‘NATURAL’ PROGRESSION : More Tricks Up His Sleeve?

Oliver Stone, apparently chagrined over the paucity of controversy, box office and year-end awards surrounding his film “Nixon,” announced that he would try again with his next project, “Natural Born Nixon.”

Despite tight security measures, a copy of the script has been secured. Herewith, a few of the more potentially controversial moments:

* Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) and wife, Pat (Juliette Lewis), drive out into the desert in a convertible. Nixon stops, reflects, turns to his wife and says, “You know, Pat, the whole world’s comin’ to an end.”

* Pat dances lasciviously in front of a leering John Kennedy (Tommy Lee Jones) at a Vegas convenience store, while E. Howard Hunt (Ed Harris) sneaks up on him from behind and slashes his throat with a straight razor.

* In his rabid quest for the truth about Watergate, Archibald Cox (Tom Sizemore) tortures and kills John Mitchell (E.G. Marshall), H.R. Haldeman (James Woods) and John Ehrlichman (J.T. Walsh) while they’re testifying under oath.

* Carl Bernstein (Robert Downey Jr.) sleeps with Deep Throat (Linda Lovelace) to break open the Watergate story.

* In the desert, Nixon encounters an American Indian, who shares with him some peyote. In the middle of a fever dream, he imagines himself at the Lincoln Memorial, “rapping” with “the youth of today,” then grappling with a giant, multi-headed monster inside a lava lamp.

* After escaping from the White House just before his impending impeachment, using John Dean (David Hyde Pierce) as a hostage, Dick and Pat drive into a shady glen. Dean begs for his life, but the two blow him away and walk off hand-in-hand, laughing and cooing.

* The last scene of the movie features a cameo by Woody Harrelson as Mickey, his character in “Natural Born Killers.” He gazes wistfully at a portrait of Nixon and says with a sigh, “When they look at you, they see what they would settle for. When they look at me, they see what they are.”

Stone insisted that the script was completely factual and offered annotations referencing each event to a published account. Unfortunately, most footnotes referred to irrelevant passages in J.G. Ballard cyberpunk novels. A spokeswoman for the Nixon family vehemently denounced the screenplay, grousing that it got “a couple” of the details wrong.