STRANGE BEDFELLOWS MOVIE MOGULS PONDER PATRIOTISM.

Byline: Joseph Honig Local View

SO Hollywood is going to war: White House emissaries ask for a new patriotism in popular entertainments. Celebrities take off for global hot spots and raise pots of cash for families of domestic terror victims. Military strategists call on filmland scriptwriters for hints of real-life horrors to come.

Some of the very men and women lambasted for disturbing, antisocial and immoral diversions are being requested to promote traditional American values.

Will they rise to the occasion with meaningful contributions? Or will contemporary Hollywood treat our national emergency as just another box office opportunity?

So far, the results are mixed - with some astonishing moments. Film czars who've served up years of death, mass murder and graphic violence rushed to remove World Trade Center images from post-Sept. 11 movies. They said good taste prompted their decisions.

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, an on-screen murder machine of some renown, agreed with decisions to postpone release of his latest blood-and-bullets epic. Maybe the Terminator was showing his sensitive side; maybe he was wondering whether hours of unstaged horror on television might keep moviegoers at home.

While the world awaits new terror and more unthinkable violence, studio chiefs ponder what kind of on-screen homicide is acceptable in times of genuine butchery.

Will films showcasing cold-blooded murder be centered around patriotic themes?

Have suggestions for yet another Rambo movie been prompted by nationalism or marketing?

Will Clint Eastwood, Jean-Claude Van Damme or even Jackie Chan square off against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban?

Maybe so. After two years of being broadsided by the family values crowd, Hollywood is now courted by the friends of George W. Bush, the same people who once skewered entertainers for selling sex, violence and assorted other poisons.

Our leaders are making nice with show business. They want to be friends. They've buried the hatchet with all those Democratic movie stars.

The administration even dispatched White House adviser Karl Rove, a conservative's conservative, to lobby Tinseltown luminaries on morale and the movies.

But will a country steeped in ``Die Hard'' and ``Reservoir Dogs'' turn out for new-wave John Wayne fare?

Who knows? What is clear, however, is that some government strategists, while condemning Hollywood's past storylines, have managed to find a use for those who imagine our movie mayhem.

Screenwriters, whose work has destroyed towns, cities and sometimes planets, have been invited to brainstorm possible terrorist scenarios. In other words, flamboyant filmmakers are trying to read the minds of ascetic fundamentalists.

The good news in this nexus of pop culture and our national trial by fire is that celebrities - even those who've donated time and cash for relief efforts - may wind up as smaller influences on our national conversation. They may fascinate us less; their private lives and public nonsense may be lesser preoccupations for Americans with survival on their minds. Movie stars in $10,000 gowns telling ``Entertainment Tonight'' how they're coping with terror are themselves targets - for brickbats.

And since Hollywood often trades on absurdity, is it any surprise that Generation Y soldiers and sailors - men and women besotted with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Mariah Carey - will be entertained this Thanksgiving by an overseas brigade led by pop dinosaur Wayne Newton? This administration's answer to Barbra Streisand might pass political litmus tests, but many 19-year-old troopers are sure to reach for their Walkmans.

With time, however, the new Hollywood-Washington alliance could find its footing.

There are smart, serious people on both sides who care deeply about our country and its people. The audience will tell them when they're getting it right.