LOVE ANGELES

Governor & Top Lawmakers Announce Budget Deal

Source: LA Times - Officials refuse to reveal plans of an accord that would end the longest budget deadlock on record. A hearing is expected Wednesday with a vote as early as Thursday.

Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders said Friday night that they had reached an agreement to end the state's longest-ever budget stalemate.

The announcement came after hours of closed-door meetings in the governor's office on how to close the state's $19.1-billion deficit. The new budget year began July 1, and the state government has been operating without a spending plan since then.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D- Sacramento), flanked by the state's three other legislative leaders, said in a scrum with reporters outside the governor's office that the negotiators had struck a "comprehensive agreement." He declined to share any details about what it contained.

"The details will come out next week," said Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger's press secretary.

Lawmakers promised a public hearing on the proposed budget package Wednesday and a vote of the full Legislature as early as Thursday. Before final passage, the leaders must persuade two-thirds of the Assembly and Senate to support the plan.
That could prove challenging. Past budget deals put together by legislative leaders and the governor amid California's ongoing fiscal crisis have been derailed by the Assembly and Senate rank and file, forcing their leaders to keep them in chambers for days as they and the governor tried to round up votes.

"We think it is a budget that will pass," said the Senate's GOP leader, Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta.

Although the governor and leaders refused to provide an outline of their agreement, Democrats and Republicans alike have previously said the budget would not contain any broad new taxes.

According to sources close to the discussions, the plan contains roughly $7.5 billion in cuts to services. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The sources said Schwarzenegger and other Republicans had backed down from their most austere budget-cutting demands, including the elimination of the state's main welfare program and day care for 140,000 children in low-income families.

Putting Some Zip into Catalina's Tourism

Source: LA Times - The Catalina Zipline Eco-Tour - a 3,671-foot-long cable ride over cactus-filled canyons - is part of a plan to transform the struggling harbor town of Avalon into a leading Southland destination. A few weeks before the opening of Santa Catalina Island's zipline attraction, its designer popped a question that caught a handful of local officials and visiting journalists off guard: "Want to zip?"

Bradd Morse, the president of Canopy Tours Inc., was mindful that being among the first to hurtle over rocky, cactus-filled canyons at speeds of up to 40 mph while dangling from a cable as high as 300 feet off the ground might make some people nervous.

But getting these individuals -- public safety officials, mostly -- to take a ride on the Catalina Zipline Eco-Tour is all part of the plan to transform this struggling harbor community of about 3,000 people into a more prominent Southern California destination.

At the end of the 3,671-foot-long run that starts on Hogsback Ridge will be revamped restaurants, shops, eco-adventures and hillside condominiums.

Morse's first taker was Avalon Planning Commissioner Keith Schmidt. Rightfully so, since he also is zipline project manager for the Santa Catalina Island Co., which has invested more than $1 million in the effort.

"As project manager, if I don't ride this thing, why should anyone else?" Schmidt said. Laughing nervously, he donned a hard hat and stepped into a safety harness.

The harness was connected to a small trolley running along two overhead steel cables the width of cigars. Each cable can withstand 26,000 pounds of pressure.

Standing on the edge of a wooden platform (still under construction) atop Hogsback Ridge, Schmidt took a deep breath and pushed off.

Free fall, accompanied by a high-pitched whirring sound. Wind rippling through pant legs. Quail bursting from dense brush 30 feet below. Eyes shifting from the u-shaped curve of the cables to the fast-approaching landing platform. Touchdown.

"Spectacular!" Schmidt shouted from the far side of the canyon.

Morse relished the scene. After three months of labor on some of the island's roughest terrain, the zipline -- designed to whisk 300 customers a day -- was on budget and on schedule to open April 14.

In the meantime, Schmidt has been directing work crews, training prospective staffers and focusing on details: tightening bolts, inspecting harness stitching and gauging tension in the steel cables.

The attraction is made up of five zipline segments averaging 734 feet in length and connected to platforms. One stretch is 300 feet above a canyon floor.

Riders who pay $89 per ticket will get a hawk-eye's view as they swoop down from a mountaintop to the beach. Because the ride is divided into five segments, one full trip would take about 90 minutes, according to Morse.

"It's safer than a boat ride across the Catalina Channel or tooling around this island in a golf cart," Morse said. "It only feels like you're doing something crazy and out there."

Each paying customer will be required to sign a waiver and weigh between 60 and 245 pounds. Young children will be required to ride with a parent. The attraction is insured by the Island Co.

The history of ziplining boils down to this: After entrepreneurs discovered that scientists used the technology to study tropical forest canopies in the 1970s, it boomed.

Today, there are hundreds in operation around the world. In Southern California, they are in use at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains and at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

While showing the Catalina zipline to local officials, Morse said he received inquiries from prospective investors who wanted him to help them build zipline operations in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Ohio. Morse, who already runs his own ziplines in New Hampshire and Jamaica, said he referred them to a competitor because "I'm booked solid."

Here, the zipline is part of an effort to broaden Catalina's appeal to a younger crowd: families and baby boomers. A four-hour bus tour of the island's interior wilderness was closed earlier this year because of declining ticket sales.

Critics expressed concern that Avalon was in danger losing its charm as a timeless slice of old California.

Artist Joe Paquet, 47, was painting a favorite landscape a few yards from where a construction crew was putting finishing touches on the zipline platform at Hogsback Ridge.

"There is a certain character and romance about this island that is unique," he said. "Once you give it up to generic fads, it will only be found in books. That's sad."

Moments later, Morse put a stretch of zipline to the test with a maneuver he called "penciling in": zipping with legs extended and body horizontal to reduce wind resistance and pick up speed.

Seconds later, Morse slammed feet-first into the landing platform's rear retaining wall, buckling his legs at the knees to absorb the impact.

"That was not an experience that tourists will ever have," Morse, who was not injured, explained later. "We're still fine-tuning and testing. But it is also true that ziplining is not Disneyland."

Mixed-Gender Dorm Rooms are Gaining Acceptance

Source: LA Times - About 50 schools in the U.S., including a few Ivy League campuses and several in California, are allowing men and women to room together. Participation is still relatively low.

They weren't looking to make a political statement or to be pioneers of gender liberation. Each just wanted a familiar, decent roommate rather than a stranger after their original roommates left to study abroad.

That's how Pitzer College sophomores Kayla Eland, female, and Lindon Pronto, male, began sharing a room this semester on Holden Hall's second floor. They are not a couple and neither is gay. They are just compatible roommates in a new, sometimes controversial, dormitory option known as gender-neutral housing that is gaining support at some colleges in California and across the nation.

Eland, a biology major who hopes to become a doctor, said that a roommate's personality and study habits are more important than gender. "This might not be right for everyone," she said of sharing the small, cinder block-walled room with a man. "But I think it's important to have the right to choose where you want to live, how you want to live and who you want to live with."

Pronto, an environmental studies major who works each summer as a forest firefighter, agreed. Apart from remembering to lower the toilet seat, he said, living with a woman friend is not much different from rooming with a man. "As far as I'm concerned, a roommate is a roommate," he said.

Although the number of participants remains small, gender-neutral housing has gained attention as the final step in the integration of student housing.

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

Pitzer, which began its program in the fall of 2008, is among about 50 U.S. schools with the housing choice, according to Jeffrey Chang, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign in 2006 to encourage gender-mixed rooms. Participating schools include UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Haverford, Wesleyan and the University of Michigan.

College officials say the movement began mainly as a way to accommodate gay, bisexual and transgender students who may feel more comfortable living with a member of the opposite sex. Most schools say they discourage couples from participating, citing emotional and logistical problems of breakups. Officials say most heterosexuals in the programs are platonic friends.

"College students are adults," said Chang, who is gay and is now a law student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "They have every single right to choose the person they feel most comfortable living with."

He estimates that at schools where the option exists, only 1% to 3% of students living on campus choose a roommate of the opposite sex.

Officials at the Assn. of College & University Housing Officers - International say the trend has accelerated, but they don't expect most schools to adopt it. Experts note that most students prefer a same-sex roommate, and some colleges are reluctant to antagonize parents, legislators and donors who view the option as immoral or even dangerous.

Pepperdine University in Malibu, which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ, maintains separate dorm wings and apartments for men and women. Asked whether it would consider going gender neutral, Sue Gamboa, a housing department office manager, said: "Not in the wildest dream would Pepperdine move in that direction."

Harvey Mudd College, next to Pitzer in the Claremont Colleges, began gender-neutral housing last fall mainly as an option for gay and transgender students, said Guy Gerbick, dean of residential life. Seven students joined; among them are a man and two women, all straight, who share a triple room.

Parents cannot veto such a decision at Harvey Mudd, but Gerbick asks students to discuss it with their families ahead of time. He also asks applicants whether they are romantically involved; all of this year's participants said no. But if they were, the school could not forbid them from rooming together.

"If we are going into a post-gender world, then the regulation of private behavior is just not practical," he said.

Several years ago, an earlier proposal for gender-neutral housing was killed at Harvey Mudd by skeptical administrators and older, more conservative trustees, Gerbick recalled. More recently, 74% of Harvey Mudd students voted in a survey to allow the option and, to Gerbick's satisfaction, a new administration agreed.

UC Berkeley senior Rose DeLeon-Foote, who has a male roommate, laughed at fears that gender-neutral housing might promote promiscuity. In fact, she said, the opposite is true when roommates see each other "all gnarly in the morning."

"It's not sexual, it's just not," said DeLeon-Foote, 19, of Sacramento.

Many schools restrict the option to upperclassmen, to certain floors or to residence halls with gay themes. Pitzer, which has about a dozen students participating this year, avoids such limits out of concern that they may marginalize students, said Chris Brunelle, director of residence life.

Pitzer housing applications ask whether students prefer a roommate to be woman, man, "other," or have no preference. Or students can request to live together, as Eland and Pronto did after losing their original roommates.

Their room, which shares a tiny bathroom with two men next door, has the usual collegiate trappings of beer bottles and political posters. The only unusual sight is women's clothes in one closet and men's in another.

The pair seem to have a warm brotherly-sisterly friendship and, while they try to be respectful, they say they are not inhibited about being in underwear or even nude while changing clothes in the room. They insist their living situation does not interfere with romantic relationships with other people. And although they have not been teased on campus, they face curious questions from relatives and friends.

"I definitely think it's generational," said Eland, 20, of Seattle. "For my grandparents, living with someone of the opposite sex, if he is not your serious boyfriend or husband or brother, would be very strange."

Pronto, 21, of Weimar, north of Sacramento, said his mother at first worried that he might be distracted by having a female roommate. And fellow firefighters at his "macho" summer barracks may joke about it, he said.

But at colleges, he said, "I think those old-fashioned ways of thinking are kind of dissipating. . . . Over the years, this division between men and women, which was so big, is slowly closing."

Eland's and Pronto's living arrangement won't last long.

Both will be studying overseas next fall, she in Spain, he in Costa Rica, and they are not sure where -- or with whom -- they will live when they return to school.

Southwest Offers a Spring Break

Source: Yahoo -  Southwest Airlines Co. is offering a sale geared toward leisure travelers who want to make short trips this spring.

The discount carrier said Tuesday it will sell tickets starting at $39 each way on some routes under 500 miles.

As usual, the airline didn't say how many seats it will offer at the sale prices, and Friday and Sunday flights aren't included. The sale ends Thursday and covers travel from March 15 through May 25.

Delta, American, United, Continental and US Airways matched the sale prices on routes where they compete with Southwest, said Tom Parsons, CEO of BestFares.com. Fellow discount carriers JetBlue and AirTran matched on some routes, he said.

Southwest has reported steadily rising traffic for several months — up 7.1 percent in January compared with a year earlier. The Dallas-based airline broke its own record for average occupancy in January. Still, 28 percent of seats were empty.

The sale shows that airlines are struggling to fill planes, especially during the relatively slow travel period between spring break and summer vacations.

"In order to fill up those last 20 percent of seats, Southwest still has to discount to get people off their couches and on to their computers booking tickets," said Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com.

Since the sale is mostly limited to short hops, the airline can still charge a reasonable price per mile, Parsons said.

"That's still money, and cost per mile is what they go by," Parsons said.

At $39 one way from Dallas to Houston, Southwest would get more than 16 cents per mile. In 2009, the airline's operating costs were a bit more than 10 cents per mile, so it can make a profit even at the sale prices if it can fill the planes.

But flights between San Francisco and Los Angeles would barely break even if every seat were taken at $39.

Avatar: Why Do Conservatives Hate the Most Popular Movie in Years?

Source: LA Times - It's no secret that "Avatar" has been stunningly successful on nearly every front. The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is already the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time, having earned more than $1 billion around the globe in less than three weeks of theatrical release. The film also has garnered effusive praise from critics, who've been planting its flag on a variety of critics Top 10 lists (it has earned an impressive 83 score on Rotten Tomatoes). The 3-D trip to Pandora is also viewed as a veritable shoo-in for a best picture Oscar nomination when the academy announces its nominees on Feb. 2.

But amid this avalanche of praise and popularity, guess who hates the movie? America's prickly cadre of political conservatives.

For years, pundits and bloggers on the right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance with Middle America. They have reacted with scorn to such high-profile liberal political advocacy films as "Syriana," "Milk," "W.," "Religulous," "Lions for Lambs," "Brokeback Mountain," "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," saying that the movies' poor performance at the box office was a clear sign of how thoroughly uninterested real people were in the pet causes of showbiz progressives.

Of course, "Avatar" totally turns this theory on its head. As a host of critics have noted, the film offers a blatantly pro-environmental message; it portrays U.S. military contractors in a decidedly negative light; and it clearly evokes the can't-we-all-get along vibe of the 1960s counterculture. These are all messages guaranteed to alienate everyday moviegoers, so say the right-wing pundits -- and yet the film has been wholeheartedly embraced by audiences everywhere, from Mississippi to Manhattan.

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises.... Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin' hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen." He goes on to say: "You're going to hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the movie's politics -- about how it's a Green epic about despoiling the environment, and an attack on the war in Iraq.... The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism -- kind of. The thing is, one would be giving Jim Cameron too much credit to take 'Avatar' -- with its ... hatred of the military and American institutions and the notion that to be human is just way uncool -- at all seriously as a political document. It's more interesting as an example of how deeply rooted these standard issue counterculture cliches in Hollywood have become by now."

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, took Cameron to task on another favorite conservative front, as yet another Hollywood filmmaker who refuses to acknowledge the power of religion. Douthat calls "Avatar" the "Gospel according to James. But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, 'Avatar' is Cameron's long apologia for pantheism -- a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world." Douthat contends that societies close to nature, like the Na'vi in "Avatar," aren't shining Edens at all -- "they're places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short."

There are tons of other grumpy conservative broadsides against the film, but I'll spare you the details, except to say that Cameron's grand cinematic fantasy, with its mixture of social comment, mysticism and transcendent, fanboy-style video game animation, seems to have hit a very raw nerve with political conservatives, who view everything -- foreign affairs, global warming, the White House Christmas tree -- through the prism of partisan sloganeering.

But why is it doing so well with everyday moviegoers if it's so full of supposedly buzz-killing liberal messages?

"It has the politics of the left, but it also has extraordinary spectacle," says Govindini Murty, co-founder of the pioneering conservative blog Libertas and executive producer of the new conservative film "Kalifornistan." "Jim Cameron didn't come out nowhere. He came on the heels of all the left-wing filmmakers who went before him, who knew that someone with their point of view would have the resources to finally make a breakthrough political film. But even though 'Avatar' has an incredibly disturbing anti-human, anti-military, anti-Western world view, it has incredible spectacle and technology and great filmmaking to capture people's attention. The politics are going right over people's heads. Its audience isn't reading the New York Times or the National Review."

I suspect that's a good explanation. But if I were trying to get to the bottom of conservative complaints with "Avatar," I'd offer three more key reasons why the film has set the right's hair on fire:

1) Glorifying soft-headed environmentalism: If you hadn't noticed, the conservative movement has become the leading focal point for skepticism about global warming. The Wall Street Journal's ardently right-wing editorial pages have been chock-full of stories ridiculing everything including government sponsorship of alternative energy, nutty Prius enthusiasts and scientists who allegedly suppressed climate change data that called into question their claims about global warming (a flap the WSJ dubbed "Climategate").

Ever since Al Gore took center stage with his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," conservatives have been falling over each other in their attempts to mock liberal planet savers, taking special pleasure in slamming Hollywood environmentalists who fly private jets or live in huge houses. (As soon as Climategate erupted, two Hollywood conservatives surfaced, asking the academy to take back Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" Oscar, even though, inconveniently, the Oscar had actually gone to the film's director, not Gore.)

So Cameron's giddy embrace of a primitive people who live in harmony with their land -- and his scathing portrayal of a soulless corporation willing to do anything, including kill innocent natives, to steal and exploit their planet's valuable natural resources -- is the kind of anti-technology, pro-environment dramaturgy that sets off fire alarms. If "Avatar" had been a western that showed sympathy for the Indians (many have in fact compared its storyline to Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves"), conservatives would probably have been up in arms too.

As it is, they have been content to hoot at Cameron's portrayal of the Na'vi's one-ness with nature, with Podhoretz writing: "Like the Keebler elves, the Blue People all live in a big tree together and they go to church at another big tree, under which we learn lives Mother Earth, only since it isn't earth, she isn't called Mother Earth, but the Great Mother or something like that."

2) Godless Hollywood triumphs again: Conservatives have complained for years that Hollywood ignores, laughs at or disrespects religion. And to be fair, they are not so wrong. It's almost as rare to see a film with a sympathetic portrayal of an openly religious character as it is to see a film with a leading role for an African American actress. I think it's a stretch to call Hollywood godless, but it would certainly be fair to call it an extremely secular world.

Conservatives are always quick to point out that when someone actually made an openly religious film -- and of course we're talking about Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" --  it made hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course, they usually fail to mention that when Hollywood made 2005's "The Nativity Story," a sweet, very respectful religious drama, it earned $37 million in the U.S., just about what it cost to make. Ross Douthat is probably right. Moviegoers are far more comfortable with a fuzzy, inspirational form of pantheism than they are with an openly biblical message.

3) Hollywood's long history of anti-military sloganeering: There is no doubt that "Avatar" portrays its military contractor characters as barbarous mercenaries, willing -- even eager -- to wipe out innocent natives in their pursuit of Pandora's precious resources. It almost feels as if Cameron is drawing parallels, not only to the Iraq war, but to Vietnam, where the military found itself in the nihilistic position of destroying villages just to save them. Even the New Yorker's David Denby, hardly a die-hard conservative, found himself in awe of the film's "anti-imperialist spectacle." But while Hollywood often makes antiwar movies, "Avatar" is something different -- a peaceful warrior film, celebrating the newly aroused consciousness of a Marine turned defender of a higher faith.

What's fascinating is that the American people, who have almost always shown strong support for our foreign wars, would happily embrace a film that portrays its military characters in such an unflattering light. My guess is that audiences have seen past the obvious because the film is set in a faraway, interplanetary future, not in present-day America. When Russian political dissidents wanted to criticize their oppressive regimes, they would often write stories or make films that were set in the past, inoculating themselves by using a 15th century czar as a stand-in for the tyrant of the day. Cameron has done the same thing, but by moving forward into the future, creating a safe distance for his veiled (and not-so-thinly veiled) social messages.

"Avatar" has, of course, far more on its mind than its politics. It's a triumph of visual imagination and the world's first great 3-D movie. But it is fascinating to see how today's ideology-obsessed conservatives have managed to walk away from such a crowd-pleasing triumph and only see the film's political subtext, not the groundbreaking artistry that's staring them right in the face.

Texting While Driving, Smoking Target of '10 Laws

Source: ABC News - Texting while driving, public smoking, cooking with trans fats targeted in states' 2010 law.

Texting while driving, smoking in public and cooking with artery-clogging trans fats will be that much harder under a bevy of state laws set to take effect around the country on Friday.

Faced with huge budget shortfalls and little extra money to throw around, state lawmakers exercised their (inexpensive) power to clamp down on impolite, unhealthy and sometimes dangerous behaviors in 2009.

Even toy guns were targeted.

Among the most surprising new laws set to take effect in 2010 is a smoking ban for bars and restaurants in North Carolina, the country's largest tobacco producer that has a history steeped in tradition around the golden leaf.

Starting Saturday — stragglers get a one-day reprieve to puff away after their New Year's Day meals — smokers will no longer be allowed to light up in North Carolina bars and restaurants. There are exceptions for country clubs, Elks lodges and the like, but the change is a dramatic one for North Carolina, whose tax coffers long depended on Big Tobacco.

Virginia approved a similar law that took effect Dec. 1, but it's more accommodating to smokers because it allows establishments to offer areas in which to light up as long as they have separate ventilating systems.

Not including Virginia and its partial ban, smoking will be banned in restaurants in 29 states and in bars in 25, according to the American Lung Association.

And 12 more states — including Florida, Michigan and Arkansas — have passed laws requiring manufacturers to make their cigarettes less likely to start fires, leaving Wyoming as the only state without such laws, according to the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes.

America's roads should be safer in 2010, as bans on texting while driving go into effect in New Hampshire, Oregon and Illinois. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, that will make 19 states that have outlawed the practice, not including six states that prohibit using hand-held cell phones while behind the wheel...

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

Source: Daily News - "When an actor signs up to play a character named Bad, he knows he's going to have to bring something of his dark side to the table.

"I certainly have insecurities and fears. I think most artists do. So I brought that," says Jeff Bridges about his role as a down-and-out country-western singer in "Crazy Heart," which opened in limited release Wednesday. "And there were times in my life I used blues to numb my feelings a little bit, and I sort of magnified that aspect of the character."

Yet it's those aspects that Bridges says didn't match up with Bad that have helped shape his life.

Starting in the late 1950s when he appeared on TV's "Sea Hunt," which starred his dad, Lloyd Bridges, the actor has had a career that has yielded many memorable performances in what can only can be called a crazy array of movies. Two of his early roles brought Oscar nominations - "The Last Picture Show" (1971) and "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974). Then, he was in two of the oddest big-budget films of the era - "King Kong" (1976) and Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" (1981), widely considered one of the biggest box-office disasters of all time. In 1982 he starred in cult sci-fi film "Tron," before getting his third nomination as the gentle alien in "Starman" (1984). His fourth nod came in "The Contender" (2000).

Along the way, he's played villains - "Jagged Edge" (1985), "The Vanishing" (1993) and most recently "Iron Man" (2008) - and visionaries, "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (1988). But Bridges is often remembered for his offbeat, unpredictable characters - "The Last American Hero" (1973) and "Stay Hungry" (1976), "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989), "The Fisher King" (1991), "American Heart" (1992), "Fearless" (1993) and the iconic slacker The Dude in the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski" (1998).

Sitting in a Beverly Hills hotel restaurant recently, Bridges, 60, looks like a cross between The Dude and Bad Blake. Wearing a rather ordinary-looking brown zip-up jacket and jeans, the actor sports a slightly scruffy goatee and longish combed-back hair.

He's got an easygoing manner, and it's obvious Bridges is enjoying the attention "Crazy Heart" is getting.

The film is being distributed by Fox Searchlight, the company that released the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" last year.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association gave Bridges its best-actor award, and he already has Spirit Award and Golden Globe nominations.

"I can't think of another film I've had so much fun on," says Bridges, who along with co-star Robert Duvall is one of the producers on the film. "And then (director) Scott Cooper pasted it together so well, and now we've got Fox Searchlight. If we didn't have that part of the equation, we wouldn't get people to see it, and that would be a shame." Coninue reading here...