LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: CHOMP!

They needed Clifford Couser to really start chewing the scenery Saturday, and, with the cameras rolling, the extras roaring and the overtime money flying out the window, they were not shy about asking for it.

Reality bites, and so does the Hollywood re-creation.

“He has to really bite the ear!” shouted John Herzfeld, director of “Don King: Only in America,” an HBO Pictures biography of the electric-haired, controversy-soaked boxing promoter.

“Bite it!” stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni urged Couser, a jaw-dropping Tyson doppelganger with the same squat body, dark, raging eyes and, it becomes clear to Everton Davis, the fighter-actor playing Evander Holyfield, the same tendency toward getting his teeth into a scene.

Seconds after the take ended, Davis bounced back--eerily like the real Holyfield did after getting bit by the real Tyson, exactly two weeks previous to Saturday--and, after the Tyson twin tore through Davis’ ear makeup and hit real ear, muttered to Couser: “Man, tone it down!”

“They were right,” Couser said later of his approach to duplicating what has instantly become an infamous act of mastication. “I bit his ear for real. They loved it. I got it right, most definitely.”

So it goes for this $8.5-million production, which is scheduled to wrap shooting on Wednesday even after adding this extra day to swiftly and cannily insert the Tyson-Holyfield mayhem.

“Only in America,” a rumination of King’s career loosely based on Jack Newfield’s scathing biography of King, is scheduled to premiere on HBO in November--when Herzfeld agrees the memories of the Tyson biting will still be fresh.

“I was at the fight,” Herzfeld said during a break on the set, “and when it happened, I immediately turned to a director who’s a friend of mine; I said, ‘I’ve got to get this into the movie. I couldn’t write this. This has to go into the movie.’ ”

With the film’s fight scenes already due to be filmed at the Grand Olympic Auditorium last week, with a few tweaks of the Kario Salem script, with a copy of the most-played videotape since the Rodney King beating and with Herzfeld’s perspective from having witnessed the event, into the movie it went.

“We were lucky enough to still have the time to shoot it,” said Herzfeld, an avid fight fan who also directed the 1996 theatrical film “2 Days in the Valley.” “[When he came back to the set after the fight] everyone comes up to me [and] says, ‘Did you plan this?’ ”

The insertion did not come without addressing a big issue: How do you put a still-developing, still-controversial moment into the context of a reasoned biography without it coming off as a stunt?

Thomas Carter, the executive producer, said he initially wanted to handle the biting as an epilogue, thinking it was too fresh an incident to depict in any way other than words on the screen to update the developments.

“I didn’t want to make it seem like it was sort of running after the last piece of sensationalism,” Carter said. “I still am concerned, but I think the redeeming value of it is we can put it in some context.

“Our movie is not about that event, and I don’t want that to be confused--even though that’s probably the most famous event that will take place in our film, and the most famous event that has taken place probably in boxing history. We’ve added a day of shooting to accommodate a piece of history.”

Carter said he agreed to add the scene--and even give the King character (played with a convincing cackle by Ving Rhames) a chance to address the incident along with all his other experiences--because the movie, as a whole, is structured fluidly enough to adapt.

“I think any time you’re doing a movie about a contemporary figure like Don King, somebody as controversial and as unpredictable as Don King is, you have to stay on your toes,” Carter said.

“But you don’t imagine that something will happen in his career while you’re making the film that by its sheer size and attention-grabbing quality will overshadow every other thing you’re talking about.”

Carter and Salem both emphasize that the movie only touches on the biting incident and, though King is held up for analysis of all his faults and glories, that it certainly does not put the blame of Tyson’s outburst on King.

To Salem, the sudden, stunning public disappearance by King only proves how removed he is (or how removed he wishes to be considered) from the Tyson tribulations.

“I think it shows you that even Don King had his breath taken away,” Salem said. “Silence speaks louder than words, especially with someone who’s talking at the rate of speed that Don is.

“So when you saw him after the fight, he was clearly stunned, clearly disturbed. Even Don King couldn’t spin what he saw out there. . . . It actually showed, I think, a human and vulnerable side of Don King. It was Barnum having fallen off the high wire.”

Herzfeld, who says he followed up on much of Newfield’s research after a long telephone call from King complaining about the book, says that considering King’s rise from the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire to countless other megaproductions, all predictions about King’s demise are unwise. While it is true that Tyson is by far the most profitable fighter King promotes, Tyson could be out for only a year as a result of having his boxing license revoked.

“Don King can always pull a rabbit out from under a hat,” Herzfeld said. “He only has to wait a year, and that’s not a long time. It’s the greatest buildup. Are you kidding me--it’s foreplay. It’s one year of foreplay.” And King--due for a second federal trial for insurance fraud in the fall (after a mistrial last year)--is the complicated, crafty, sometimes apparently crazed man running the circus and outlasting all the lions.

“I’m trying to tell the tale of a full-rounded character--comes from a dark past, lives in a dark world where there’s always clouds overhead and somehow when the ground separates underneath him, he always seems to jump over it and never fall in,” Herzfeld said.

“And how he does that and who props him up and what and when, that’s what the movie’s all about.”

Which brings us back to Couser, and the blood. In a weird bit of either truth or theater or both, Couser claims to be Tyson’s long-lost half brother and says he spoke to Tyson both before and after the Holyfield bite.

He defends Tyson’s reaction--says it was just self-defense. So, how does actually biting somebody’s ear make you feel?

“It makes you hungry,” Couser said. “I’m not going to lie. If you open your mouth, it seems like your mouth gets dry and you want to try to find some juice to put in there.

“And you’re like, ‘God, I’ve just got to bite.’ ”