaniacal Cannes and South By Southwest sensation The Pleasure of Being Robbed.

Thursday, June 26: The Russian social "satire" Cargo 200 is arguably the bleakest, most uncommercial and bitterly amusing film we've seen this year. Which is to say we loved it. See it now or wait for Netflix. Alternate: Rob Reiner gets his spittly, hyperventilating election-year game going with a screening and discussion of his 1995 film The American President.

Friday, June 27: Night Flight: Born Again revisits the gone-but-not-forgotten program's stash of music videos, interviews, shorts and other cult artifacts that made it the compelling (if short-lived) analog to '80s-era MTV. Alternate: If that's not fringe enough for you, three hours' worth of Kuchar brothers films are screening at the same time down the street at the Billy Wilder Theater.

Saturday, June 28: Another crash-worthy gala premiere of Hellboy II: The Golden Army starts winding things down, followed by more monsters-and-Hobbit talk from Guillermo del Toro. Alternate: The Peter Bart-approved crankhead opus Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal.

Sunday, June 30: The W Westwood hosts a 20th-anniversary screening of A Fish Called Wanda. Alternate: None. Are you kidding? Have you seen A Fish Called Wanda?

Here's a once-prim Beverly Hills girl, daughter of a pediatrician and school teacher, who builds a world-class brothel, goes to jail, gets hooked on crystal meth — and then moves to Pahrump, Nevada to start yet another prostitution ring, this one designed for rich women who want to hire guys to service them.

Bizarre? Definitely, and that's why Sheila Nevins bought the rights to her "life story" and why the talented team of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato decided to make a doc about her. To be sure, half way [sic] into the project Heidi decided to end her cooperation. "She's really Jekyll and Heidi," says Bailey. "Her personality changes hour by hour."

In the end, Nevins herself had to step in to grab an interview, at which we'll have a look this week during our coverage of the Los Angeles Film Festival. It was probably the exotic-bird "fetish" that put us over the top, or maybe Fleiss's allusions to the "three years in lesbian hell" that was her imprisonment. Either way, here's hoping Bart isn't pulling yet another of his banal corporate whitewashes on us — we do tend to enjoy a good "opera," especially those spotlighting B-list crank addiction. Oh, the drama.

[Photo Credit: LAFF]

• The Rise & Fall of Heidi Fleiss [PeterBart.com]

Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Guillermo del Toro's last film before disappearing down the Hobbit rabbit hole for four years, closes the festival June 29, while a smattering of world premieres (the Aimee Mann concert film Largo, Lori Petty's directorial debut The Poker House) can be found in the competition slate. Elsewhere are James Marsh's nifty Sundance-winning documentary Man on Wire — about the Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center Towers in 1974 — and Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal, which follows its infamous subject's "long, strange trip through the Nevada desert and brothel politics to open Heidi's Stud Farm."

Among the most notable of special screenings, however, we'd spotlight Swear-along Scarface at the Ford Amphitheater: "Think you've got what it takes to swear alongside Tony Montana and his foul-mouthed crew? Don't miss this opportunity to curse under the stars at this special 'Adults Only' screening of a timeless f#*!*ing classic." Actually, we don't think anyone has what it takes, but we'll probably give it a shot anyway. Check the rest of the selections at the fest's Web site, and save us a seat.

[Photo Credit: Wireimage]

• Los Angeles Film Festival [Film Independent]