WE OPEN THE CURTAINS/THAT'S WHAT'S FOR CERTAINS! With the WGA strike not looking like it's headed toward any immediate resolution, actors may start looking for other options in the form of the theatre. Or maybe not. Broadway's stagehands have called a strike to begin now, shutting down the vast majority of Broadway (non-profit shows from Lincoln Center Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, and Roundabout aren't affected, nor are three shows that have separate contracts with the union). If the strike stretches longer than a couple of days, openings will be delayed.

HARLOT'S GHOST: Norman Mailer, author of fiction and non-fiction, candidate for Mayor of New York, inventor of a favorite word on the Interweb (at least according to the article linked below), and Gilmore Girls guest star, has died.

LITTLE RED BIKE OUT ON THE MAIN ROAD, LUCKY LITTLE SPONSOR: I mean, yes, by all means, please shop at JC Penney, Target, Mervyn's, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Sears, etc., but what do you want me to say about those places? That you can buy just about all name brands at one or more of those places? Unless some really weird Japanese toy hits -- or unless some more Chinese toys metabolize into powerful drugs -- Christmas FNL Sponsorlove is going to be quite a chore.

So today's featured sponsor is the Bank Americard. Really, I don't know why you would advertise a bank card. I'm not sure how many people are currently signed up with banks that don't offer a bank card option, and for the ones that aren't keeping their money in banks at all, I'm unconvinced that 25-year-old technology is the way to get them off the fence.

But I still like this commercial, where the red bike follows the guy around, a loving-if-commercial homage to The Red Balloon. Back when Abe and Sarah Spaceman settled the kids in Brezhnev-era Moscow for seven months, just about the only thing for an American boy to do was go to the Embassy and watch the movies -- frequently Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd (because the diplomats at the Embassy didn't really get Chinatown), but sometimes The Red Balloon. I hope you all remember The Red Balloon, in which a lonely boy befriends a red balloon that follows him around, until a gang of 5-year-old nihilist French terrorists stones and slingshots the balloon to a slow, suffocating deflation punctuated with a jackbooted heel-stomp pop. And just when you've bottomed out, believing the world too cruel a place for a balloon-loving child pariah, along come the rest of the balloons to show you -- I mean the boy -- that loneliness can be cured by a gaggle of rubber friends and a white-knuckle airborne trip over the Fourth Arrondissement clutching some flimsy balloon strings. I cannot tell you how much I loved this movie, and frankly, it wasn't until just now that I realized that it was a frighteningly accurate and nearly literal depiction of what it was like to be a lonely four-year-old American with inanimate objects as one's best friends (my first words in Russian were "I have a rubber chicken," and if you don't believe me you can ask Spacemom), living among actual, honest-to-God Communist bullies. Oh, great, Bank of Americard, now the next time I see you and your red-bike friend I'm going to start blubbering like I just saw Beaches.

Washington City Paper: Cover Story: Attorney at Blah

RELEVANT, NOT-PRIVILEGED: The Washington City Paper explores the world of temp document review attorneys from the inside, relying on folks like Tom the Temp. Via Volokh.

FIELD TURF REQUIRES NO WATERING: With a strike-afflicted SNL a repeat, NBC's Green Week promotion will FNL in a few hours, where Mrs. Coach's sister will nag Tami to adopt a more green lifestyle. By ... ensuring that Street's wheelchair tires are properly inflated? Encouraging Tim to recycle his empties? Composting the Tyrapist?

So what was the most intrusive Green Week plotline?

THE VIDEO IS WHAT WE THOUGHT IT WAS: To counterbalance my negativity this morning, I give you This Movie Is About Cats Flying.

THEY HAD BEARDS, AND ALMOST ALL OF THEM WENT TO FILM SCHOOL: At this year's Oscar ceremony, it certainly seemed like the fix was in when Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg strolled out to present the award for Best Director -- which finally, if predictably, went to their old friend and colleague Martin Scorsese. After all, these four directors represented a whole generation of American filmmakers: the so-called "movie brats" who arrived in Hollywood in the late '60s and early '70s and helped to reinvent and reinvigorate the movie industry, both artistically and commercially. (Their story is memorably told in Peter Biskind's colorful and controversial Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It's also covered in "The Film School Generation," an episode of the documentary series American Cinema, which is conveniently available online through Annenberg Media; just scroll down to the episode title, click "VoD," sign up for the free registration, and watch the streaming video.)

The "brats" combined a professional craftsmanship honed in the burgeoning film schools of NYU, UCLA, and USC with a more independent view of the director's role. (Insert obligatory reference to auteur theory here.) Inspired by both classic Hollywood and international cinema, they produced more personal, often unconventional films -- like Lucas's THX 1138 (1971), Coppola's The Conversation (1974), Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976) -- films that redefined the cinematic vocabulary and pushed studios to grant directors more artistic freedom.

Yet along with this creative explosion came a commercial revolution. Despite (or because of) their "outsider" perspective and stylistic innovation, several of the "brats" proved to be spectacularly successful moviemakers. Coppola's The Godfather (1972) broke all-time box-office records; Spielberg's Jaws (1975) pioneered the concept of the summer blockbuster; Lucas's Star Wars (1977) demonstrated the enormous value of merchandising. Having helped to accelerate the demise of the old studio system, the "brats" wound up leading the way into a new corporate age of franchises and tentpoles, sequels and prequels, $200 million budgets and mammoth opening weekends.

Two questions to you, then, regarding the Big Four of Coppola, Lucas, Scorsese, and Spielberg. First, who do you believe is the best filmmaker? Second, whose movies do you enjoy the most? (Not necessarily the same answers, I would imagine....)

Next week: punk and disco, cable and VCRs, and MTV.