THE LONGEST LUNCH : Maybe, Just Maybe, It’s About Time to Move on to Dinner?

Julia Phillips is no ordinary talk-show guest and she would be the first to agree.

As the author of “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again,” the damning autobiographical tome about depraved Hollywood, Phillips wouldn’t participate in just any old afternoon television gab-fest even though it might be timely to do so. Her book, a bestseller in hardcover, recently made a splashy debut in paperback--bowing in the No. 1 slot its first week and slipping only slightly since.

But to appear on “Geraldo”? That was the exception.

The show’s producers acceded to Phillips’ demands for two round-trip first-class airline tickets L.A. to New York (for Phillips and her assistant), the Ivana Trump suite at the Plaza (as opposed to the more plebeian Ramada Renaissance, where most other “Geraldo” guests stay), a car and, most revealing, exclusive segments devoted to only her.

“They were very nice, very accommodating to me. I had back surgery and couldn’t do ‘Nightline’ and couldn’t do ‘Good Morning America’ and (“Geraldo”) held a show open for me for after I recovered,” Phillips said in way of explanation.

The topic of the show is “How Hollywood Destroys People.” Although it was taped two weeks ago, it is still awaiting an air date because, sources said, host Geraldo Rivera thought it was “too inside” to run during the sweeps period. Others said Rivera hadn’t done his homework and was slightly at a loss for what to talk to her about, opening the show by trying to link her days as a producer (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) with “The Player,” a film satire about Hollywood.

As for Phillips, she didn’t need much prompting and the show livened up when she spewed forth with more juicy opinions about Tinseltown: Phillips believes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna are “freaks.” She compared them to vegetables who eventually “won’t be interesting when they’re not ripe anymore.”

Rivera agreed to give over the first two segments to Phillips alone as long as she agreed to stay for a third and participate in a panel discussion. She balked until they agreed to pay her to stick around. Phillips then joined New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who talked about how has-beens go to Vegas; former MGM star Gloria de Haven and her new career directing screen tests for aspiring actresses as was done in the 1940s (but shot on video); writer Paul Rosenfield (whose own Hollywood book, “The Club Rules,” was just published by Warner Books) and a disguised Beverly Hills prostitute who said actresses still have to sleep their way to the top.

The assemblage, said someone who saw the taping, “couldn’t have been stranger.”