'Rudy', a made-for-TV film about Rudy Guiliani, shows tonight on USA TV. (In twenty minutes, in fact.) Catherine Seipp writes about James Woods, who plays the title role:

Woods, you may recall, was an inadvertent witness to one of the dress rehearsals for Sept. 11, 2001, which led to the situation we are in now. The actor reported suspicious behavior about some fellow passengers -- who evidently were doing a dry run -- to a flight attendant and co-pilot, and later identified two of them as two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Regarding his participation in this project:

Woods had script approval with "Rudy," and he exercised it, noting that when he took the project his mother told him, "Don't let them screw this up." When he read an early version of the script, he noticed that on page five the word "village idiot" was used in connection with the White House.

"I put down the script, I called my agent, and I said, 'This script is not approved,'" Woods recalled. "He said, 'Well, you've only been reading it 30 seconds.' I said, 'That's all I needed.' I'm not going to do a script where someone is using the words village idiot about anybody at the White House during 9/11. It's ridiculous.

Regarding Rudy Guiliani himself:

"I lived in New York under (Democratic Mayor) David Dinkins, and it was like living in a war zone," Woods said. "There's virtually nothing about Rudy Giuliani that I don't unequivocally admire," he added. "Certainly his level of genuine human compassion was captured after 9/11. I mean, he went to 200 funerals. Sen. (Hillary) Clinton went to zero. He's a great man, warts and all."

Questions and comments afterwards:

1. So very little time for so much information; why to prefer the book.
2. Good photography, Not quite Woody Allen's "Manhattan", but not bad.
3. It portrays Rudy as only seeing the WTC after the second plane had impacted. I don't know the details of Rudy's whereabouts that day -- was that accurate?
4. A bit of harsh language. Very realistic for Rudy, from what I hear. But I'm wondering how far we'll go down this venue.
5. Definitely a warts-and-all portrayl. One can easily understand why his wife was so hurt. Also portrayed the firing of police chief Bratton as being ego-motivated.
6. I was left with an admiration for Guiliani's problem-solving abilities. A lot of what it takes to make life better is being serious about solving problems. I hope that his faults weren't a necessary manifestation of his strengths.