Tribal Rites in Lotus Land . . .

By RICHARD ZOGLIN.

"Lemme just take this call," says producer Lawrence Gordon, interrupting an interview to grab the phone. What follows is one of those edgy Hollywood power conversations, laced with sarcasm, posturing and barely controlled venom. "What do you mean you have nothing to do with it?" says Gordon. "No, I don't believe you . . . Suppose I bid $5 million, will you take credit for it?" Gordon hangs up the phone, then says with a smile, "So now we have to go to plan B."

And what is plan B, the interviewer asks. "Can't tell you," says Gordon. "Too dirty."

Hooray for Hollywood. And at least a couple of cheers for Naked Hollywood, a probing, cynical, sometimes annoying but always fascinating documentary about the movie business, produced for the BBC and making its U.S. debut next week on cable. Producer Nicolas Kent got extraordinary access to a host of Hollywood bigwigs, from stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger to studio executives & and other behind-the-scenes brokers. The resulting six-part series has been described by Kent as "a study of a tribe in its native habitat."

That habitat can be hostile. Hollywood has been buzzing for months over the caustic portrait that emerges in the British documentary, and some of the participants are kicking themselves for having cooperated. Two of them -- producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer -- were apparently so miffed that they succeeded in preventing the episode that features them from being aired in the U.S.

At its best, Naked Hollywood puts a human twist on the familiar tales of Hollywood mass production and megalomania. One sequence tracks the relay team of writers hired by producer-director Ivan Reitman to massage the script of Kindergarten Cop. ("I felt he was somewhat written out," says Reitman of original writer Murray Salem. Says Salem: "He was not that friendly to me.") James Caan recalls career missteps that included turning down the lead roles in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kramer vs. Kramer.

The most scalding episode is the third, on agents. It is hard to know which is more unsettling: the caught-in-the-act scenes of oily agents coddling clients over lunch and at the racetrack, or their considered explanations to the camera of what they do for a living. Ed Limato, who represents such stars as Mel Gibson and Richard Gere, talks about the joys of occasionally handling a newcomer, like actor James Wilder, whom he can teach "how to dress, who's important for him to know, who's not important for him to know." Another agent discusses the value of starting out in the mail room. "You learn what an agent sounds like and talks like and dresses like. You see what it looks like in an agent's office who's succeeding and ((one)) who's failing."

There is no narrator; the commentary is embedded in the editing. When Joe Roth describes the pressures of his job as head of 20th Century Fox, his remarks are juxtaposed with clips from The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. A look at Hollywood negotiating is embellished by an actor quoting from Sun-tzu's The Art of War. Even the way the interviews are shot -- subjects are often dwarfed by huge desks or planted against stark unflattering backgrounds -- emphasizes the Felliniesque strangeness of the world under scrutiny.

Some of this seems facile and condescending. The segment on agents, for example, hardly needs the bludgeoning of Frank Sinatra singing "All of me/Why not take all of me?" And in the episode on studio chiefs, why interview screening-room projectionists ("He comes across over the intercom as very nice") except to take a cheap poke at the high and mighty? Hollywood moguls are perfectly capable of skewering themselves. Most of the time, Naked Hollywood lets them do it quite nicely.

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles