Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Paul McCartney's "The Love We Make," debuting tomorrow (Sept. 10) on Showtime, does more than capture the music icon's journey of a decade ago — from being grounded on the tarmac on Sept. 11 to spearheading the memorable Concert for New York in Madison Square Garden the next month. It also brings back the feelings of unity and of caring people striving together toward healing that became the best part of those dark days.

Directed by the legendary rock documentarian Albert Maysles, the film also includes concert performances and backstage encounters.

McCartney recently recalled that by the time he took to that stage — along with David Bowie, Elton John, Billy Joel, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and many others — he could almost feel that "we were emerging from the fearfulness of the immediate impact" of the terror attacks.

"And now you were seeing the emotion releasing through music, which I always think is a great thing. It's one of the reasons I love music and I'm in it. You could see, particularly the firefighters and the volunteers and their families, and the victims' families, were able to release this emotion that has been so sort of pent up. It was a really great feeling. We actually felt like we were doing a bit of good."

Speaking via video linkup before a rapt audience of critics, McCartney went from chatting about his first visit to NYC — when Beatles fans sounded like "a billion seagulls screaming" at their landmark Shea stadium concert — to recalling how he wrote "Let It Be" after dreaming of his mother saying those words. He then enthralled listeners as he shared his views on the transformative, healing power of music:

"I've come to the conclusion that it's magical," he declared. "You know, there's so much — what is it Shakespeare said, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'? There's so much that we don't know about. When you get down to the scientific thing about music, it's vibrations. And you can actually measure them ... The fact that it's vibrations working on people, I think that's part of the answer."

McCartney believes science will eventually provide information as to the impact of music on the human body and psyche, "but the fact remains that whether or not we discover how it works," he said, "it works. It can bring you to tears, it can make you smile, it can make you flash back to a memory. People often say to me, 'Thank you for the music. You know it's the soundtrack of my life.' ... I think the first word I used is what I'll end up saying: it's a magical thing. And I do mean that. Do you believe in magic, really? I do. I have to.

"For instance, just a story to quickly sum up: One of my most famous songs is 'Yesterday.' And, like 'Let It Be,' 'Yesterday' came to me in a dream.

But this time, it wasn't just my mom saying a phrase. This time, it was a whole tune in my head. I have no idea where it came from ... This song that was to become very famous throughout the world — I just dreamed it. So there's no way out of it for me — I have to believe that's magical."

THE BIG-SCREEN SCENE: Singapore-born rising film actor Chin Han was thrilled to join an all-star cast including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Marion Cotillard for Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion" thriller, which opens today (Sept. 9). But with the exception of Cotillard, Han says of the cast that he "met them for the first time at the Venice Film Festival last week. I felt more grateful than anything — to be seen alongside them." The actor plays a Hong Kong-based scientist in the film about a fast-spreading killer virus.

"To be told by someone like Laurence Fishburne that he enjoyed my performance was icing on the cake," Han continues. "To have a speed boat taking you through the canals Venice to the Lido for your movie premiere? That's not something that happens every day."

As if all that wasn't heady enough, Chin Han is also featured in Gus Van Sant's "Restless," the drama of a terminally ill teenage girl (he plays her physician) and the young man who loves her — who come into contact with the ghost of a WWII kamikaze pilot. That film is soon to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival.

With his roles in "The Dark Knight" and "2012," "it's been an amazing four years," Han points out. So how does he size up the quartet of super-directors with whom he's worked in that time?

"With Christopher Nolan, you feel you're in the hands of a master with a labyrinthine imagination, who can keep track of all these complex ideas in his mind," Han says. "You want to go wherever he takes you for that ride. Gus Van Sant is like the poet filmmaker, for me, in his representation of life.

"Roland Emmerich is like a big boy with a huge imagination. Working

with him, I got to indulge childhood fantasies like outrunning a giant tidal wave.

"And Steven Soderbergh — I'd say he's the closest I've come to working with a cinema verite director. Everything is so authentic, no-fuss, spare and realistic."

AND THEN THERE WERE... With all the attention going to Chaz Bono as this season's "Dancing With the Stars" approaches, very little notice has been taken of Ryan O'Neal.

That would've been unbelievable a couple decades ago. We're used to seeing the suave likes of George Hamilton in the "Dancing With the Stars" unofficial "mature gentleman" category. With pugnacious 70-year-old O'Neal, they have a whole different type. The one-time dreamboat of "Peyton Place" and "Love Story" fame and the long-time love of the late Farrah Fawcett, Ryan has come back from arrests, family trauma, violent episodes and a successful battle with leukemia. But can he step up to the demands of "DWTS" and maintain control over his notorious temper? Time will tell.

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 2011 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM