Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

One cannot libel the dead — a fact that has been used to a sorry degree by C. David Heymann, in his new, exploitative book, "American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy."

Using dubious sources at times to make his points, Heymann accuses the offspring of the late president of being involved in drugs and drink and worse.

In one particularly damning section, he tells of an evening of sex that he says John had with an unnamed call girl — and uses her as his source to outline disturbing sexual fetishes she describes in detail, reportedly at John's request. Heymann does concede that John ended up declining to take part — which makes one wonder why it was ever included in the book.

Heymann is described by his Simon & Schuster publishers as "one of the most respected biographers of our time," and the firm points out that the author of such best sellers as "RFK," "The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club" and an Elizabeth Taylor biography has been nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes. That makes it especially hard to fathom why he would go on a gutter wallow in his biography of two of the most celebrated and admired presidential offspring in history.

FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE: Esteemed British actor Alfred Molina says he got a real crash course on the CIA's activities during the Cold War in TNT's gripping upcoming miniseries "The Company," with Michael Keaton and Chris O'Donnell.

"The most revealing thing to me," notes the actor, who plays top spy Harvey "The Sorcerer" Torriti in the project that spans some 40 years, "is that despite the changes in technology, all the different gizmos spies have to deal with now, and the different situations that we're in, essentially the actual profession of espionage hasn't changed very much since the days of Elizabeth the First's court. The skill you develop is to try and figure out how the other person thinks, and those kinds of intuitive things that have to do with intellect, deduction and intelligence are really always going to trump any kind of technological gizmo you might develop. You can have state-of-the art computers, and it doesn't really matter … it's the information you get from looking the other person straight in the eye.

"That's what my character is always talking about," he continues. "He has this thing where he says, 'My nose is twitching.' He's always working on hunches and gut instincts, and when it lets him down he's furious because it usually means he didn't trust his instincts." He adds, "It's a very different approach from Michael Keaton's character (CIA counter-intelligence specialist, James Jesus Angleton, codename "Mother"), who is very analytical, cool and intellectual.

I think really what I came away thinking was ultimately the skill is a very elusive one and a very hard one, but a very simple one." "The Company" will air in three two-hour installments over consecutive Sundays debuting Aug. 5.

MEANWHILE: Also in "The Company" is Rory Cochrane of "A Scanner Darkly" and "CSI: Miami" fame — playing a KGB man secretly operating in the United States. Cochrane deals in international paranoia in a whole different time and space in the contemporary big-screen thriller "Right at Your Door" — about a dirty bomb set off in Los Angeles by terrorists. That's quite a topic for a film with a budget that only allowed for a few carefully selected special effects and stunts.

"They don't really focus on the bomb or the terrorist aspect of it. They focus on the panic-stricken aspect," explains Cochrane of the feature that goes into limited release next month. "I play the husband of Mary McCormack. Her character gets stuck outside in the toxic ash. All communication fails. Everything hits the fan."

He notes, "On 'The Company,' I had some time off in between shooting, which we did in Budapest and Toronto. But the other one was on a tighter budget so it was demanding six-day weeks, staying in that panicky frame of mind."

TAKING THE PLUNGE: Critics have been bemoaning the lack of a sizeable release for the multiple film festival winner "The Big Bad Swim" almost as much as they've been praising the witty comic drama, due on DVD July 24, and its stars. Those include "Criminal Minds" actress Paget Brewster as a high school calculus teacher who's among the students in a swimming class for water-shy adults — a far cry from her series role as an FBI agent. "I know they wanted someone else who is represented by my manager," Brewster cheerfully reveals. "I can't say who, but she's great. She couldn't do it. My manager sent me the script, and I loved it. Every scene was very real heartfelt and honest. Strangely, you don't see a lot of that in scripts. I said, 'Hey, will you ask them if I can audition for it?' They didn't have anyone else. They said, 'We're about to start. Can you be in Connecticut Tuesday?' That's how I ended up doing it."

(With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster)

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.