Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

When Don Cheadle's "House of Lies" hits Showtime in January, "It's going to be a water-cooler show. People will be having parties to watch this thing. It will be huge," predicts former star of "The West Wing," Richard Schiff, who plays the head of Cheadle's cutthroat Wall Street consulting firm on the forthcoming dramedy. "It's so timely," he adds. "It holds nothing back."

According to Schiff, it's not that "House of Lies" — also starring Kristen Bell — has any direct correlation to today's headline-generating Occupy Wall Street movement. It's that "it depicts the disposition of people on Wall Street in a way that actually helps you understand it more. These are human beings, not monsters, but they don't have anything programmed within them to deal with the betterment of the rest of us. They're programmed to make more money for themselves and a couple of their clients, and that's all."

Well, not quite all. The show is also "very sexy. You might see my bare ass," advises Schiff. "But you'll see other, much sexier bare asses."

MEANWHILE: "House of Lies" is one of a bundle of projects in the pipeline for Schiff. Tomorrow night (Nov. 2), he'll be introduced on "Up All Night" as Christina Applegate's father — a perpetually analytical psychologist. He tells us, "I'm enamored of her. I think she's fantastic." And then there's Schiff's new "Up All Night" wife, Blythe Danner.

"I reminded Blythe that we worked together — must be 18 years ago now — on a TV movie in a scene were I was a lie-detector test-giver. It was a time-cut scene, done in one shot, in a kind of a tricky way, to pass time. They panned over to me, then panned back and it was Gwyneth Paltrow in the chair," he recalls, speaking of Danner's real-life daughter. "It was before Gwyneth was a star or anything. She was 16 or 17 and lovely."

Schiff is also in TNT's Nov. 29 adaptation of Scott Turow's "Innocent" with Bill Pullman, Alfred Molina and Marcia Gay Harden.

This week, Schiff will be on the set of ABC's "Once Upon a Time," playing Show White's father, King Leopold. "We watched the pilot and my 11-year-old daughter said, 'Daddy, you have to do this,'" he says.

Schiff reunited with fellow "West Wing" alumnus Rob Lowe in the 2012 big-screen political drama, "Knife Fight."

He's currently trying to figure out his schedule between two more projects and a trip to Israel he intends to take later in the month on behalf of the non-partisan Creative Coalition.

Schiff says he wrapped up his stint on "The West Wing" feeling the kind of fatigue that comes from "a seven-year grind. It was a wonderful grind, but 10 and a half months a year of 70- to 80-hour weeks, playing one character — I needed a mental break." He did a one-man show in the U.K., among other things, and "rejuvenated myself. I feel spunky now — wanting to do things." It shows.

ANOTHER HOUSE HEARD FROM: Kevin Spacey, who is currently being seen as a sympathetic Wall Street character in the "Margin Call" feature with Zachary Quinto, Jeremy Irons and Penn Badgley, has his own "House" beckoning. A February production start has been set for Spacey's "House of Cards" political series that has Netflix and filmmaker David Fincher executive-producing. Fincher's directing the pilot.

This is the deal that got much attention this past spring as part of the increasing jockeying for prime content between outlets including Netflix, Amazon, even Facebook, and their traditional media rivals. Netflix reportedly outbid HBO for the series, and guaranteed 26 episodes. Now being cast are roles including ambitious D.C. reporter Zoe Barnes, and Linda Vasquez, described as a "severe, deadly, cunning woman at the top of her game" who will serve as chief of staff to the president-elect.

The series is based on the excellent 1990 BBC miniseries starring Ian Richardson that depicted political intrigue at the end of the Margaret Thatcher era in Great Britain. If you haven't already seen it, it's well worth adding to your rainy-day list.

THE BIG-SCREEN SCENE: Warren Beatty's not saying much about his Howard Hughes movie project, which moved from Paramount to New Regency a few weeks ago — other than to say it's not a biopic about the late billionaire.

Beatty's starring in the project as well as producing and directing from his own script, and it appears he's planning to start shooting it early in the new year because he wants prospective cast members to be available from Jan. 5 "onward." That includes a young Warren Beatty look-alike being cast now for a flashback sequence. He's described as "handsome, late 20s to 50s and square-jawed."

NO, N.O.: As if New Orleans hasn't suffered enough disasters, now the city is about to be infested by giant killer spiders — in a creature-feature called "Earthquake," that is. The tale has these particularly nasty arachnids burrowing under the Big Easy, making tunnels that then cause earthquakes. Kinda sounds like a "Tremors" gumbo.

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

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