Director Gus Van Sant collapses into a plush chair at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. It’s the end of a long day of press for his new feature, Restless, and he will be dashing straight from our interview to a sound mixing session for the Starz series, “Boss,” Van Sant’s first foray into television.

It’s the early 1960s and Chicago is feeling the rumblings of upheaval. Sexuality is peeking out from behind bedroom walls, civil rights is picking up traction, and the powder keg of segregation is set to go off. Gathering the elements of waking life and assembling a fantasy at 116 East Walton Street, Hugh Hefner builds the Playboy Club. Races mingle and booze flows as locals blow off steam and power brokers shake on midnight deals. VIPs, the “keyholders,” are served by Playboy Bunnies, who — with their tight satin out- fits, bunny ears, and white puffball tails — come to symbolize fun, privilege, and innocent sex appeal. The club is an escape for its time.

Humanity is back to square one — hunting, gathering, and avoiding being eaten. Decaying husks of men, women, and children wander about in search of flesh, while small bands of the uninfected struggle to survive. AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” based on the graphic-novel series, has launched the zombie genre into long-form television and opened up the classic horror concept to complex relationships and a genuine feel of, “What if it really happened?” Jon Bernthal plays Shane Walsh, a sheriff’s deputy in a small Georgia town, who finds himself looking after Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and her son (Chandler Riggs), the family of his best friend, Rick (Andrew Lincoln). Shane is the leader of a group of survivors who end up rescuing Rick, who had been presumed dead, and bringing him back to their forest refuge. Shane is then de facto demoted, from both the top of the heap and Lori’s sleeping bag. Season one saw Bernthal’s character begin to detach from pre-plague morals, and season two, premiering October 16th, will apparently follow him down the dark road.

Once upon a time in a Mississippi town of “300 nice folks and a few soreheads,” little Rose Diane Ladnier silently prayed to God to “let her be an actress.” That young girl with pigtails grew up to be Diane Ladd, three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, writer, director, and healer. Venice recently visited Ms. Ladd in her Ojai home, and though it’s been ages since she resided in the Magnolia State, in true old-fashioned, southern hospitality- style, she greeted us with a bountiful lunch buffet. “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” laughs Ladd. It’s that warm blend of wit, worldliness, charm, and feistiness, that has kept her audiences coming back for more, as they have since her 1966 film debut in Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels.

With his blue-eyed gaze and air of perpetual amusement, Malcolm McDowell has been captivating audiences for over four decades. His charisma and intensity strike a cultural nerve, tickling the imagination of everyone suspicious of the status quo. The actor’s first subversive triumph came in 1968 with his role as a percolating revolutionary at a boarding school in Lindsay Anderson’s If.... Ending his character’s scholastic career with gunfire and a devilish grin, the young star caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who cast him in A Clockwork Orange. McDowell’s portrayal of the sociopathic Alex in the 1971 classic was an incendiary moment in film his- tory. Opinion of the film was so split that it was nominated for four Academy Awards and banned in Britain for 27 years. Whether glorification of brutality or commentary on crime and free will, A Clockwork Orange created a whole genre of pop-culture art, fashion, and philosophy. His bowler hat, single eyelash, future-British slang, and carefree love of ultra- violence and Beethoven, lifted McDowell to iconic status, and he’s continued to earn it ever since.

First sighted loitering outside the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey, Jay and Silent Bob have been getting into mischief for 17 years and counting. They started off as lovable public nuisances in Clerks (1994), game-show saboteurs in Mallrats (1995), relationship gurus in Chasing Amy (1997), unlikely prophets in Dogma (1999), fugitive comic-book stars in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), and full circle to neighborhood delinquents in Clerks II (2006). At the helm of the View Askew productions was Kevin Smith, a.k.a. Silent Bob, who created the characters as a tribute to the singular personality of his buddy, Jason Mewes, the ever chattering, expletive-loving Jay. The two went on to appear as cartoon characters in “Clerks: The Animated Series” (2000). Allegedly finished appearing in live-action adventures, Jay and Silent Bob live on in cyberspace, as Smith and Mewes broadcast the raw, racy, and unpredictable “Jay and Silent Bob Get Old” podcasts from the Jon Lovitz Theater in Universal City and from locations across the country.

A good political aide is seen, not heard. With the kind of finesse accorded to Mafia hit men, these worker ants carry out their king’s orders with stone-cold expressions, offering humbly potent advice and surveying the enemy camps like clear-minded spies. In the case of a Chicago Mayor whose brain is going due a rare disease, that lucidity is a very good thing indeed, especially in the enticing form of Kitty O’Neil. As a true believer who espouses the company line that “Kane is the city, and everything we do that is good for the city comes from the fact that he has the power to do it,” Kitty isn’t so much the power behind the throne as she is the force that will continue to prop it up at all costs

Onscreen, British-born actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (phonetically pronounced: Aday-Warlay Akinnoy-Yay Ag Bajay) is an imposing figure. With memorable roles in “Oz” and “Lost”, the actor admits he is often cast as a “brawler.”