Malick’s Thin Green Line

You already know the first rule of navigating Hollywood--it’s who you know. So here’s the second one--it’s who you pay back.

Indeed, Terrence Malick had more than mystique to bank on when he gathered his forces for “The Thin Red Line.” He also had a karmically correct zero balance sheet.

The Malick meter started ticking many moons ago--about a quarter century’s worth--when the budding director was making “Badlands.” He’d lined up stars Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen, but before shooting was scheduled to begin, an investor dropped out of the $300,000 project.

That’s where the who-you-know principle kicked in. Malick called his buddy George Stevens Jr., a founding director of Malick’s alma mater, the American Film Institute.

“Terry was great friends with my children, David and Michael,” Stevens recalls. “And I said, ‘I don’t think it’s that important if Michael goes to college’ and so I invested.”

When Warner Bros. bought “Badlands,” Stevens got a check from Malick. On the memo line at the bottom, Malick had scribbled, “Go Michael, go.”

Michael did. To Duke University, as it turned out. Oh, yes. Did we mention that George Stevens Jr. was executive producer of “The Thin Red Line”? And that Michael Stevens was associate producer? “There’s a nice symmetry to that,” says George Stevens.

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Power chick-wise, L.A. could scratch other cities’ eyes out. You think that’s just our feminine wiles talking? Then pick up Matt Towery’s new book, “Powerchicks: How Women Will Dominate America” (Longstreet), which tips its hat to many of the usual suspects--Angelenesses Lucy Fisher, Gale Anne Hurd, Jamie Tarses and Amy Pascal, to name a few.

To make the list, it didn’t hurt to be doing a man’s job--or what used to be, nyaah, nyaah. Just ask Jeanie Buss, president of the Forum, or Playboy PR goddess Cindy Rakowitz.

Of course, you can still count on the well-trodden path to becoming a woman of note--exposure. That helped chatty tele-power-chick and tabloid queen Janet Charlton. “I know for a fact that Jerry Seinfeld buys the Star and gets a huge kick out of it,” Star’s gossip columnist says in the book.

Which brings us to the third rule of Hollywood--you are who reads you.