Even this Mickey Mouse production must enjoy certain protections

(The movie rights to Jonathan Harr's fine book "A Civil Action" had been sold to Robert Redford, who turned them over to Disney's Touchstone Pictures. Jonathan got big bucks for the book. Attorney Jan Schlichtmann reportedly received several hundred thousand dollars. The families had received nothing, even though it was really their story which would be the heart of the film. Former Woburn State Rep. Nicholas Paleologos, who is a partner with Frederick Zollo, of Zollo Productions, had bought the rights to the families' life stories. Fred and Nick, both of Woburn, had made several films, including Oscar nominee "Missippi Burning." They had bid for the book and had planned to make a film as well. But they were outbid. Then Nick had some legislation filed with the Mass. Legislature to prohibit the use of information from anyone's life in a book or film without their permission. I wrote this column in response to Disney's refusal to deal with the families and Nick's well-intentioned, but misguided legislation. )

By Charles C. Ryan

Anyone with a brain knows Hollywood, with very rare exceptions, has no connection to reality.

From it's Lollywood lifestyle, to it's Gollywood awe of its own wonderfulness, Hollywood and its players are absorbed with their own fantasies.

Ask any author who has had their book made into a film or made-for-television movie. Usually the only connection between the book and film is the title and maybe one (badly distorted) character.

Thus it is very easy to feel sympathy for the Woburn families whose children were afflicted with leukemia. And it is very easy, emotionally, to support their effort to get some legislation passed which would require filmmakers to obtain peoples' permission, and compensate them, before producing a movie based on their lives.

Follywood, in the guise of one of Disney's numerous production companies, is about to make a film of the Woburn families' suffering, based on Jonathan Harr's book A Civil Action.

Harr's been paid a reported $1.2 million for the right to Hollywoodize his book.

The attorney for the Woburn families, Jan Schlichtmann of Beverly, who blew off a significant settlement offer because of his greed and Follywood-like ego, has also reportedly been paid for the right to be John Travolta-ized.

But the victims, the dead and ill children, the families who suffered for years through the illnesses, and additional years through the various legal maneuverings and appeals -- they are being paid nothing. They're being victimized twice.

The major difference is that the companies who polluted the ground water in Woburn never, ever deliberately intended to hurt children, or their families -- at least not until the lawyers stepped in.

Lawyers, you see, are the real world's answer to Fowlywood. It's their job, generally, to distort the truth just enough so their clients can win.

Smallywood, on the other hand, is deliberately exploiting these families. It methodically, calculatingly plans to put them through their suffering all over again in the guise of entertainment.

(Some of the phonies out there in LaLa land like to pretend what they do is "art". But all Dollywood really cares about is money.)

Showing it's usual courage, the Maulywood production company plans to change the names of the families to avoid legal complications. More than likely, it will also change the names of the polluters and their bit players. But they'll still tag the movie as "based on real events" -- at least as real as Disney World.

If Follywood had anything even remotely approaching ethics, or even a faint glimmer of that thing called morality, or even a inkling of something called fair play, the families would have been the first people they spoke with as soon as the rights to Harr's book were acquired.

But that's expecting too much from Dummywood. It's like imagining a new-born pup won't poop on the carpet. And it ain't gonna change, not from a land where they remake everything including themselves.

But no matter how much I'd like to support the legislation being batted about that would require that the victims of the Woburn tragedy receive some form of compensation, I can't.

Every once in a rare while, someone with guts, or someone who just doesn't know any better, actually attempts to make a real movie in the land of little people.

Imagine Richard Milhous Nixon giving his assent to Olver Stone's Nixon (which actually managed to cast him in a sympathetic light). What kind of films would there be about Adolph Hitler, or Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot, if filmmakers needed their permission first?

No, like it or not, the First Amendment of the Constitution has to take precedence over our feelings. In that sense I have to agree with Jack Valenti's (president of the Motion Picture Association) stance that no legislature should limit free speech for the sake of curbing a film company's ignorance.

It just would have been more comforting if Smallywood's leader had mentioned something about honor or truth or justice in his defense of bad behavior. It would have been nice, too, if he sided with the families and persuaded Disney to do the right thing without legislation.

But Follywood can make any film it chooses, about anything it wants. That it prefers to be Disney's Dumbo in most of its efforts is its own damnation.

Of course, the fact that Foulywood makes a film doesn't mean anyone has to go see it. In this case, the Woburn families should take a tip from the Baptists and boycott the film.

And everyone who is fed up with LaLa land's complete and callous disregard for real human emotions should join them.

Charles C. Ryan, who's now applications manager for Essex County Newspapers, was the reporter who broke the story on Woburn's toxic wastes and the childhood leukemia cases and covered the issue for 16 years.

(I wasn't the only one who beat up on Disney. Eventually Touchstone Pictures negotiated a settlement with the families and made the film using real names. The real names of the families and the real names of the companies, much to my surprise. They still changed a lot of the facts, though (See A Civil Action: Factual Errors in the Movie), proving that Hollywood has to be Hollywood.)