Today, if knowledge of a movie is out there for a while, it may increase its appeal. It builds up a mystique. Bad buzz can actually morph into anticipation.

It's like night and day when you compare this to 9-11, when the national trauma was so severe that the media felt uncomfortable being too critical of the administration,

But I think it would be tougher for Walken than it was for Reagan. His weird roles might harm him.

It's part of our heritage, part of our culture. The more we move into cities, the more cool we try to be, the more we miss the part of ourselves that's simple and country.

The last thing you want to do, if you are investing dreams, energy and money into a city edition, is to basically fold up the Web page into something nobody would recognize as being a part of Newsday.

This goes back to ancient Greek drama. This has always been the role of fiction and entertainment to let us try these things out in a totally safe way. There's a perennial interest in these type of things. What they all have in common is bending the boundaries.