A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : SECOND GUESSING : Another Battle Between Artistic Truth and Mass Appeal: And the Loser Is . . .

Could a funnier, more upbeat ad campaign have helped “Mr. Saturday Night,” or was the sometimes acerbic, sometimes sentimental drama about a selfish, old-fashioned comedian doomed from the start?

The consensus is that audiences simply weren’t interested in a film that was mostly about a testy, cantankerous old man--even if he was played by Billy Crystal. As “Mr. Saturday Night’s” disappointing numbers suggest (only $10.8 million after three weeks of wide release), Crystal’s fans prefer him in his hip, wiseacre roles from “City Slickers” and “When Harry Met Sally . . . .”

This perception was apparently grasped more fully by the marketing team for the film’s distributor, Columbia Pictures, than by senior executives with Castle Rock Entertainment, which produced “Mr. Saturday Night” and enjoyed a contractual “final cut” over the shape and tone of the ad campaign. According to an ad agency executive with inside knowledge, a classic disagreement unfolded between the camps.

Castle Rock, “being much closer to the filmmaker, wanted to stick to the artistic truth of the film,” says the executive, “while Columbia wanted to push the more likable, mass-appeal aspects.”

Both Columbia marketing chief Sid Ganis and Castle Rock partner Martin Shafer deny any sort of contretemps took place. Ganis says that Columbia wanted to keep Crystal looking youthful in the one-sheets and trailers, and to emphasize his relationship with his wife, played by Julie Warner. In the end, he explains, “We made an agreement (with Castle Rock) to go halfway with this approach . . . you have to be as faithful to the content as you can.”

One disagreement, say sources, was over the ‘50s-style nightclub comic image used for the film’s one-sheet poster, with a grinning Crystal posing with a huge cigar. Some in the Columbia camp apparently felt it made the film seem old-fashioned.

The question of whether a different marketing campaign for “Mr. Saturday Night” might have improved its chances overall is debatable. As one source observes, “It tested better than it performed.”

Some note that films about stand-up comedians--”This Is My Life,” “Punchline,” “Lenny”--have never fared strongly. A more widely held belief is that “Mr. Saturday Night’s” ethnicity was a major stumbling block for younger audiences.

“For most audiences, (Crystal’s character) might as well have been from the 15th Century,” remarked L.A. Reader critic Andy Klein. “MTV kids don’t know from Borscht Belt comics.”

“This was a very, very big gamble for Billy, who thought his popularity and talent would transcend whatever reluctance audiences might have about his character, or the ethnic backdrop,” said an independent producer.

Castle Rock’s Shafer acknowledges that “we saw, on the face of it, that this wasn’t going to be the most commercial film we’d ever made--we knew it wasn’t ‘City Slickers.’ But hey, you know? We couldn’t be prouder of the movie. For us, it was a success. Billy totally delivered.”