After attacks, will Hollywood change its ways?

Independent TV producer Beth Polson, who began her career in the 1970s, agrees.

"I've seen all the cycles," she says, noting that for the past few years networks have only wanted male-oriented, action films.

"I just hold on to the side of the boat and wait for it to go away, but this is not the way we wanted it to go away," she says. Stranded in the South, where she went to celebrate her mother's 97th birthday Sept. 11, Ms. Polson says she, too, has noted a change. "This has galvanized the nation in a way that nothing else could have."

Polson, however, is not confident that these events will bring about a serious change in the entertainment industry. "I think they will be very responsible for the next few months," she says - but all bets are off after that. Polson says she might feel differently "if I had any faith that the media was governed by something other than money, but ultimately, it isn't."

Gernon says the shift may be subtle, such as a desire for heroes and moral clarity in popular entertainment. A project he has developed about a Vietnam War veteran in search of his own redemption has been picked up with what he calls great enthusiasm in the past week.

"[Cable channel] HBO has told us this story is more important than ever. It is about war, but it has heroes," Gernon says. Not only does it fit the bill for a heroic lead, but it explores an issue Gernon says Americans now face: coming of age.

"Right now, we'll be years sorting through this [terrorism] story," he says, "putting a human face on it," and understanding what it is to be a citizen "in a nation you love and whose values are worth preserving,"

But Americans are learning "that the world is a cruel place that [isn't] 'happily ever after' all the time. That is part of the growing-up process."

* Warner Brothers has delayed the Arnold Schwarzenegger revenge film "Collateral Damage," in which a Los Angeles skyscraper is bombed.

* Touchstone Pictures pushed back the release of "Big Trouble," a comedy starring Tim Allen, in part because it involves a bomb on a plane.

* Sony Pictures Entertainment withdrew a "Spider Man" trailer from theaters because a helicopter becomes entangled in a web woven between the twin World Trade Towers.

* In the coming movie "Nosebleed," actor Jackie Chan was to star as a World Trade Center window washer who battles terrorists bent on blowing up the Statue of Liberty. The script will be rewritten.

* Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, which owns more than 1,000 radio stations across the United States, has compiled a list of songs inappropriate to air, including the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" and Soundgarden's "Blow Up the Outside World."

* A new album cover by hip-hop band The Coup had, until recently, depicted the World Trade Center exploding. "We changed the artwork as soon as we saw what had happened," said Daria Kelly, director of sales for 75 Ark, the band's label.

* Electronic Arts (EA), the largest video-game developer in North America, suspended for six days the online game "Majestic," which involves real-time phone messages to players giving unsettling fictional information. EA felt phone messages of this sort were inappropriate. When play resumed Monday, players received e-mail notifications which allowed them to begin again at their own pace. "That obviates one of the problems that network television and sports franchises have had, which is, when is the appropriate time to resume, says EA spokesman Jeff Brown.

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