Pellicano confidential

WOULDN’T YOU know that in the midst of our grand national debate about eavesdropping, L.A. would produce its own smaller, sordid, made-for-cable but infinitely- more-fun eavesdropping scandal?

The Washington debate touches on constitutionality and national security -- the struggle between the executive and legislative branches. The Hollywood version touches on contract squabbles and divorce settlements. They’ve got the CIA. We’ve got CAA.

And while the main D.C. figures are eminences such as George Bush and Porter Goss, our cast features Sylvester Stallone and Mike Ovitz. And a real-life private detective, Anthony Pellicano.

Now, I’m a sucker for a West Coast P.I. -- at least, for the idea of a West Coast P.I. As proof, one of my sons is named for “Chinatown’s” Jake Gittes; the other is named for Sam Spade.

True, this makes me a fan, not an expert. So when Pellicano first hit the papers in the fall of 2003, I wasn’t sure what to think about him. That case centered on a threat against L.A. Times reporter Anita Busch; she was apparently warned to stop writing about Steven Seagal’s involvement with a mobster.

Now, whenever a real Hollywood P.I. makes news, it’s exciting and surreal, creating an instant feedback loop because Hollywood detectives remain icons and stock characters in our films and lore. When a real one appears, we reflexively classify him in fictive terms: Is this guy Philip Marlowe in the flesh, or Lew Archer? Or the Continental Op?

In 2003, with the (alleged) crude threat against Busch and the revelation that Pellicano kept hand grenades in his office, I thought of Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane’s two-fisted, hard-charging, woman-slapping ‘50s detective.

With last week’s unsealing of a mammoth (110-count) indictment following a three-year investigation, our picture of Pellicano changes. The case now revolves around wiretapping -- less Mike Hammer, more J. Edgar Hoover.

But let’s dispense with the parlor-game comparisons and ask an actual question: Is Pellicano a warts-and-all example of the real-life P.I. whose existence gave rise to the mythic Hollywood detectives in the first place?

Let’s flash back to a time before straight actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger played gay men. To a time when gay men like Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter played straight guys: on screen and also at premieres and “dates” stage-managed by studios.

Back then, a magazine like Confidential could expose such an actor and destroy him. In an era when stars were minted by studio publicists, those stars had to be protected (from others, from themselves) by studio muscle. A recently published book about ‘50s beefcake-manager Henry Wilson, “The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson,” explains the use of gangsters and off-duty cops to scare off Hudson’s would-be blackmailers.

Perhaps things haven’t really changed, and celebrities remain exploited and vulnerable. According to the New York Times, Pellicano has described himself as a fixer and “sin eater” for stars such as Liz Taylor, Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise.

Now, “fixer” I can buy. Easy to imagine a studio wanting someone on (or more likely off) the payroll who can keep a stoplight-running star from spending the day at traffic school.

But “sin eater”? A Google search reveals “sin eating” to be an antiquated British practice banned by the Catholic Church. The sin eater would place a bit of bread on the breast of someone near death; in consuming the bread, he’d transmit the sin from the dying person to himself. Some religious scholars compare sin eating to the ancient Jewish tradition of the scapegoat.

So maybe Pellicano looks like a bully and a creep, a far cry from the “tarnished knight” of our celluloid fantasies. Maybe, to us, he’s more evocative of Gordon Liddy than Humphrey Bogart. But not to Pellicano. Even as he was allegedly bugging Keith Carradine’s phone and running the DMV records of Kevin Nealon, Pellicano saw himself as a sacrificial lamb left to wander, alone, down Sunset Boulevard. Well sure, why not?

And what could be more Hollywood than believing your own hype?