An Inside Jab : The making of ‘An Alan Smithee Film,’ Joe Eszterhas’ satiric look at Hollywood, is anything but business as usual.

On a movie set in an industrial corner of downtown Los Angeles, actor Eric Idle, playing a disillusioned director, plots aloud to burn his latest film after it has been butchered by studio honchos and producers.

“I don’t want the world to have to see another appalling film, for God’s sake,” a distraught Idle tells a pair of director brothers, fellow film aficionados. “If we believe in film--and we do--don’t we have a responsibility to protect the world from bad ones?”

The brothers, played by rappers Chuck D and Coolio, attempt to dissuade Idle from destroying the reels of film.

“Is the movie really that bad?” Coolio asks.

“It’s ----ing horrible. It’s worse than ‘Showgirls,’ ” Idle replies.

He makes a powerful case and the brothers shake their heads with disgust.

Who better to write these words than Joe Eszterhas, the man who wrote “Showgirls”?

In a departure from the kind of steamy fare he has become known for, Eszterhas has written “An Alan Smithee Film,” a satire of Hollywood wheeling and dealing and industry eccentricities now shooting around Los Angeles on a tidy $10-million budget. The irreverent project was the talk of Hollywood last summer when Eszterhas and his producing partner, Ben Myron, circulated the script to about 200 industry insiders. The result was the script’s purchase by Cinergi Pictures Entertainment, a distribution deal with Disney and all manner of Hollywood and non-Hollywood types clamoring to take part in the mock documentary-style film.

The movie takes its name from the pseudonym assigned to a film when a director wants his name taken off a troubled project.

In this case, the film project in “Smithee” is an action blockbuster with the dubious distinction of having the biggest budget of any movie in history--$315 million.

“There are some truly ridiculous and absurd things that happen in this industry,” Eszterhas said last week in a phone interview. “And I’ve dealt with those--sometimes ruefully, sometimes with a sad chuckle and sometimes by pounding the wall with my fist. Hopefully, that’s all in there. And hopefully it’s in there in a funny way.”

The cast is all over the map. Actors and nonactors, old-timers and twentysomethings have parts in the sendup of Hollywood movie-making. “Smithee” includes performances by superstars Sylvester Stallone and Whoopi Goldberg as well as such nonactors as psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers and California Lt. Gov. Gray Davis. Then there are the Hollywood players like agent-turned-manager Gavin Polone, defense attorney Robert Shapiro, producer Robert Evans and Miramax Chairman Harvey Weinstein juxtaposed with disaffected Generation X types like rappers Chuck D and Coolio. Even football stars Troy Aikman, Dan Marino and John Elway have bit parts.

Instrumental in the making of the movie was Eszterhas’ then-agent Arnold Rifkin, William Morris’ worldwide head of motion pictures, who engineered the financing with Cinergi President and CEO Andrew Vajna. He represents Goldberg, Stallone and Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan, who is also in the movie.

But in a twist worthy of inclusion in the “Smithee” script, the writer fired Rifkin two weeks ago and found a new agent with International Creative Management, claiming Rifkin was not giving him “the kind of representation that he did at the beginning of our relationship.”

Specifically, Eszterhas said he decided to switch after Rifkin told him he could not read a new spec script Eszterhas had written for 2 1/2 weeks.

Though the film was shepherded by Rifkin, Eszterhas said the agent initially did not believe in the project and warned the screenwriter not to circulate the script.

“Arnold felt that I should withdraw my script and not put it out around town because it would hurt my career and also his,” Eszterhas said. Rifkin declined to comment for this story.

One person close to the film said Rifkin was among the first to see the screenplay and was always behind it, but simply expressed uncertainty at first about how to proceed with it.

Eszterhas said he was “hurt and angry” by Rifkin’s initial reaction, prompting him to circumvent the traditional spec script process in which an agency “auctions” off a screenplay to the major studios. Instead, he opted to shop his work around in an unorthodox method he said was inspired by Russian history.

Eszterhas said he had read that Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other suppressed Soviet writers had mimeographed their work and distributed it themselves.

“It occurred to me that maybe it was time to turn to those kind of genuinely guerrilla methods,” Eszterhas said. “If you have an agency that is not endorsing the material and specifically saying the material should be withdrawn, then how do you get around that agency’s clout? . . . We decided ‘Just let people read it and let them talk about it if they like it.’ ”

And with 200 scripts swirling around Hollywood like a chain letter, tongues did start wagging.

In the months before writing “Smithee,” Eszterhas had been trying to recuperate from bad press associated with his self-described “two nuclear cloud” film flops--”Showgirls” and “Jade.”

“Eszterhas is such a marketeer,” said one industry insider. “He’s made ‘Alan Smithee’ a far more interesting project for people to look at because he’s gone through all this Sturm und Drang.”

But will the inside-Hollywood tale play in Peoria?

“ ‘Entertainment Tonight’ plays Peoria, and so does ‘Hard Copy,’ ” Idle said in a break from shooting. “All the obsessive hype about movies plays everywhere. We are fascinated by the line between fantasy and reality. And it’s a very recognizable world for those who know about film. There are these larger-than-life figures you meet all the time in Hollywood.”

Director Arthur Hiller said he thought the intermingling of actual people with fictional characters gives the film an added air of realism.

“It’s an outlandish, offbeat comedy rooted in reality,” said Hiller, a veteran director and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “We’re making fun of ourselves here.”

The principals in the movie all agree that it exposes the eccentric underbelly of Hollywood, but each has a different take on just how savage that portrayal is.

“It’s a revenge film really,” said Idle, who plays the title character. “A savage view of Hollywood.”

“It’s a loving portrayal, a valentine to the industry,” said producer Ben Myron. “It’s a very Hollywood story in a thumbing-its-nose kind of way.”

“Whoopi’s in it, Sylvester Stallone’s in it. If you’re gonna be in anything, why not this? It’s a spoof on Hollywood and the black guys win in the end,” said Chuck D. “The movie fits my anti-Hollywood thing.”

Eszterhas said that Steven Spielberg read the script early on and pronounced it “wicked, but not mean.”

“It’s a sweet giggle,” Eszterhas said. “I always tease Andy [Vajna, head of Cinergi Pictures, who financed the film], ‘You may be the only person in the business who’s put up $10 million to do an industry home movie.”