He didn’t mean anyone anyone. He meant anyone in show business anyone. In Hollywood, you see, “people” doesn’t mean what it means to everyone else. Out here, “people” means “people you know in the business.” What everyone else calls “people,” we call “customers.” And right now, the entire town is trying to figure out what the customer wants, or, as we put it to each other over steamed vegetable lunches and nonfat soy lattes, “What do they want?”

Since September 11, people out here have been frantically trying to read the national mood. Each Monday morning, the weekend box-office receipts are scoured for signs of the national direction. Why did Disney’s “Monsters, Inc.” do so well? Are they into monsters, now? Why did “The Last Castle” bomb? Are they not into military drama? And each day, as the Nielsen Overnights come humming through the town’s fax machines, people (well, people people, not customers people) gather around, trying to figure out whether the success of the WB’s new show “Smallville,” a teen action-drama about the young Superman, means America wants more heroes, or whether they don’t much like any of the new comedies because they have their minds on weightier matters.

The gas that makes this town go is money, and money comes in cascades only when you know what the customer wants and can get it to him before anyone else does. That’s the chief irony of this most ironic business: only those with the common touch can afford to live like kings. Steven Spielberg is so tuned in to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans that he no longer needs to be around them. Ever. Hollywood, though, has a chaotic and haphazard way of stumbling right into the national mood. Of our six key genres–action-suspense, romantic drama, comedy, romantic comedy, thriller and plain old drama–one of them has to fit the national mood, and only the first, the action picture, really seems out of the mix for a while. If there’s one thing we all learned on September 11, it’s that big exploding things aren’t thrilling.

But it takes a few months to get a picture into production, and another few months to get it made, and a few months more to edit, score, market and release it. So when something big happens that challenges the nation and irrevocably alters its taste in material, Hollywood is caught as flat-footed as, say, the FBI. And that’s good news. Because the last thing America needs as it faces a long war abroad and terror attacks at home is a Hollywood hellbent on producing relevant, timely product. It’s almost impossible to imagine the awfulness of what, say, Barbra Streisand and Mike Ovitz and Jim Carrey and Tom Cruise might produce if they really thought about what this country needs right now. Big, deep thoughts are not what we do in the 310 telephone area code. We don’t do the “heal the nation” thing. We do the “distract the nation for a few hours” thing, and we’re pretty good at it.

That’s what we’re all thinking about out here, as we wait an extra 15 minutes in the morning at the studio gate to have our cars searched and sniffed. Weeks ago, the FBI reported that the major studios may be targets of further terrorist attacks, so our cars are stopped at the studio gate, our mail is opened, X-rayed and checked for anthrax; dogs sniff our tires; and the formerly friendly, casual gate guard demands to see my studio ID and, when I tell him I can’t find it, demands that I either find it or stay home.

Hollywood has so far been spared anthrax-laced letters and any bombs besides “The Last Castle” and the NBC sitcom “Emeril.” But in this most insecure and status conscious of towns, there is a slight sliver of the feeling of being left out, like we’re suddenly not on the A-list of people important enough to poison. This is hard for us to swallow–I mean, if we were going after the really important people, we’d certainly hit us. Maybe we’re not people people after all. Maybe we’re just plain people. Maybe, when the nation has important work to do and important things to talk about, our silly marriages and fancy cars and idiotic new-age philosophies and spinning classes make us seem insubstantial. Frivolous. Of limited usefulness. Like a Playboy bunny: nice to have around, occasionally diverting, not someone you make geopolitical strategy with. And that, more than anything, is what’s nagging Hollywood these days. Not so much the recession, the war, the events of September 11–instead, we’re thinking about what we always think about: ourselves.