On Movies: Macy movie on moviemaking

'It was bizarre making

The Deal

," says

William H. Macy

. "There I was a producer, playing a producer, being the producer."

Indeed, a movie that almost didn't get made about making a movie that almost falls apart several times over,

The Deal

not only was produced by the prolific character actor, who stars as a cynical, broke Hollywood producer opposite a snappy

Meg Ryan

. Macy and his director buddy,

Steven Schachter

, also went around soliciting financing for the film, which eventually got made in Cape Town, South Africa. And Macy even did some second-unit directing (a very funny film-within-the-film sequence involving a British starlet in a brassiere, lobbing a hand grenade).

The Deal

is one of the centerpiece shows for the 17th Philadelphia Film Festival, which gets under way Thursday. Macy will be in town, and will present his flick, for its East Coast premiere, Saturday night at the Prince Music Theater. It will screen again next Sunday at the Ritz East.

First screened at Sundance in January,

The Deal

is based on the

Peter

Lefcourt

novel of the same name, and follows the development of a script about 19th-century British prime minister

Benjamin Disraeli

as it goes from being a classy period-piece drama to, yes, a modern-day action flick starring a black martial arts master (

LL Cool J

) who's recently converted to Judaism. Ryan plays a studio exec,

Elliott Gould

is a learned rabbi who signs on as the movie's technical adviser, and

Jason Ritter

and

Fiona Glascott

(the starlet in the bra) also star.

It's a fast-paced, larky affair, full of funny, knowing but affectionate barbs aimed at the Biz. And it was royally panned by the two industry trades, the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety.

"There is a sort of unwritten law in Hollywood that you can't make movies about Hollywood, that Hollywood hates movies about itself," says Macy, on the phone from the home in Aspen, Colo., that he shares with his wife,

Desperate Housewives'

Felicity Huffman

, and their two kids.

"And foolishly or not, we decided to buck that - we were very well aware of it. I knew we might be in trouble when

Geoff Gilmore

, the guy that runs Sundance, called me up and started his whole talk with me by saying, 'I hate movies like this. They're indulgent, they're smug,' and then, without missing a beat, he said, 'I love your movie. It's so funny.' . . .

"So, those two reviews, the trades, I was really upset with them. I thought they were low blows."

Macy, 58, has an alarming number of films and television shows and movies to his credit. The IMDB lists 113 titles - and that doesn't include any of the stage productions he's been involved with, from his days with

David Mamet

in Chicago on. But Macy is just now getting around to producing, and directing.

"I'm trying to put a film together to direct," he reports. "It's been an ongoing, two-year process, you know how that is.

"It's called

Keep Coming Back

, a coming-of-age story, and I'm very close. We've got the money, we've got everything, we just need a movie star. It's out to people now."

If that sounds like something Macy's

The Deal

character, Charlie Berns, might have said, well, it very well could be.

For information on

The Deal

screening, and other Philadelphia Film Festival pictures and programs, visit

» READ MORE: www.phillyfests.com

, or call 267-765-9700, Ext. 4.

Short subjects.

He's already offered his own unique takes on

Nixon

and

JFK

, and now

Oliver Stone

is getting ready to do

W,

his biopic of our current prez,

George W. Bush

. In the title role:

Josh Brolin

, the cool-headed trailer-park hero of the

Coen Brothers

'

No Country for Old Men

. And just announced as first lady

Laura Bush

:

Elizabeth Banks

, of

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

and, most recently,

Definitely, Maybe

. Also on board as W's parental units -

George H.W. Bush

and his former White House flatmate,

Barbara

- are

James Cromwell

and

Ellen Burstyn

. Shooting begins in late April, says Variety. This should be, um, interesting. . . .

Sam Raimi

, perpetrator of those wee little

Spider-Man

pics, is returning to his roots: the blood and mayhem of his 1981 classic

The Evil Dead

. Called

Drag Me to Hell

, the new Raimi production stars

Justin Long

and

Alison Lohman

(replacing

Juno's

Ellen Page

), along with

Cloverfield's

Jessica Lucas

, veteran character actor

David Paymer

, and

Lorna Raver

. It's about a really, really bad curse. . . .

David O. Russell

is being allowed to make another movie, despite the YouTube-featured horror show of the director throwing major, major hissy fits on the set of his last, and floppiest, film,

I Huckabees.

The new Russell endeavor is called

Nailed

, and will star

Jessica Biel

as a waitress who gets a nail lodged in her noggin, making her behave in weird ways and sending her to Washington to lobby for better health care. There she meets a congressman played by

Jake Gyllenhaal

- and comedy, and romance, ensue.

James Marsden

,

Catherine Keener

and

Tracy Morgan

also star. Shooting begins in mid-April. . . . New York indie icon

Jim Jarmusch

is at work on a new one, tentatively titled

The Limits of Control

, about a mysterious stranger getting up to mysterious stuff in Spain. It stars Jarmusch regular

Isaach De Bankolé

in the lead, and also includes

Hiam Abbass

,

Gael García Bernal

,

Paz de la Huerta

,

Alex Descas

,

John Hurt

,

Youki Kudoh

,

Bill Murray

(some obscuro actor who appeared in Jarmusch's

Broken Flowers

),

Jean-François Stévenin

,

Tilda Swinton

,

and

Luis Tosar

. Focus Features will distribute - late this year, or next.