LONG SHADOW `ALL THE KING'S MEN' AND ITS TOWERING PRESENCE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

When Steven Zaillian decided to make a new movie out of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ``All the King's Men,'' his first impulse was to take the action out of the Depression and put the film into the here and now.

Zaillian wanted to know what Willie Stark -- the bombastic Louisiana politician who begins as an idealist and ends up just as corrupt as the politicians he hated -- had to say to modern times.

Problem is, there is no modern politician like Willie Stark, a man modeled after Huey P. Long, who dominated Louisiana politics during the Depression era.

Zaillian ended up compromising, moving the action ahead to the 1950s.

Robert Rossen's 1949 version, which won the Oscar for best picture, was, like the novel, set in the 1930s.

``If Willie Stark was going to run for office today, you'd have to shoot him up with tranquilizers to bring him down a few clicks,'' says James Carville, the political consultant who has long championed bringing a new version of Penn Warren's book to the screen.

Fiery oratory 

``People don't talk like that from the stump today,'' continues Carville, who has an executive producer credit on the new film. ``That kind of fiery plain talk was Willie's personality. You remember the (Howard) Dean scream? If you were in the room, it didn't sound like much. But Willie Stark, he's a screamer. He didn't need a microphone for people to hear him.''

So, Stark, played with gusto by Sean Penn, remains a blustering, bellowing presence, a populist politician who tells voters that ``nobody helped a hick but a hick himself.'' Stark starts as a do-gooder, using his stump speeches to weakly rail against pork projects and budgetary excesses. But when nobody listens, Stark, as Carville puts it, ``shows a little leg,'' melding politics and entertainment with an evangelical fervor. Then he gets elected and proceeds to become everything he once deplored.

``The main theme of the story is that here's a guy who gets his ends and means mixed up,'' Zaillian says by phone from the Toronto Film Festival, where the movie screened to mixed reviews. ``I'm asking the audience: `How do you feel about that?'

``For some, it's all right. What he gets done is the important thing. And others will take a more moral stand and think he's awful. Both viewpoints are invited, both are valid.''

More so than Rossen's version, Zaillian's movie is faithful to Penn Warren's 1946 novel, focusing more on ``all the king's men'' -- the people surrounding and supporting Stark, those enabling him and those corrupted by him. The list includes a jaded, irresponsible reporter (Jude Law) who becomes Stark's right-hand man, the reporter's lost love, Anne (Kate Winslet), who finds herself attracted by Stark's charisma, and Anne's idealistic brother (Mark Ruffalo), a pawn in Stark's power games.

Power play

``Power changes everything,'' Winslet says. ``It infects people. It causes them to lose their moral compass and do things they otherwise wouldn't think of doing. That's what interested me in Willie. He infects people.''

Zaillian also shows more affection for Stark than Rossen did. Though ultimately self-

serving, Stark is portrayed as a man who helps the poor by building schools, hospitals and roads. Above that, there is a nobility to the plain-spoken character, a politician possessing strong beliefs and the courage to speak them.

``I was frustrated during the last presidential election where you could tell everyone was saying what they thought they should be saying and not one of them was saying what they meant,'' Zaillian says. ``I remember thinking, `If somebody just got up there and told people what they truly felt, it would be so refreshing that they couldn't help but get elected.' But the political parties are too strong. These candidates aren't working for themselves. They're working for their parties. Everything gets compromised.''

Carville, a Louisiana native and strategist for Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, knows a thing or three about Stark's journey. And he says he can feel Zaillian's pain.

Political speak

Says Carville: ``There's the great scene in this movie where Willie realizes he's not going to win, and Jack tells him, `When you take one step up the podium, you sound like the rest of the politicians. Talk to the people like you talk to me.' So many times, I watch politicians and just wince because they sound like every other politician. And people pick up on that. It's certainly not appealing.''

The cast and crew were reminded of Long's long shadow of accomplishment while making the movie in Louisiana. Wherever they filmed, they'd run into a street, school, hospital or highway named after Long, who was the state's governor from 1928 to 1932, and a U.S. senator from 1932 to 1935.

``You talk to anyone in Louisiana and New Orleans, and they'll tell you all about Huey Long giving free books to kids and building the

roads,'' Ruffalo says. ``You see his hand in the entire state. More than any other modern politician, he named things after himself. I was surprised we never ran into a Longville or Longingrad.''

Notes Carville: ``That's how they are in Louisiana. If you're not larger than life, you're not alive.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) MADE IN AMERICA

Sean Penn gets out the vote as larger-than-life Louisiana politician

(2) Sean Penn portrays the bombastic Willie Stark -- modeled after corrupt Louisiana politician Huey P. Long -- in ``All the King's Men.''