Crayola-zation

You don’t like the way those computer geniuses are coloring all those classic black-and-white movies? Think you could do better? Well, thanks to ex-National Lampooner (and b&w; purist) Ron Hauge, you have a chance to take your best shot: It’s “The Colorization Movie Coloring Book” from Workman Publishing, with 30 of those mawkish coloring-book-style replicas of familiar stills culled from such classic b&w; films as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “Plan Nine From Outer Space.”

The book, just out, also thoughtfully supplies six crayons so you can get right at Gloria Swanson’s gown or Hank Fonda’s cap.

To help the tyro colorizer, we went to Tom Powell, veep of Color Systems Technology Inc. for advice. “It’s not a job for the faint-hearted beginner,” Powell warned darkly. “The pressure is on to make sure that red is the right red.”

He suggested hiring “a multimillion-dollar research team (to) get them to tell you what the right colors are. Then you can’t really go wrong, or be blamed.” Also: Studio records document the exact colors of the film’s clothes, sets and props--and the computer does much of the rest.

To help you crayolizers get the scene from “Sunset Boulevard” right, we went to director Billy Wilder himself: “What the hell difference does it make? The film I made is in black and white!’