BY GENE TRIPLETT
LONDON — Playing an outlaw disc jockey defying the ’60s British establishment’s anti-rock conservatism proved highly educational for Nick Frost.

And he got to do a love scene with a Bond girl.

Before taking the role of slyly amorous deejay Dave in writer-director Richard Curtis’ ”Pirate Radio” (out now on DVD), the 280-pound comedy actor and confirmed house-music

Philip Seymour Hoffman, center, and Nick Frost, right, in "Pirate Radio."

addict had never even listened to a Rolling Stones album, much less been cast as a prolific stud.

“Well, it’s my natural state of being,” the portly co-star of such films as “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” joked during a press junket at the BFI London Film Festival in October.

“I do get all the ladies, and a nude scene,” he said. “I’m so terribly sorry for you all. My mother-in-law is Swedish and very forthright and opinionated, and when I told her that I was gonna do a nude scene, she says, ‘Oh, I hope I don’t see your (genitalia).’

“But I do think it’s quite brave of Richard to have a 20-stone man makin’ out with a Bond girl. I mean, not many people would write those sex scenes for a big man. You know, I think Gemma (Arterton, who played Strawberry Fields in ‘Quantum of Solace’) was more afraid than I was. I don’t think she’d ever seen a man like me.”

It was also against type, on a personal level, for Frost to be spinning British Invasion-era records by the Stones, the Who, the Kinks and the Troggs, but that’s what the story called for.

Curtis (screenwriter of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill,” writer-director of “Love Actually”), has written a raucous ensemble comedy set in 1966, when the government-controlled British Broadcasting Co. (BBC) aired barely two hours of rock and pop music a week over U.K. airwaves.

In the home country of the Beatles, Stones and the Who, at the height of British pop music’s greatest, world-changing era, the only way more than half the U.K. population could hear new music any time they wanted was to tune into ” pirate” radio stations, broadcasting from ships and marine structures anchored outside British territorial waters.

Curtis, 51, grew up in that era and remembers going to bed at night with a transistor radio under his pillow, listening to rogue deejays rock the night with tunes such as “Friday on My Mind” by the Easybeats, the Hollies’ “I’m Alive” and Procol Harum’s pot-smoke dreamy “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

The filmmaker created a fictional seagoing band of radio personalities based on those rebellious platter-spinning chatterers of the past, casting Philip Seymour Hoffman as a risk-taking American deejay known only as “The Count,” Rhys Ifans as ultra-cool radio royalty Gavin, Rhys Darby as an idiosyncratic New Zealander, and as the captain and owner of the ship/station, Bill Nighy, 59, who also grew up on Brit rock and pop.

“They were both, Bill especially, he’s a proper old rocker,” said Frost, 37. “And I think I upset Richard and Bill when the first week I kind of said to Richard, ‘Can I talk to you?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, sure, what is it?’ I said, ‘I think I should probably tell you that I’ve never listened to Rolling Stones records.’ But I said, ‘Don’t say anything, don’t say anything.’

“And he immediately said, ‘Oh, Bill!’ And got Bill over and said, ‘Tell Bill what you just told me.’ And then I kind of said it to Bill as well, and then the two of them just kind of rowed on me for five or 10 minutes and made me go back and buy loads of Rolling Stones records. … I’m very pleased that that happened, because it was an eye-opener for me.

“I was a big fan of (Jimi) Hendrix. I was always a fan since I was 10 or 11. But that was kind of it for me, that was my ’60s touchstone, because I like house music and stuff like that. So for me, the Stones were never really relevant.”

And the Beatles?

“No, not really,” Frost said. “I saw you raise your eyebrows there. I know. I’ve gotta say, again, they weren’t relevant to me. There’s a guy, Scroobius Pip, who’s an English hip-hop singer, and he says, ‘The Beatles were just a band.’ For me, it’s true. But Simon Pegg is a massive Beatles fan, so I think for him, more than anything, I went again and bought everything and spent six weeks just listening to the Beatles on my iPod.”

Frost later sent a text message to Pegg, his best friend and co-star from “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” saying, “You know what, I get it. I understand now.”

After going through similar musical conditioning for Curtis, Frost is now a fan of the Beatles, the Stones and all things brought on by the ’60s British revolution.

“I am, absolutely,” Frost said. “As soon as Richard cast me, I didn’t listen to any music post-1969 for the whole period I was involved in it, about five or six months. And for someone who likes house music and very modern tweaks and beeps and whistles, it was pretty tough for a while, and my iPod is much richer because of it.”

So, ” Pirate Radio” has changed Frost’s mind musically, but he isn’t kidding himself that his turn as a mysteriously attractive, overweight lothario will persuade casting directors to start offering him romantic leads.

“I think Daniel Craig is one thing,” he said. “But I’m a different kettle of fish.”

Imagine the best elements of Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” and “National Lampoon’s Animal House” set adrift on an old tanker in the middle of the North Sea with a super library of ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the high level of irreverent mirth and great music that floats ” Pirate Radio,” just out on DVD.

Writer-director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually”)  launched one of the funniest ensemble comedies of the past year, inspired by those two hilarious classics and the actual events of his youth when, in the home country of world-changing musical acts such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who, the government-run British Broadcasting Co. (BBC) aired little more than two hours of rock or pop music each week.

But the British establishment’s anti-rock conservatism only served to create a movement of underground rock ‘n’ roll freedom fighters, broadcasting illegally from ships and marine structures anchored outside the U.K.’s territorial waters, reaching millions of English hearts and souls hungry to hear Roger Daltrey stuttering “My Generation” and the Yardbirds pleading “For Your Love.”

Curtis sets his fictionalization of this cultural phenomenon in 1966 aboard one such high-voltage vessel, where urbane and unflappable station owner/ship’s captain Quentin (Bill Nighy) oversees a colorful crew of rogue disc jockeys that includes a rule-bending renegade American known only as “The Count” (Philip Seymour Hoffman in naturally cool-dude mode); ultra-hip, flamboyantly mod-clad radio royalty Gavin Cavanagh (a perfectly smooth and slinky Rhys Ifans); amorous but overweight Dave (an achingly funny Nick Frost), who is amazingly successful at seducing the station’s prettiest female fans, despite his girth and to the consternation of his shipmates; oddball New Zealander Angus (Rhys Darby); slow-witted “Thick” Kevin (Tom Brooke); and Quentin’s visiting teenage stepson (Tom Sturridge), who’s ripe for being corrupted by this rowdy band of airwave outlaws.

Meanwhile, back in London, a relentlessly stuffy and intolerant government minister (an excellent, straight-faced comic turn from Kenneth Branagh) is leading the charge to pull the plug on pirate radio and sink it once and for all. The crew of the rocking boat has to figure a way to pull together and keep their 24/7 party afloat and the music alive.

With boatloads of adoring women (including Bond girl Gemma Arterton and January Jones of “Mad Men”) visiting the platter-spinning pirates twice a week, and round-the-clock revelry recalling the debauchery of Delta House, Curtis’ film is as chaotic and anarchic as the ’60s themselves, fueled by a sizzling soundtrack studded with hits from the Kinks (“All Day and All of the Night”), the Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”), the Stones (“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”), the Who (“My Generation,” “I Can See For Miles”), Procol Harum (“A Whiter Shade of Pale”) Martha & the Vandellas (“Dancing in the Street”) and more than 50 others.

Obviously a labor of love, Curtis’ funny valentine to the ’60s era’s free-spirited champions of free will and rock ‘n’ roll is as full of heart as it is hilarity. It is a fitting tribute to the unifying power of the music.

DVD extras: Deleted scenes, commentary from writer-director Curtis, producer Hilary Bevan Jones and actors Nick Frost and Chris O’Dowd.

Blu-ray extras: Featurettes–”Tuning In,” with Hoffman, Branagh and Nighy discussing the enormous influece of pirate radio on the U.K. in the 1960s; “7 of Heaven,” with Curtis, Nighy, O’Down and Hoffman discussing the life-changing effects of the music of the ’60s; “All at Sea,” with Curtis, O’Dowd, Ifans discuss the fun and perils of filming at sea.

— Gene Triplett

Silly names have been a staple of comedy since the early days of vaudeville, and when old burlesque performers eventually moved in front of Hollywood’s rolling cameras their outlandish sobriquets, garish noms de plume, goofy monikers and loopy pseudonyms came along with them

And so pioneers of comedy traipsed across Nickelodeon screens in the guise of characters such as Egbert Souse, Cuthbert J. Twillie, Larson E. Whipsnide, T. Frothingill Bellows, Rollo La Rue, Elmer Prettywillie and Professor Eustace McGargle (all W.C. Fields inventions), or as Wolf J. Flywheel, Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, Otis B. Driftwood and Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (a.k.a. Groucho Marx).

That va-va-voom vamp Mae West gave us the suggestive Marlo Manners, Flower Belle Lee and Peaches O’Day.

And while the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy mostly appeared onscreen in their heyday as Stan and Ollie, their earlier screen incarnations, both together and individually, were rich with purple appellations. Stan boasted performances as Ferdinand Finkleberry, Romaine Ricketts, Winchell McSweeney, Rhubarb Vaselino, Gabriel Goober, Dippy Donawho and Magnum Dippytack, while Ollie donned such character names as J. Piedmont Mumblethunder, Sharkey Nye, Oswald Schwartzkopple and Solomon Soopmeat.

Preston Sturges, that master of screwball comedy from the 1930s and ‘40s, wrote into his scripts such distinctively nutty character names as Dr. Zodiac Z. Zippe (“Hotel Haywire”), Charles Poncefort Pike (“The Lady Eve”), Constable Edmund Kockenlocker (“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”), Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith and Sgt. Heppelfinger (“Hail the Conquering Hero”), Harold Diddlebock and E.J. Waggleberry (“The Sin of Harold Diddlebock”) and Judge Alfalfa J. O’Toole (“The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend”).

Comic Bob Hope kept close to his vaudeville roots with such movie names as Milford Farnsworth (“Alias Jesse James”), Pippo Popolino (“Casanova’s Big Night”), Hot Lips Barton (“Road to Rio”), Painless Peter Potter (“The Paleface”) and Humphrey “Sorrowful” Jones (“Sorrowful Jones”).

Even sexpot Marilyn Monroe wasn’t immune to a little suggestively silly nicknaming, appearing on screen as such characters as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (“Some Like It Hot”), Pola Debevoise (“How to Marry a Millionaire”) and Dusky Ledoux (“Right Cross”).

Hollywood he-men generally veered toward macho character names in their movies, but every so often they also got saddled with slightly silly monikers. John Wayne turned in one of his best performances ever as Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit,” and as an early matinee cowpoke the Duke labored under such trumped-up sagebrush pseudonyms as Stony Brooke, Duke Slade, Biff Smith, Dare Rudd and Singin’ Sandy Saunders.

Even big star James Stewart suspended his leading man image to play such whimsically named characters as Mattie Appleyard (“Fools’ Parade”), Elwood P. Dowd (“Harvey”) and Rowdy Dow (“The Gorgeous Hussy”).

Some modern comic actors still hold to that old tradition of silly names, notably Ben Stiller, who has created such amusing screen roles as Gaylord Focker (“Meet the Parents”), Tugg Speedman (“Tropic Thunder”), Derek Zoolander (“Zoolander”), Bwick Elias (“If Lucy Fell”), Garth Motherloving (TV’s “The Simpsons”) and Reuben Feffer (“Along Came Polly”). And Woody Allen has contributed two of the best with nebbishy Fielding Mellish (“Bananas”) and the pseudo-murderous Virgil Starkwell (“Take the Money and Run”).

Of course, the silly name phenomenon isn’t limited to film comedies. Occasionally, goofy character names even show up in heavyweight dramas – note Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt (“Interview With the Vampire”) or Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle (“Taxi Driver”). The list is endless.

If there were a Silly Name Hall of Fame we’d nominate all of the above, plus the following, for a place of honor:

Tom Cruise again as Cole Trickle (“Days of Thunder”), Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (“Goldfinger”), Clint Eastwood as Philo Beddoe (“Every Which Way But Loose”), Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo (“Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2”), Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler (“Boogie Nights”), Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo (“Midnight Cowboy”), Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko (“Wall Street”), Scott B. Morgan (uncredited) as Keyser Soze (“The Usual Suspects”), Harvey Korman as Hedley Lamarr (“Blazing Saddles”), Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink (“Reservoir Dogs”), Yano Anaya and Zack Ward as Grover Dill and Scut Farkus (“A Christmas Story”), Sally Kellerman as Hot Lips O’Houlihan (“MASH”), Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite (“Napoleon Dynamite”), Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley (“Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”).

And naturally there’s George Lucas, who stands in a category of his own for silly and sillier names via “Star Wars” – from the mainstays Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader to supporting players such as Boba Fett, Mace Windu, Jar Jar Binks, Hermi Odle, Jek Porkins, Kit Fisto, Lak Sivrak, Momaw Nadon, Mon Mothma, Nute Gunray, Ponda Baba, Salacious B. Crumb, Sy Snootles, Sio Bibble, Plo Koon, Dexter Jettster and on and on.

Did we leave any out? Have your own favorites? Send them in to dking@wimgo.com and we’ll include them soon in an updated version of this post.

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – It might sound a little precious to say so, but Bill Forsyth is in the best sense a “boutique” filmmaker.

This singular Scottish writer-director has only nine modestly budgeted movies on his resume, and each of them is a unique gem – lovingly crafted, keenly intelligent and invested with an idiosyncratic, handmade quality that renders it wholly novel.

Although he hasn’t released a film in more than a decade, Forsyth still attracts a loyal following of fans who share his earthy, eccentric take on life and continue to admire his originality in movies such as “Gregory’s Girl,” “Local Hero” and “Housekeeping.”

It’s those three films that will be featured in a two-part “special event” beginning this week at New York’s fabulous Film Forum.

On Thursday, a spanking new 35mm print of “Housekeeping,” Forsyth’s 1987 adaptation of the Marilynne Robinson novel, will be screened at the Greenwich Village theater, followed by an appearance by Forsyth himself in an interview with James Healy, assistant curator of the George Eastman House of Rochester, N.Y.

The next Thursday, April 22, will feature showings of Forsyth’s quirky 1981 coming-of-age comedy “Gregory’s Girl” and his 1983 small-village masterpiece “Local Hero.” Naturally, it would take a heroic effort for Oklahoma fans of Forsyth to attend these events, but all of the director’s films are readily available on DVD. So the occasion provides an opportune time to revisit these or other of his remarkable works.

“Housekeeping,” Forsyth’s first American film, is set in the Pacific Northwest of the 1950s. In it, orphaned Sara Walker and Andrea Burchill are “rescued” by a relative they’ve never met – Christine Lahti’s Aunt Sylvie, whose kookie lifestyle proves not nearly as charming as it seems on first blush. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times wrote of the movie, “Forsyth – though his palette here is grayer and cloudier than in any of his earlier films – keeps his sense of wonder. The sadness of ‘Housekeeping’ is twisted into its bemusement and reverie, its oddball charm. It’s a lovely, strange little film – quietly, tensely lovely ….”

“Gregory’s Girl”: Desperate after an 8-game losing streak, a Glasgow school soccer team recruits a hotshot female player; and although demoted to goalie, teenage knucklehead Gordon John Sinclair falls hard for her. But there are behind-the-scenes feminine conspiracies at work here. “The movie contains so much wisdom about being alive and teenaged and vulnerable that maybe it would even be painful for a teenager to see it,” wrote Roger Ebert.

“Local Hero”: Off to buy up the picturesque Scottish coastal village of Furness for a refinery, Texan Peter Riegert finds himself falling in love with the place, even as astronomy-loving boss Burt Lancaster arrives via helicopter to seal the deal. But crusty beachcomber Fulton Mackay has an intriguing counterproposal. “Genuine fairy tales are rare; so is filmmaking that is thoroughly original in an unobtrusive way. Forsyth’s quirky disarming film is both …,” wrote Janet Maslin in the New York Times.

The writer-director’s full resume includes these films: “That Sinking Feeling” (1980), “Gregory’s Girl” (1981), “Andrina” (1981), “Local Hero” (1983), “Comfort and Joy’ (1984), “Housekeeping” (1987), “Breaking In” (1989), “Being Human” (1993) and “Gregory’s Two Girls” (1999).

Forsyth, 63, both wrote and directed eight of the films on his resume and has received numerous awards for his work, including BAFTA film awards for “Gregory’s Girl” and “Local Hero.” The only film he directed but didn’t write was 1989’s “Breaking In,” which was penned by the estimable John Sayles and featured Burt Reynolds delivering one of the finest, most understated performances of his career in the role of an aging, over-the-hill professional thief.

One of Forsyth’s best but least appreciated pictures came in 1984 with “Comfort and Joy,” a whimsical yet slightly melancholy tale about a Scottish radio DJ in mid-life crisis who inadvertently becomes embroiled in a feud between two rowdy Italian clans vying for control of the Glasgow ice cream market.

New Yorker film critic David Denby once speculated on the director’s unique perspective: “A director with a comic vision of his own – a way of seeing the world that is funny or odd down to its roots – comes along perhaps once in a decade. Bill Forsyth, the young Scottish writer-director, may be one of those talents.”

And Forsyth himself has said of his off-kilter take on comedy, “Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.”

Although he’s been absent from filmmaking since the lukewarm critical reception and sparse distribution of “Gregory’s Two Girls” in 2000, Forsyth revealed in a BBC Radio interview last year that he’s currently working on a new film project with the working title “Exile.”

More information on the Film Forum’s special tribute to Bill Forsyth can be found on the theater’s website, www.filmforum.com.

This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Action: The Complete Series”

“Action” ran for only one truncated season on Fox in 1999, but fans of take-no-prisoners satire still remember it for its dead-on lampooning of Hollywood’s outrageous blockbuster excesses and cutthroat culture.

Over 13 episodes, a fearless Jay Mohr took on the role of Peter Dragon, the arrogant, foul-mouthed head of Dragonfire Films, and in the process created one of the most relentlessly vulgar and dislikable sitcom characters in TV history.

The season’s story arc follows Dragon as he reels from the aftermath of a disastrous, $150 million box-office bomb called “Slow Torture” and tries to save his studio from ruin with a lame action script titled “Beverly Hills Gun Club” that he accidentally bought from a novice writer.

Along for the politically incorrect ride are Ileana Douglas as Wendy Ward, an ex-child star turned prostitute, and Buddy Hackett as Uncle Lonnie, a sage, profane chauffeur who dispenses crazy advice. And an amazing roster of big-star cameo appearances includes Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Salma Hayek, Stuart Pankin, David Hasselhoff, producer Gavin Polone, E! network anchors Steve Kmetko and Jules Asner and “Saturday Night Live” star Maya Rudolph.

Only eight of the 13 episodes aired on Fox before the series was cancelled, but in hindsight the show appears to have been a precursor to such pushing-the-envelope shows as “Arrested Development” and “Entourage.” All 13 episodes plus outtakes and a “making of” featurette are included on two discs of “Action: The Complete Series.”

-Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

When Dakota Fanning took to the stage in tight glam-star corset and fishnet stockings, and Kristen Stewart appeared in a shiny red leather jumpsuit slinging an electric guitar, Cherie Currie and Joan Jett were jolted 35 years into the past.

And they wept.

Kristen Stewart, left, as Joan Jett, and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie in "The Runaways."

This was only a movie set, and those were actresses up there in the lights. But Currie and Jett were experiencing something way beyond deja vu, watching their teenage selves at the height of their stardom and the end of their innocence in The Runaways. And the fact that Fanning was really singing like Currie and Stewart was really playing like Jett as they ripped through The Runaways’ biggest teen-rebellion hit, “Cherry Bomb,” only deepened the emotional time-warp sensation.

“Oh my god, when Joan and I saw them shooting the Japan stuff, we sat there and cried,” Currie said in a phone interview this week from a publicity tour stop in Portland, Ore.

The Runaways were big in Japan, where they embarked on a legendarily successful tour in the summer of ’77, but a Los Angeles location was standing in for the Land of the Rising Sun when Currie and Jet sat in an audience of cheering extras, watching a concert scene being shot for “The Runaways,” the new biopic based on Currie’s tell-all memoir, “Neon Angel,” about the controversial “jailbait” band that blazed a trail for every hard-rocking, all-female group that would follow.

“It was like being in the audience back in the ’70s,” Currie said of her experience on the set. “We were just up there doing the best we could do. We had no time, nor could we conceive what we were doing at the time. So it was like, ‘Wow, what a visual gas this is.’”

Writer-director Floria Sigismondi’s version of The Runaways’ story — like Currie’s — is a shocking one of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and celebrity that came too suddenly and too soon to a group of naive adolescent girls from Los Angeles under the questionable adult supervision of manager, producer and shameless hype-meister Kim Fowley (played with brilliantly lizardlike loathsomeness by Michael Shannon).

Cherie Currie, 1976

Raised in the San Fernando Valley and inspired by the music and image of David Bowie, Currie was only 15 when she was approached in a North Hollywood teen club by Fowley, who already had corralled Jett (born Joan Larkin) and drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve) with the intent of assembling what he called a “jailbait rock” band. It’s a gritty coming-of-age story bathed in the harsh light of public scrutiny, and a frank, intimate study of the love-hate relationship between Jett and Currie and their struggle to live up to their tough-girl image and simply survive the wild ride in a male-dominated rock ‘n’ roll world.

Currie says the film sticks reasonably close to the way it all really happened, except for a few “creative liberties” such as a scene in which her Bowie impersonation gets her booed off the stage at a high school talent show. In reality, she won that contest.

“There are some things that I think could have added to the film, but I’ve got my book so, you know, I can live with it,” she said.

What she really liked about the film was Fanning’s spot-on portrayal.

“And we had a really good time,” Currie said. “I think my warmest thoughts of her are when she came to my house and we were saying lines back and forth for a couple of hours, for her to get my vocal mannerisms. And I got to teach her. I sat in a vocal booth with her when she did her vocals. It was really exciting, and my god, it’s Dakota Fanning; are you kidding me? She’s my favorite actress of all time.”

Currie today

The film also afforded Currie the opportunity to work in the recording studio with Jett again for the first time since 1977, laying down vocal “guide tracks” for Fanning and Stewart to study.

“Yeah, I tell ya, we didn’t miss a beat,” Currie said. “It was like 33 years just melted away. It was like we’d never stopped.”

Of course, overwork, low pay, drug- and alcohol-aggravated jealousies, musical differences and in-fighting — especially between Currie and guitarist Lita Ford (played in the film by Scout Taylor Compton) — did eventually cause The Runaways to stop.

Currie was one of the first to leave in ’77, deciding to pursue an acting career and landing a key role in — of all things — a coming-of-age film called “Foxes” (1980) opposite Jody Foster. That same year, she recorded an album with her twin sister, Marie (portrayed in the film by Riley Keough, daughter of Lisa Marie Presley).

She went on to appear in “Parasite” (1982) with Demi Moore and “Twilight Zone: The Movie” (1983) before the roles dwindled to minor parts on TV series such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “Matlock.”

Over the years, Currie also has worked as a drug counselor and physical trainer, become a mother during her seven-year marriage in the ’90s to actor Robert Hays (“Airplane!”), dabbled in painting and become a prize-winning chain-saw sculptor.

She recently carved a full-size wooden guitar, complete with pearl inlays, as a 16th birthday gift and token of appreciation for Fanning’s work on the film.

“It was really a labor of love that I couldn’t wait to give her,” Currie said.

As for her experiences in The Runaways, Currie, now 50, said her regrets are few.

“I’m glad it happened the way it did, ’cause look where we are today,” she said. “We actually have an opportunity now not only to be recognized for being brave young girls, but really to be able to make a difference as adults now in kids’ lives who have hopes and dreams and maybe give them a little more courage.

“I mean that’s pretty astonishing, walking off the plane in Japan, and it was just Beatlemania. And it was just all that work, all that hell, all the touring. And it was like, ‘We made it.’ … We might not have had the gold and platinum records. We might not have made the money because people were stealing all of our money. But we accomplished everything you could ever want to accomplish.

“We were girls, and I think what The Runaways did — and there really aren’t words.”

Kin’s project recaps Warner Brothers’ legacy in film

BY GENE TRIPLETT

When the name Warner Brothers is mentioned, some people picture Humphrey Bogart as the sweaty double-crosser in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” or a fiery-eyed Bette Davis hot-boxing cigarettes in almost every movie she ever made. Others see Bugs Bunny tormenting wabbit-hunting Elmer Fudd, or hear the carnival-spirited Looney Tunes theme “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” and Porky Pig stuttering “That’s all, Folks!”

But few people can name the siblings who made them all famous.

A number of older movie fans remember the line “Jack L. Warner in Charge of Production” that used to appear beneath the familiar WB shield at the beginning of every film, but Harry, Albert and Sam, the other three brothers who founded Hollywood’s only family-owned studio, are largely forgotten by today’s moviegoing public.

“It’s very simple,” said Harry Warner’s granddaughter, Cass Warner Sperling. “(Jack) out-survived everybody.”

Jack L. Warner also was the most visible of the clan, attending every important Hollywood function, dining and drinking in all the right places, and welcoming all the publicity he could get.

Cass Warner Sperling

That’s why Sperling wrote a book and filmed a documentary, both titled “The Brothers Warner” — to set the record straight and give credit where it’s due in the building of this Hollywood family dynasty.

The award-winning documentary, an official selection at 33 film festivals worldwide, has just been released on Warner Home Video.

“Harry was actually the spokesperson and the president in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,” Sperling said of her grandfather. “So, if you’d asked anybody back then, they would have known who Harry was. He was the strategic general and the one who kept that place going financially for 50 years.”

Sperling, 62, spent 30 years researching personal and studio archives and conducting interviews with relatives, actors, executives and others with close ties to the Warners. What she has assembled are fascinating never-before-seen photos and footage showing filmmaking’s crude beginnings, the “Golden Age” of Hollywood and the story of four sons of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents — real name Wonskolaser — who developed a powerful work ethic early on.

From a storefront theater, complete with a sheet for a screen and borrowed funeral parlor chairs for seats, they went on to build not only one of the leading Hollywood studios but one of the most innovative and groundbreaking dream factories in the industry.

It was Warner Bros. Studios that had the vision and the courage to introduce sound to commercial feature films with “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, when the majority of the filmmaking community on both sides of the camera either dismissed it as a passing novelty or feared its career-ending implications.

“I also wanted to bring to the forefront that I’m very proud of the fact that they had a conscience, felt a responsibility for using this powerful communication tool, film, to ‘educate, entertain and enlighten,’” Sperling said. “It was more than just entertain. And they were really the first ones to take stories out of the headlines of newspapers and address the issues of the day that affected most people on the street.”

The studio became the first to address the need for prison reform in 1932 with “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” starring Paul Muni.

When Adolph Hitler rose to power, Warner Bros. was the first major studio to stop doing business with Nazi Germany in 1934, despite the country’s lucrative film market, years before other U.S. film companies dared to follow suit.

The first major Hollywood film with a blunt anti-Nazi message, “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” starring Edward G. Robinson, was released by Warner in 1939.

The studio became known — and criticized — for its violent gangster films of the ’30s and early ’40s, which made stars out of such Warner contract players as Robinson, James Cagney, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart. Critics charged glorification of crime, but Harry Warner insisted the message was “crime does not pay.”

Warner also holds the distinction of being the first and only movie studio to be sued by the Ku Klux Klan over the 1937 release of “Black Legion,” starring Bogart as a machinist who loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker and is persuaded to join a secretive hate group that intimidates foreigners through violence. The KKK lost the action.

And along with the relevant movies, there are also the Warner classics such as “Casablanca,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Sergeant York,” “Now, Voyager,” “Life with Father,” “White Heat,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “A Star is Born” (1954 version), “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” “Giant,” “Moby Dick,” “The Searchers,” “Auntie Mame” and “The Nun’s Story,” to name but a few.

And of course there were all those great cartoons that were as much for adults as kids.

It’s a movie studio that deserves to have a movie made about it.

And in addition to Sperling’s documentary, a feature film is actually in the works. Rights to her book have been optioned by producer Alain Goldman (“La Vie En Rose”) and a screenplay is about to be delivered by Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote “Goodfellas” and “Casino.”

“Nick is incredibly thorough,” Sperling said. “He’s an ex-journalist, and I just admire him tremendously, his wanting to know details and things like that.”

So, who would Sperling pick to play the four Warner brothers?

“I just don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the ’80s, even before the book came out in ’93. Back then, the perfect people would have been Jack Nicholson as Jack and Dustin Hoffman as my grandfather. But, you know, here we are.”

Sperling’s up for any suggestions.

The diminutive actor Michael Dunn was small in stature but mighty in spirit, says a new biography by Yukon, OK, native and author Sherry Kelly. “The Big Life of a Little Man: Michael Dunn Remembered” relates the poignant and inspiring story of Dunn, who was born in Shattuck, OK, with dwarfism but built a large career in Hollywood that earned him an Academy Award nomination.

Dunn (real name, Gary Miller) died mysteriously in London at age 38 after carving out a distinguished career that included playing Dr. Miguelito Loveless for several seasons in the mid-’60s on TV’s “The Wild, Wild West,” winning an Oscar nomination for his role in 1965’s “Ship of Fools” and appearing in numerous films and TV series.

Kelly, author of “A Cat Named Zooby” and “Your New Baby’s Instruction Book,” is a first cousin of Dunn. She drew upon a rich repository of family letters, magazine articles, newspaper clippings and personal reminiscences from friends and relatives to paint a touching and intimate portrait of a man who never let his physical limitations prevent him from pursuing his dreams.

“The Big Life of a Little Man” (Tate Publishing) is available at barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, tatepublishing.com and numerous book outlets. The book, 172 pages in paperback, retails for $12.99.

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

Cast around for a narrative movie about fly fishing and you’re sure to hook up with “A River Runs Through It.” But Robert Redford’s angling classic, based on Norman Maclean’s much admired memoir, isn’t the only literary chronicle of the esoteric sport wading onto big screens.

“The River Why,” a fly fishing novel by David James Duncan, might not possess quite the stately mystique of Maclean’s elegiac book, but it has an avid following of its own among sportsman who chase after trout with whippet rods and fur-and-feather lures.

And just as “A River Runs Through It” made a triumphant leap from page to screen with Redford’s lovely, 1992 film, “The River Why” now wends its way to movie theaters with a new cinematic adaptation that will have its premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival in April.

But the movie drawn from Duncan’s wild-and-wooly outdoors novel flowed over many tumultuous twists and turns on its tortured way to the screen.

When it is shown at DIFF at 7:30 p.m., April 14 (Landmark Magnolia Theatre 5), and 7 p.m., April 15 (Dallas Museum of Art Horchow), the movie will have tumbled through a rancorous feud between the author and producers, a protracted court case, a struggle to find financing and a distributor, and humbling comparisons beforehand with Redford’s august classic.

“The River Why,” directed by Matthew Leuwyler, follows the life path of Gus Orviston, a 19-year-old prodigy characterized as “the Mozart of fly fishing.” As he moves to a remote cabin on an Oregon river to live among the fishes and master his craft, “Glum Gus” hooks countless muscular trout, flounders in existential crisis, burns out and stumbles through many streamside misadventures. Eventually, he undergoes a spiritual awakening and finds true love.

Despite the film’s off-track pedigree and legal troubles, its producers managed to attract a first-rate cast that includes Zach Gilford (“Friday Night Lights”), Amber Heard, William Devane, Kathleen Quinlan and William Hurt (himself an avid fly fisher).

The film’s checkered path to production featured an ugly, highly publicized feud among Missoula, Montana-based novelist Duncan, the publisher Sierra Club Books and the film’s producers. Duncan claimed the publisher sold film rights to the book without his consent and sued to stop production, alleging copyright infringement.

Eventually, the case was settled out of court, with Duncan reclaiming rights to the book and vowing to proceed with his own film version. The producers were allowed to forge ahead and complete their film (but are prohibited from using Duncan’s name in promotional materials) and are now embarked on a round of film festival screenings and continued efforts to hook a major distributor.

The DIFF opens Thursday and runs through April 18.

This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Dirt! The Movie”

Dirt is not dirty, declare the makers of this light-hearted yet serious-minded documentary, out on DVD Tuesday, that examines the “skin of the earth” and the “ground beneath our feet.”

Inspired by the celebrated book, “Dirt, The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth,” by William Bryant Logan, “Dirt! The Movie,” is a humorous yet significant look at man’s relationship with the soil. Dirt, the film tells us, makes human existence possible. “It feeds and shelters us. It holds and cleans our water. It regulates the earth’s climate. It heals us and makes us beautiful.”

But, as narrator Jamie Lee Curtis bemoans, people of the industrial age have thoughtlessly ignored, abused and damaged this most precious resource – “destroying (it) with our agriculture, our mining, and our paving over the planet for cities.” Without healthy soil, mankind faces an inevitable increase in mass starvation, drought, floods and global warming.

Ranging from the vineyards of California to the plains of Kenya, the documentary examines Earth’s terrain and weaves together animation, vignettes, personal accounts and scientific data to tell the surprisingly entertaining story of dirt.

Dirt and humans couldn’t be closer, the film concludes. “We started our journey together as stardust, swirled by cosmic forces into our galaxy, solar system, and planet. We are made of the same stuff. “

“Dirt! The Movie” runs 80 minutes and is being released by Docudrama. Suggested retail price is $26.95.

- Dennis King