Orchestrating Those True Confessions : Show business: Talk isn’t cheap when publicists have absolute control over what big-name clients say and who they say it to.

Never have so many talked to so many about so much.

For celebrities and semi-celebrities, true confessions have become another summer entertainment.

And this summer, true confessions have stretched from Hollywood people telling all to sports figures filing into television’s confessionals and, most recently, a set of entertainment writers telling all about the people who get the celebrities to talk publicly in the first place.

There’s nothing cheap about all of this talk. There’s a payoff, somewhere. Spilling the beans can have a beneficial effect.

The onslaught of the mea culpas started earlier this year with the publication of Julia Phillips’ tell-all Hollywood book, “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.” That true confession reached No. 1 and stayed on the bestseller list for 13 weeks, finally fading in late June.

But an epidemic of television shows late last month show that when it comes to show business, words speak louder than actions.

When “20/20’s” Barbara Walters got tennis star Martina Navratilova to talk about her sexuality and a lawsuit brought against her by her former companion, the ABC news show beat other television entertainments for the entire week, hitting a 13.7 rating with a 29 share of audience. Clearly it was first in the eyes of viewers.

Almost the same thing happened when “First Person With Maria Shriver” on NBC featured former Los Angeles Raider Lyle Alzado talking about his brain cancer and his previous use of steroids. The payoff for Shriver: an 11.0 rating and a 24 share, the best ratings ever for that show.

Even cable’s little Arts & Entertainment network found success in Hollywood talk. Its first of six parts on “Naked Hollywood,” a BBC see-all, hear-all documentary, got into more than a million households, becoming one of A&E;’s most-watched shows this year.

And in a related field of entertainment, when Vanity Fair put a pregnant Demi Moore on its cover to go with more pictures and some text, the magazine sold close to 1 million copies, up from its official circulation of 789,820.

But the topper to this, our long hot season of true confessions, came with the August edition of Los Angeles magazine.

That’s when veteran Hollywood writers Ivor and Sally Davis confessed that they’ve had it with certain of Hollywood’s practitioners, specifically some independent “boutique” publicists.

Ironically, they directed their fire at some of the most powerful people representing some of Hollywood’s biggest names.

“We have been threatened and harassed, bullied and browbeaten. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore,” they wrote in going public with their complaint about the conduct and business practices of what they call a “Flacks Fatales.” Both writers incidentally deny any vestige of anti-feminism in their thinking and in the title of their article.

”. . . This is the story from the front lines--and from that perspective of what is beginning to look alarmingly like the losing side . . .,” they wrote. You have to understand that the Davises are gentle people, journeymen journalists of a Hollywood scene who in large measure rely on publicists for access to the personalities their editors crave them to cover.

The Davises’ complaint: Certain public-relations people had assumed absolute control of Hollywood coverage and of what their clients could say and who they would talk to. Among those named in Los Angeles were Pat Kingsley, Susan Geller and Andrea Jaffe. Editors, the Davises claimed, were being told what writers could be assigned to what stories. Photographs of stars were controlled by the publicists. Magazine covers were being dictated. Even TV confessions were carefully supervised by public-relations people.

On top of that, telephone calls weren’t being answered, interview quests were being denied and writers told what they could ask and where they should be silent. Ivor Davis himself says that he has been blacklisted a couple of times by studios for stories that he has written, another sign, he says, of the immature attitude on the part of some people in Hollywood.

The Davises said that other writers they knew had talked about how to lift this iron curtain of sorts. Some magazine editors had met recently to talk counter strategies. But no one was actually doing anything. The Davises and many other Hollywood writers believe that the entertainment industry should be covered with as much care and with as much professionalism as goes into coverage of government and business and political activities. Frustrated by what they call immaturity, rudeness and almost single-handed control of sources, the Davises decided that only an airing of their complaints might begin to change things in Hollywood.

It was a confrontation worthy of a television talk show itself. But no TV producers called.

The Davises did receive numerous telephone calls from other abused writers and many calls from abused network and other publicists. Pat Kingsley, one of the publicists named by the Davises, did talk to Ivor, explaining her side of the business somewhat to his satisfaction.