COVER STORY : Is Hollywood...

The question was put to a veteran film director: Is there, as Vice President Dan Quayle contends, a “cultural elite” in Hollywood?

“There are about six guys who have the power in this town to greenlight a picture,” the director replied, “and none of them are remotely concerned about culture!”

Besides, he added, “the only week they’re interested in culture is Oscar week.”

As Dan Quayle continued to stump the nation lashing out at what he termed “shallow sophisticates” who sit in America’s newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges “laughing at America itself, at the familes that have always done the real work of building a great society,” members of the entertainment industry once again saw their community under attack by politicians.

In a speech last month at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., conservative Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan talked about “the adversary culture, with its implacable hostility to Judeo-Christian teaching” that had subverted values “from the public classroom to the TV screen, from the movie theater to the museum.”

Texas billionaire Ross Perot, meanwhile, derided Quayle after the vice president claimed the fictional TV character “Murphy Brown” undercut traditional family values because she had a baby out of wedlock. It was then learned that Perot, the undeclared presidential candidate, had once sternly criticized another TV character, 18-year-old Doogie Howser, for going to bed with a teen-age girlfriend.

But while many view Quayle’s attack as merely an attempt to shore up conservative support for President Bush, the vice president’s remarks touched on larger issues that have periodically been debated for decades: Is Hollywood a monolith where a small group of people who think alike dictate the kinds of movies and television programs America watches? Do films and TV programs mirror life or impose their own agenda of beliefs and values on society? Is there a correlation between what people see and what some view as erosion of family values? And, does Hollywood have a liberal bias that affects public attitudes?

Clouding the debate was the fact that Quayle did not pinpoint those individuals he believed composed the cultural elite.

If the elite meant people who make movies, would Lew Wasserman, the grand old man of MCA, be lumped in with the fast-living former studio chief and ex-hairdresser Jon Peters? In television, would Roseanne Arnold and Bill Cosby be considered part of the cultural elite? Does the cultural elite include the writers of “Saturday Night Live”?

Even as Quayle was speaking out against the cultural elite and TV programming, wasn’t TV headed in a more populist direction--toward “reality-based” programs, such as “Rescue 911” and “Cops?”

But some critics of the mass media said the vice president had tapped into a groundswell of discontent over today’s movies and TV shows.

These critics come armed with a list of examples, from ABC’s “Roseanne,” where 16-year-old Becky Connor once asked her mother to help her get birth control pills, to Fox’s “Married . . . with Children,” where daughter Kelly Bundy dresses like a slut, can’t count to five and is constantly made the butt of jokes about her sleeping around.

Films are no better, they add.

Writers Guild of America-West President Del Reisman said he often hears complaints from the public about profane language and explicit sex in movies. “A lot of these feelings are no longer on the extreme fringes of American conservatism but are being said more often by the mainstream. . . . They are saying, ‘Hey, Hollywood, you’re giving us too much sex, you’re going for the big buck here.”’

TriStar Pictures’ recent blockbuster “Basic Instinct” dealt with a bisexual who murders her victims with an ice pick after having an orgasm. One media critic asked why actor Michael Douglas--who reportedly received $15 million to star in the film--and Sharon Stone would agree to appear in such a movie.

“Did Michael Douglas really have to do this film?” asked Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education in Arlington, Va., and a frequent critic of how the media portrays sex, drugs and violence.

“I think we are dealing with such massive egos who are so afraid of not making a hit film, of not having a starring role . . . that they are willing to sacrifice the nation’s integrity itself on the altar of their own professional honor,” Reisman said.

Reisman believes an unhealthy diet of corrosive television shows and films is just as bad for people as air pollution. She calls it “toxic media.”

“I saw the coming attractions for ‘Batman Returns,”’ Reisman said. “It opens up with Catwoman beating the devil out of Batman. Then there is a scene where she has her tongue out and she is practically consuming his face. The kids don’t miss this information. This isn’t the old (TV) Batman. This is not innocuous.”

Gail Panatier of Van Nuys, who with her husband, Mark, reviews more than 100 movies a year as a volunteer for the California State PTA, said she was appalled when she took her 16-year-old daughter to see the R-rated film “Naked Lunch.”

“I have no idea how it got an R rating,” Panatier said. “I think (the film) was supposed to be surreal. It had these creatures that were insects and they all represented sexual organs. The story was about this guy who was an insect exterminator and his wife gets addicted to the juice he uses for spraying. In one of the very first scenes, she is injecting this stuff into her breasts.”

Panatier said she doesn’t believe there is an elite that spreads any particular political or social agenda in films, but she does think that those who work in Hollywood have a responsibility to make movies that do more than shock or go for a quick laugh.

“I think (filmmakers) are in a particularly powerful position because they are marketing their views to the world,” Panatier said.

But some contend that the lifestyles of people in the entertainment industry have an impact on the kinds of films and TV shows that are produced.

It’s a real world that exists beyond the stereotypes of the cellular phones and the Mercedes convertibles and the Monday-night dinners at Morton’s. For every Griffin Mill, the amoral studio executive in “The Player,” there’s a real life Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who, despite a workaholic lifestyle, dotes on his children and rolls out such films as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sister Act,” which both contain uplifting themes. But from producer Aaron Spelling to Arnold Schwarzenegger, these power brokers are mostly white males concentrated geographically on the Westside and just over the hill in the Valley, people whose staggering incomes allow them to lead lives free of the common everyday concerns depicted in many of their films and TV series.

“There is a lot of money in Hollywood and cultural elites are susceptible to (more) temptations than people who don’t have money,” said Dennis Jarrard, former chairman of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. “If you’ve been married four or five times, you’re going to have a different attitude about what you create than if you come from a stable marriage.”

Although there is a shared liberal sensibility among Hollywood decision makers, it is economics, not ideology, that drives the entertainment industry. For that reason, you will probably not often see a major studio bankroll films on subjects they fear the public will avoid--there have been few movies about AIDS (although there’s a spate of AIDS films in development) or the homeless, and virtually none about abortion, although television has portrayed these downbeat, controversial subjects more frequently.

Ratings and box office are the signposts that guide Hollywood, say those who deal regularly with the industry. “Any way you look at it, the box office is the most objective measure there is,” said entertainment attorney Peter Dekom. “We don’t have to wait every four years for an election to see what the public wants. We get judged every day of our lives.”

Few would argue that when it comes to social issues, Hollywood has a liberal tilt.

For a 1990 study, University of Texas government professor David F. Prindle interviewed 35 “Hollywood opinion leaders” and found them to be “much more liberal” than the American public at large on a range of issues. While a 1987 Times Mirror poll showed that 62% of the public describe themselves as religious, only 24% of Prindle’s sample described themselves that way. Ninety-seven percent of Prindle’s Hollywood sample agreed that “it’s all right for blacks and whites to date each other,” compared to 53% in a 1990 Times Mirror poll. Of the Hollywood group, 68% supported gay rights compared to only 12% of the 1987 Times Mirror respondents.

In a telephone interview, Prindle said he interviewed only three studio heads and no other studio executives. His list included officials of civil rights and other organizations, including Andy Spahn, president of the Environmental Media Assn., an industry-created organization that promotes environmentally correct messages. Acknowledging that some people in his sample were far more influential than others, Prindle said that did not matter because “the sample is so uniformly liberal. . . . They all have the same opinion.”

Prindle’s results confirm research surveys conducted a decade ago by Stanley Rothman, a government professor at Smith College, and S. Robert Lichter, now co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington.

In an article describing their findings about the movie industry, Lichter and Rothman wrote: “Their social views are broadly humanistic, and they enthusiastically support certain aspects of the new morality that emerged in the 1960s.”

“Quayle comes to the same results that we do,” Rothman said by telephone. “My suspicion is that things have not changed, although the public has become more liberal in some areas. . . .. Many people in the movie industry like to think they’re pragmatic, open-minded people. They fail to perceive that they do share a perspective.”

That shared perspective in the media doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything sinister or conspiratorial going on, said George Comstock, S.I. Newhouse professor at Syracuse University’s School of Public Communication.

“The media are inevitably in every country run by elites,” Comstock said. “You have to be literate to start with, which eliminates a significant proportion of the population. You don’t find French television coming from some village in Lyon.”

Comstock, author of “Television and the American Child,” said people are largely recruited into the U.S. media because they have talent, not because of their politics or ideology. “You don’t go around and say, ‘I want Republicans to manage my TV station.’ You say, ‘I want someone who can make me money.’ ”

In professional cultures, Comstock added, employees in industries ranging from medicine to publishing tend to associate with one another. “So, your opinions are often formed by people who are around you.”

Some Hollywood observers say that the cultural elite that Dan Quayle talks about is an elite, not a cabal. “An elite is just a group of people who share certain basic assumptions, a certain world view and operate on the basis of that world view,” said Ronald Brownstein, a Los Angeles Times national political correspondent and the author of “The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection.”

But others see in Quayle’s label a potential for hate-mongering.

“The word elite is a loaded word,” said Richard Zakia, a professor of photography at Rochester Institute of Technology, who has made a study of images.

“The term elite is kind of neutral, but in the context (Quayle) is using it, people can substitute anything for it--niggers, dagos, kikes, krauts, Jews, commies. . . . You notice he didn’t use the word rich, did he? Are the rich the elite? The rich that contributed to his campaign are not elite.”

Since the time of the studio moguls, Hollywood has been more receptive to portraying social change than other segments of society.

Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner were conservative people, but the product they put out was culturally subversive. From Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals to “The Thin Man,” Hollywood revealed a life far removed from most towns in America and they created an excitement in the imaginations of moviegoers everywhere.

It is typical of the hypocrisy in Hollywood, said Brownstein, that on one hand they say their art has no impact on society and on the other they decide to make films that address politically correct concerns such as the environment. “In ‘Lethal Weapon 2’ they put in a little line ‘don’t eat tuna’ to save the dolphins, and yet they are killing all these people in the movie,” Brownstein said.

Some charge that Hollywood films rarely depict stable marriages and happy families. Instead, having an affair is a common plot device, children move in a world outside the family unit and family disputes are often resolved with violence.

Critic Michael Medved, author of a forthcoming book, “Hollywood vs. America,” said poor movie attendance demonstrates that the industry is out of touch with its audience.

He cited “a tremendous spate of marriage-bashing in 1990 and 1991,” including, “Sleeping With the Enemy,” “Deceived,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Mortal Thoughts,” “A Kiss Before Dying” and “Reversal of Fortune.” Some of these pictures did quite well at the box office, however.

“What would a Martian conclude about marriage in our society, if it based its findings on American movies today?” Medved asked. “I don’t think (it) would get the idea that people report a remarkably high satisfaction with their marriages.”

To be sure, TV has its share of programs that portray family life in a positive way such as “The Wonder Years” and “The Cosby Show.” But Medved argues religious practice and commitment are “grossly underrepresented,” and that single parents are overrepresented on television.

“I’m not suggesting that if you make a movie about a nice family that movie is going to do great business,” he said. “What I am suggesting is that there is a comfort level introduced in some of these films--people see a family and say, “That’s what we’d like to be.”

Religious values are also virtually ignored, according to some Christian media critics.

“Name a film in the last 10 years where you saw a family pray over a dinner or attend religious services--it’s as if we don’t do those things,” said Bob DeMoss, youth culture specialist with Focus on the Family, a Christian media watchdog group. “People eat together, but apparently they don’t pray together.”

Each year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out the Oscar for best picture, it is likely to go to films that are uplifting of the human condition, such as “Dances With Wolves,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Rain Man.”

DeMoss believes something is askew when Hollywood bestows its highest award to “The Silence of the Lambs,” a film about an FBI trainee who seeks help from a psychopathic cannibal in order to track down a man who skins women.

“Millions of American families felt very comfortable taking the whole family to ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ” DeMoss said. “Not only was it a glorious production, but there was a message we rarely hear, that looks are skin deep. Hollywood, by contrast, is intellectually skin deep and, therefore, they don’t have the heart for these kind of values.”

While Quayle’s criticisms seem to imply that movies and television programs have a uniform agenda in the way they portray Americans and their lifestyles, his broad-brush criticisms don’t acknowledge the wide diversity of both mediums. In movies, for example, the high-gloss Cinderella world of “Pretty Woman” is juxtaposed with the gritty realism--and serious family values--of “Boyz N the Hood.” But despite made-for-TV movies that often explore controversial subjects, some say television generally fails to portray life as it is.

“One could make the opposite criticism (from Quayle’s) entirely, and that is, that the world portrayed in TV is very unrealistic, and has very little to do with life as it is lived by most people in this society, and if you’re talking about lifestyles, why don’t we see poverty?” said Duke University political scientist David L. Paletz.

“Do we ever see the real life styles of people in South-Central Los Angeles on TV?” Paletz asked. “I think it’s a very particular point to pick on one episode in one series.”

Reisman, president of the Writers Guild, West, said that Hollywood reflects American life rather than induces it: “Quayle is talking about a few TV shows he has heard of, which present lifestyles he objects to. But if you look at TV across the board, you see a whole range of American lifestyle.”

That diversity can be seen in small towns like Kissimmee, Fla., where two years ago, the city commission fought over whether to impose NC-17 ratings on movies shown in local theaters. Former commissioner Richard Herring said the community of 30,000 located near Orlando has changed with the times. It’s conservative, he said, but not extreme right wing.

“It’s the world we live in,” the 47-year-old printer explained. “It’s a lot faster. I got a wife and kid, 13, and another daughter, 23, who watch ‘Murphy Brown.’ . . . I consider myself a conservative, but this is not the 1920s.”

He noted that “Basic Instinct” is still playing at the “ultraconservative” Cobb theater chain in town--he even saw it. “It didn’t play one day and leave.” With its R rating, Herring said, “You know going into a movie like that what it was.”

While social scientists say the public’s attitudes on social issues is growing increasingly more liberal, professors Rothman and Prindle said it is impossible to know whether television and movies--as opposed to a myriad of other factors--are responsible for these changing attitudes.

Despite his findings, Rothman concedes: “Most people watch television for entertainment. They couldn’t care less about what Quayle is saying.”

“Nobody ever goes broke knocking Hollywood, or knocking the media,” said writer John Gregory Dunne, the author of the novels “Harp” and “Dutch Shea Jr.” as well as screenplays including “The Panic in Needle Park” with Joan Didion.

Quayle’s rhetoric may be designed to curry favor among certain voters, but this is a debate that’s not confined to a campaign year, and the larger issues that it touches upon are sure to be with us when the next generation of studio executives and television programmers take over.

Film makers have long faced the dilemma of trying to decipher what the public wants and how to present it, to a moviegoing public that says it wants quality but lines up for “Wayne’s World” and “Problem Child 2.” One of this year’s most highly praised network series was “Brooklyn Bridge,” which has the kind of family values Quayle couldn’t criticize. But it drew weak ratings and was only renewed because CBS wanted to give it another chance.

After four decades in Hollywood, veteran producer Robert Radnitz (“Sounder,” “Cross Creek”) said the quality of films still depends on who makes them, not a “cultural elite” agenda.

He said if you show three filmmakers a script, they will likely come away with three different approaches. He has told this anecdote to film school classes.

“You could take a story about a guy in college, and he decides to go home for the holidays, and what does he find? He finds that his father has been murdered, his mother has married the guy who probably murdered his father and has implicated herself. And on top of that, his girlfriend has gone bananas. Now, you could make garbage based on that. Or you could make ‘Hamlet.’ ”

Staff Writer Terry Pristin contributed to this report.