Filmland Ponders a Message : Movies: President Clinton’s appearance at CAA’s Democratic fund-raiser leaves entertainment executives and movie stars alike awed and inspired.

Even normally cool Hollywood insiders aren’t above being awe-struck in the presence of political power.

Such was the case Saturday night, when some 450 entertainment industry executives, movie stars and moguls rendezvoused with President Bill Clinton at the Beverly Hills headquarters of powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, where a $1,000-a-head cocktail reception raised money for the Democratic Party.

Arriving early, veteran director Arthur Hiller, who is president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, stood alone in the press pen outside the building with a video and still camera around his neck. He was hoping to snap a photo of Clinton and was disappointed to learn the President would be entering the building elsewhere. But, Hiller (“The Americanization of Emily,” “Outrageous Fortune”), was excited to get a shot of Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (“Rain Man”) being frisked with his arms outstretched after something he carried set off a walk-through metal detector.

A prominent movie producer, who didn’t want to be identified, one of around 80 individuals to pay $2,500 to chat and have a picture taken with Clinton in an upstairs CAA conference room, admitted to a reporter: “I was going to ask him if he was concerned as I was about the rise of neo-Nazism in Germany, but I chickened out.”

When the President, who arrived late, finally descended from the upstairs to the 57-foot-high lobby of CAA’s I.M. Pei-designed building to address the crowd, the packed room hummed with excitement. Oscar winning writer-director Phil Alden Robinson (“Field of Dreams”) remarked: “This is very cool.”

CAA President Ron Meyer, who hosted the reception with agency Chairman Michael Ovitz and co-founding partner Bill Haber, told a Times reporter that, as a first generation American son of German immigrant parents, Saturday night’s event fulfilled his “wildest dreams.”

Said Meyer: “I was only sorry that my grandparents and father didn’t live to see me host a party for the President. That my mother could be here to see it (she was on hand), couldn’t have made me more proud . . . to me, it’s all kind of amazing--the ultimate high.”

Meyer acknowledged that even though his agency represents such megastars as Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Madonna and Michael Jackson, the movies represent “the make-believe world,” while “this is the real world.”

And even CAA’s super-cool, unflappable Ovitz, considered the most powerful player in Hollywood, reportedly told his three young children that evening how struck he was that he--a kid from the San Fernando Valley--found himself standing on the podium next to the President of the United States.

Producer Brian Grazer, who co-heads Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard, acknowledged he was thrilled to see Clinton “up close” for the first time.

Grazer was one of many industry players who reacted favorably to Clinton’s challenge to the entertainment industry to examine how film and TV violence can negatively affect impoverished young people whose lives are without strong family and community support.

Noting he was emotionally moved by President’s remarks, Grazer, who’s produced such family oriented movies as “Parenthood” and “My Girl,” said, “He’s the most amazing motivating force--he’s like a prophet because he speaks completely from the heart. . . . I want to find ways to do things and be involved that will have a positive effect on the way kids are going to grow up.”

Oscar-winning director John Singleton, whose hard-hitting urban drama “Boyz N the Hood” was singled out for praise by the President Saturday night as a violent film that was “great” because “it showed the truth about what happened” when crime impacts a neighborhood, said hearing Clinton’s remarks and speaking to him “makes me feel like I’m not crazy to make a movie about something.”

Standing beside the filmmaker at the reception, Columbia Pictures Chairman Mark Canton said: “It causes me to feel like I have to take note. . . . I’m going to really take Sunday to put things in perspective.”

Director-producer Frank Marshall (“Alive,” “Arachnophobia”) said: “I think we should all try as hard as we can to change things. We have to be aware that we’re very fortunate to be where we are and it’s very different to be outside Hollywood. . . . We should all be thinking about the movies we’re making and what effect they have--we have this tremendous power to influence people.”

Director Martha Coolidge (“Ramblin’ Rose,” “Lost in Yonkers,” and the upcoming “Angie, I Says”) shared the sentiment that Clinton’s remarks were “a good reminder we can all be more responsible,” as did veteran producer Larry Gordon, who in addition to making a tame movie like “Field of Dreams” also made the more violent “Die Hard” series.

Said Gordon on his way out the door: “It was very inspiring; we all have a lot of thinking to do.”

Filmmaker Jon Avnet (“Fried Green Tomatoes”) viewed Clinton’s plea as a “wonderful challenge” to “be part of a collective group to inspire people.” The director-producer said that after making such socially conscious movies as “Heatwave” (about the Watts Riots) and “The Burning Bed” (about physical abuse), he was “distraught” that such works would not have a more “positive political effect” on society. After hearing Clinton’s speech, Avnet said, “I was very impressed and encouraged to continue . . . now, I’ll keep on trying.”

Whoopi Goldberg, who has starred in such nonviolent fare as “Sister Act” and “Ghost,” said she sees other issues as more important. When she met with the President in the upstairs conference room, she said she asked him to “please pay more attention (and support) the striker replacement bill,” which would block the hiring of replacements for people on picket lines. “I’m asking him to say ‘no’ (to replacing strikers); we want people to maintain the right to strike.”

Goldberg was among several CAA star clients to mingle with the crowd on the lobby level, along with others such as Glenn Close, Geena Davis and Michael and Kirk Douglas and executives such as Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner. Nonetheless, there were those who said they were disappointed that the room wasn’t more star studded.

But as one CAA official pointed out, a number of the agency’s high-profile clients, including Warren Beatty, Annette Bening and Dustin Hoffman, as well as some industry heavyweights such as Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Peter Guber, stayed on the two upper levels after meeting with the President because the lobby was too crowded.

CAA’s Meyer, commenting on a New York Times report that there were bruised feelings in town among some people who weren’t invited, said, “We had only so much room . . . and we went to our phone books and invited the people we were most comfortable inviting.”

One group that wasn’t invited were the executives and clients from rival power agency International Creative Management, headed by Jeffrey Berg, who has publicly feuded with Ovitz.

Also not present were many stars and industry honchos who were expected to attend a $25,000-to-$100,000-a-couple dinner for Clinton later that evening at the Beverly Hills mansion of billionaire Marvin Davis. They included such Hollywood powers as Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Warner Bros. chiefs Bob Daly and Terry Semel and Disney studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg.