John Herzfeld

Any play set in the waiting room of the Los Angeles County Medical Center intensive care unit might lead an audience to expect a "St. Elsewhere" episode--a credible expectation, given how most of Equity waiver theater is in love with TV. What playwright Greg Suddeth delivers in "Mine Enemies," at the Cast, is preachy racial drama interspersed with bedside monologues. As his play unravels, Suddeth gives new meaning to the word twist.

PAUL Walker had barely taken his seat at a table in the deserted lounge of a Santa Monica beachfront hotel to discuss his two new films -- the family-friendly "Eight Below" and the gritty thriller, "Running Scared" -- when a woman timidly approached. "Can my son take a picture of us together?" she asked the lanky, blue-eyed star of "The Fast and the Furious." Walker offered a brief smile, looked at her camera-toting son and quickly said yes.

Jennifer Levin was victimized twice--once when Robert Chambers killed her and again when her reputation was dirtied during his trial. "I've tried to clear a little of the mud off her," said John Herzfeld, co-writer (with Irv Roud) and director of "The Preppie Murder," the ABC movie airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

Great man. --Mike Tyson praising Don King Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" HBO's new funny/tough biography of tenaciously flimflamming boxing promoter Don King is the most entertaining TV movie in years. Where fact and dramatic license or interpretation intersect here is not always easy to spot, but a true gas it is, with Ving Rhames affirming, as King, that he's as able a scene-stealer as the one he's playing.

For the most part, Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco seemed to be having a great time putting their sordid past in front of them. The Massapequa, N.Y., couple, who gained notoriety in the "Lethal Lolita" case this year that erupted when 18-year-old Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the head after an alleged affair with her husband, traveled to Culver City recently to relive their ordeal during the filming of the CBS movie "Casualties of Love: The 'Long Island Lolita' Story."

Everyone who works in the thriller genre inevitably spends part of the time looking over his or her shoulder at Alfred Hitchcock, who articulated many of his theories and techniques for jolting an audience in his published conversations with the late French director Francois Truffaut. In one of the most incisive sections of that interview, he discussed the difference between suspense and surprise, and declared his preference for suspense.

While TV stations across the country were making headlines in recent days with their decisions to accept ads for condoms, an ABC TV-movie was quietly filming a scene showing a teen-age boy passing a condom to a friend. "Daddy," now in production in Los Angeles, promises to be a frank treatment of teen-age sexuality. The movie depicts the consequences of teen-age sexual activity in terms of unwanted pregnancy and deals candidly with the controversial issue of birth control.

HOLLYWOOD is so behind the curve on cultural trends that most fads are over before the movie biz can figure out how to exploit them.

This is the time of year when nervous TV executives put their futures in the hands of people like David Nutter. Next week, the broadcast networks will unveil their schedules for the new TV season, and studio executives are praying that their pilots -- each typically representing millions of dollars in development and production costs -- will get the nod and become new series. They've found that having someone like Nutter onboard can improve the odds considerably.