REEL LIFE : ‘Fresh’ Ad Has Bad Aim When It Comes to Guns : If a shooter were to hold a semiautomatic that way, he’d wind up with a casing in the eye. For Hollywood, though, it’s the menacing look that counts.

It’s been said that John Wayne always won because he never had to stop and reload.

For decades, Hollywood has depended on machine guns with bottomless clips and six-shooters that fire seven rounds, Dirty Harry excepted. Movie makers are understandably more concerned with maintaining drama, but it’s an armament inaccuracy that earns the thriller “Fresh” this week’s Done-Only-Like-This-In-Hollywood award.

The DOLTIsH prize goes to “Fresh” for its nonsensical movie poster. It’s a picture of a menacing young black man shown in profile, his arm is outstretched as he aims down the side of a pistol in a manner designed to look extra threatening.

Problem is that a semi-automatic pistol (held properly) ejects the spent casing off to the right side, away from the shooter. A right-handed shooter holding the pistol sideways, as pictured, would eject the hot casing into his own eye.

“We joke about it all the time here,” said Andy Dickson, manager at Shooter’s Paradise in Oxnard, who’s seen more than a few improbable roles for firearms. He credits this one to martial arts expert turned action hero, Steven Segal.

“I talked to one of the guys who trained with him back when he was Steven Siegal, and this guy told me that Segal came up with that because in karate they teach that the most natural way to extend the arm is palm down.”

The pronate palm appealed to makers of gangsta films who apparently found that it looked extra realistic and double menacing.

“It’s the first thing kids want to do when they visit the range with their parents is to aim the gun sideways like in the movies. That’s the first thing we tell them not to do.”

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“Upfront,” a half-hour round-table hosted by Ventura County business booster O.C. Jenkins, is struggling to make the jump from cable television to the comparative big time of KEYT television in Santa Barbara.

Viewers who occasionally feed on the public access end of the cable food chain will recognize Jenkins as the host of “Ventura Today.”

“The purpose of the show is to put business rather than government in the forefront as the leaders and problem solvers of this nation,” Jenkins said. “The American Revolution succeeded because they were businessmen. The Russian revolution was proletarian and it failed. The French revolution was middle-class and the Mexican revolution was a peasant revolt. They both failed.”

Several million Mexicans, fresh from elections in which 75% of eligible voters participated, might disagree. But what the heck.

Jenkins has done nine shows since “Upfront” was launched in June, but he’s still not a regular on the ABC affiliate. His shows air as specials, but he’s trolling for sponsors that would put him in the Sunday public affairs lineup.

“The format is more like Buckley’s ‘Firing Line’ than anything else,” Jenkins said. “I encourage the guests to disagree, but I try to find the common ground. Otherwise it’s just bickering.”

The next scheduled broadcast is Sept. 11. Jenkins said it will be a nonpolitical conversation about children in California with Gayle Wilson, wife of Gov. Pete Wilson.

The show airs at 11 a.m., just before “This Week with David Brinkley.”