Entertainment

Los Angeles, the 1950s: Everyone wears fedoras and drives a convertible to the Trocadero for cocktails. And if you tangle with the wrong people, your life expectancy is about 15 minutes. "Mulholland Falls" is set in that world, which is ruled by a violent team of cops who shoot off your face first and file for a search warrant later. Nick Nolte leads the cops, who are based on L.A.'s now-extinct Hat Squad, and it's hard to tell who is more hateful: the snakey crooks or the cops, who tell an underworld figure, "This isn't America, Jack. This is L.A.," and then beat him to death. Directed by Lee Tamahori ("Once Were Warriors"), the movie is as sleek and beautiful as a Buick Roadmaster. The luxe costumes and sets are gorgeous, and Dave Grusin's coronet-heavy score sets a jazzy, ominous tone. No expense has been spared to give "Mulholland Falls" a triple-A-list cast that includes John Malkovich, Treat Williams, Melanie Griffith, Chazz Palminteri, Bruce Dern and Daniel Baldwin (and that's just the stars with billing - Louise Fletcher and Rob Lowe, who have small roles, aren't even mentioned in the credits).

A long-simmering Hollywood feud overheated last week when Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney executive and current DreamWorks partner, brought a $250 million suit against his former employer. Essentially, Katzenberg is trying to enforce a provision in his old contract that grants him 2 percent of the profits from Disney productions for which he was responsible as long as they are generating money. The courtroom action should provide a fascinating insight into where all the money goes in Hollywood. A lot of attention is focused on star salaries, which are certainly outrageous and getting more outrageous all the time. And occasionally the crafts unions, which just signed a modest contract, are blamed for the spiraling production costs - the average Hollywood movie now costs $36 million. But studio executives, as opposed to studio owners, are reaping rewards like never before in the history of Hollywood. Whether it's through generous stock options or performance bonuses, or deals such as the one Katzenberg says he had with Disney, CEOs, presidents and various executives are profiting like never before. This, of course, follows a general pattern in business these days, with executives making so much in salary that it has become a political issue. But show business has its own peculiar notes to ring, largely because by its nature it plays out everything in public.

If it took first-time screenwriter Mark Brown only a month to write "How to Be a Player," the comedic tale of a smooth operator juggling five girlfriends, it took less than a week for the onetime actor's new career to take off. Six days after he handed the script to his agent in December, Island Pictures' six-figure bid beat out 20th Century Fox, as well as operations such as Warner Bros., which had expressed interest in the project. "The studios are now paying attention to the proverbial 'hip-hop nation' - a significant part of which is urban youth," said Brown, 28, who has been asked to rewrite two other hip-hop comedies, one for Fox and one for Columbia, and turned down additional work, including a TV pilot, for lack of time. "With the help of MTV and the video market, a genre that was once a niche has crossed over. You go to Beverly Hills and see young white guys with baggy pants and the new Air Jordan tennis shoes, caps turned backward, saying, 'Yo, yo, yo.' "

Summer's the time for long evenings on the patio and weekends at the lakeshore. But it's also the busiest season for those who like to attend community fairs and festivals. The activities range from rodeos to bake sales, carnivals to parades. We're compiling a calendar of fairs and fests in the Inland Northwest that we'll publish in late May in the Friday Weekend entertainment section. If your town or group is holding a festival, rodeo or a fair, send us the dates, place, some details about the events and a phone number where we can get more information, if needed. Just mail it to: Susan English, Weekend Fairs, Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201; or fax it to (509) 459-5098, or e-mail the info to susane@spokesman.com. The deadline for making the calendar is May 17.

A liens have successfully crossbred with humans. Sounds like a cover story for the Weekly World News doesn't it? But according to Dr. Bred (a.k.a. Wonderbread), leader of the Seattle-based Super Sonic Soul Pimps, aliens have mated with humans. He should know; he conducted the ultra hush-hush experiment in the mid-1960s. (Funny how Dr. Bred's birth dates back to about the same time.) Yes, we know this is a joke; these guys are just a little kooky - their absurd costumes scream, "escaped asylum patients." So we'll just let them go on pretending. The story's interesting, all the same. The three men - Intellijamus, Otto E. Roticize and Taboo - that were the result of the groundbreaking study along with Dr. Bred comprise the Super Sonic Soul Pimps, a three-quarters alien, intergalactic explosion of soul and funk. The band plays the Zoo in Pullman tonight and Outback Jack's Saturday night. This is starting to sound more like a topic to be explored by agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully on an future "X Files" episode. "That 'X Files' stuff is kind of hokey-pokey," said Dr. Bred, from his hideout lab in Seattle. "You've got to separate the raisin from the raisin bran. We are the real legitimate bran, damn it!" The story goes like this: In college, Dr. Bred became fascinated, strike that, obsessed with mammal breeding habits. In fact, much of his doctoral studies were in cross-breeding and genetics. He received a degree in the late '50s from a nowdefunct university in Switzerland, despite protests from faculty. Wonderbread moved to Alaska in the late '50s and began successfully cross-breeding different species like bears with deer. It was then that Dr. Bred was contacted by aliens to conduct similar experiments using them and humans as subjects. In short, a female extraterrestrial from a distant planet in our galaxy gave birth to three half-human, half-alien sons. Dr. Bred is their stepfather since the human participant died during breeding. Currently, the four have a message to spread through both their live concerts and self-titled debut CD. As to the message - it's a little vague. "I'm not going to say like Jesus we're going to make the fish explode in numbers and the bread be passed around to everybody," said Dr. Bred from his hideout in Seattle, "but it's going to be damn close." Dr. Bred isn't the only one who knows aliens live among us. He recently learned that the F.B.I. has been keeping a close tab on them. "The FBI has been tracing us," he said. "We're careful, and they yet to have any legal reason to take us down. In fact, it's my theory they are, in essence, watching us to see if we're contacted. We are in their minds a decoy. But of course we have a greater plan than that. "There is something big around the corner that I have not been made fully aware of yet that the three triplets are aware of and it's something this alien life does want to communicate to us as a planet. They feel they're going to accomplish it through music." Be scared humans. Be very scared. Saturday's concert starts at 9:30 p.m. The cover is $3. Wylie's Wild West Show I'm miffed that Wylie Gustafson and his sidekick, the Wild West Show, haven't scored a record deal, especially when most of the country bands on the radio - just like the '80s hair metal bands - are schlock, musical junk food, if you will. None of that has deterred Gustafson from playing music that is great, because other than the token cowboy hat, today's country music has lost touch with its roots. Wylie and the Wild West Show remind us what country music was all about. Gustafson, a traditionalist, dresses his Western music with the styles absent from most country today. There's yodeling cowboy music, old dirt-stomping honkey tonk, strains of Austin and Bakersfield and a taste of blues. Wylie and the Wild West Show have released two stand-out albums - 1992's self-titled and 1994's "Get Wild." A third one, recorded by Ray Benson of the Austin, Texas, legend Asleep at the Wheel is on the way. Gustafson plays the El Toreador tonight with Thom Ramsey. Music starts at 9:30 p.m. Kiss the clown Circus clowns have always made me want to crawl under my bed sheets. I've had a clown phobia since I was a wee child. And when the clown doll in Poltergeist pulled little Robbie under the bed, I had repeating nightmares. So what does all this mean? Southern California's Kiss the Clown, which plays Ichabod's North with the Flies and the Monas tonight, is helping me to overcome my phobia. Its debut CD has been by my bedside for the last couple of weeks. Kiss the Clown offers up fun, guitar-driven rock not unlike music by the Dickies music, an obvious influence for the band. Last year, Kiss the Clown opened for the legendary Dickies on the band's U.S. tour. Touring with one of holiest of holys in punk rock was a big highlight for the band. "We didn't get to hang out with them too much," says guitarist Ky Porter. "They've been my favorite band since high school. So I was pretty stoked about that." The band is signed to Rotten Records, a label known for its mainstream-unfriendly roster. The songs on its eponymous debut original appeared on the unit's third demo tape. In some ways, it shows. The album is full of good moments but the production is a bit shoddy. Inna reggae style New York-based roots reggae band Rising Lion plays Outback Jack's on Tuesday. The band fuses original songs with reggae from the likes of Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, Peter Tosh and Steel Pulse. Reggae at 9:30 p.m.

Joseph Haydn was a friend of Mozart and a teacher of Beethoven. Like them, he was a great composer. The Spokane Symphony will end its chamber orchestra series at The Met with an (almost) all-Haydn program Sunday afternoon, to be repeated Tuesday evening. The concert will features four first-chair soloists - oboist Keith Thomas, bassoonist Lynne Feller, violinist Kelly Farris and cellist John Marshall - in Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante. The orchestra, led by Fabio Mechetti, will play Haydn's Symphony No. 1 and his Symphony No. 45, "Farewell." Also on the program is the "Toy" Symphony, once believed to have been Haydn's but now thought to be by ... well, someone else. No one is completely sure who it might have been.

Ricki Lake stars in "Mrs. Winterbourne."

Folk musician Baby Gramps will hold court in another intimate concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at Street Music, 117 N. Howard. A versatile singer-songwriterguitarist, Gramps has shared the stage with a plethora of greats - Charlie Musselwhite, J.J. Cale, Jesse Colin Young, Joan Baez, Leon Redbone and Elvin Bishop, to name a few. He tours extensively, performing on an antique steel-bodied guitar. His repertoire ranges from ragtime, jazz and blues to children's songs and originals.

"Brain Candy" is not a bad way to describe the thoughtful sketch comedy of The Kids in the Hall. Neither as nakedly provocative nor as invested with pop-culture attitude as "Saturday Night Live" or "SCTV," they bring to the small screen (first on HBO, now re-running on Comedy Central) intelligent black-humor sendups of such ordinary things as male bonding, suburban life and teenage giddiness. The group takes its name from a phrase Jack Benny used - "That's from the kids in the hall" - to credit jokes from the aspiring comedians lining the corridors of his studio. With its new movie, the Canadian troupe jumps from the fringe into the reductive melting pot of Hollywood movies, creating a mildly interesting comedy product in which the Kids' pithy humor has been diluted and drained of its essential flavor.

(Gong Li)

Sharon Kam, winner of the 1992 Munich Clarinet Competition, will perform Copland's Clarinet Concerto and Rossini's Introduction, Theme and Variations with the Spokane Symphony tonight at the Opera House. The symphony, led by music director Fabio Mechetti, will play Villa Lobos' exotic tone poem "Dawn in a Tropical Forest" and Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2. At 16, Kam, who grew up in Israel, made her orchestral solo debut with the Israel Philharmonic. Kam's career has included performances with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and Tokyo Philharmonic.

Diamond Rio brings its harmonious blend of influences and styles - which wins hearts, cranks out hits and pulls down awards - to the University of Idaho's Kibbie Dome in Moscow on Saturday. The group's current hit, "Walkin' Away," is No. 10 on the this week's Billboard country singles chart. Before the boys take the stage, Patty Loveless will belt out her unabashedly emotional music. Her latest hit, "You Can Feel Bad," ranks at No. 19. Rich Macready opens.

Director Claude Lelouch brings Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" into the 20th century.

Sweaty Nipples will release an album later this year.

Jr. Cadillac brings its rock sound back to Spokane tonight at the Davenport.

Dan Aykroyd, and Daniel Stern, as Celtics fanatics, star with Damon Wayans in "Celtic Pride."

"Now and Then" stars Rosie O'Donnell, Rita Wilson and Demi Moore.

Summer's the time for long evenings on the patio and weekends at the lakeshore. But it's also the busiest season for those who like to attend community fairs and festivals. The activities range from rodeos to bake sales, carnivals to parades. We're compiling a calendar of fairs and fests in the Inland Northwest that we'll publish in late May in the Friday Weekend entertainment section. If your town or group is holding a festival, rodeo or a fair, send us the dates, place, some details about the events and a phone number where we can get more information, if needed. Just mail it to: Susan English, Weekend Fairs, Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99208; or fax it to (509) 459-5098, or e-mail the info to susane@spokesman.com. The deadline for making the calendar is May 17.

Tom Berenger's scarred and brittle ground-zero soldier of "Platoon" (1986) collides with America's own combat-zone school situation in "The Substitute." The new arrival is an oddly substantial exploitation picture that benefits from name-brand casting, a dead-serious screenplay and urgent subject matter, presented for more than shock value. The film finds director Robert Mandel as well-equipped for desperate action as he was on the thriller "F/X" a decade ago, and clearly tapping his own background as a Manhattan schoolteacher.