What the world doesn’t need is another synopsis of how powerful Michael Eisner, Steven Spielberg and Rupert Murdoch happen to be. We know already.

So instead of Hollywood’s usual suspects, we decided that our annual Who’s Who Entertainment special report should be made up of the less obvious names in show business publicists, agents, journalists, analysts and bankers who can play often-critical roles in determining what movie gets made and which star winds up on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Of course, some of the folks on our list of 25 weren’t anxious to talk about their behind-the-scenes duties. As a group, publicists were the most press shy, followed closely by agents. We went ahead and profiled everybody with or without their cooperation and it’s a look at Hollywood that you don’t always run across.

We look at Hollywood in other ways this week. The front page includes an exclusive on efforts to develop a studio on the former Unocal headquarters site downtown, as well as the travails of DreamWorks both in getting a successful movie lineup off the ground and in getting a permanent headquarters at Playa Vista.

I want to believe that L.A. is too big to be a company town, but there are some days when it’s tough to fight the tinsel.

Mark Lacter

Editor