Boys and girls of A. Scott Ferguson High School.

On behalf of my company Krazy Krow Films, thank you for letting me address you in between your The Social Sciences Brought To You By Jet Ski period and your class in Advanced Sprite. Thanks also to your school administrators for setting up this assembly in exchange for a small grant from Krazy Krow Films — as a result of which, by the way, you will be learning fractions next semester.

I have a problem.

I am a 41-year-old film executive, with a wife, an ex-wife, three children, two ex-children and three different but equally crucial dog trainers.

I support all of them. So I need to maintain a steady income, which is not an easy thing to do in Hollywood.

I also should mention that I am a graduate of Harvard, as are a surprising number of other people in show business — many of the writers on "The Simpsons" and Conan O'Brien, much of the founding staff of "Saturday Night Live" and, believe it or not, the people who created "Married With Children." Harvard is actually a pretty good way to break into show business.

But unfortunately, the only way to break into Harvard is to study very, very hard, and walk around your high school campus looking like you dry your clothes in the toaster. I'm afraid you wouldn't have liked me very much when I was your age.

I'm afraid you wouldn't like me very much now.

Unfortunately — and this is why I'm here — my job requires that you love me.

As everyone knows, teenagers are possibly the world's richest vein of doltishly squandered $5 bills. So every branch of the media is desperate to reach you, including television, music and even (for some weird reason I feel compelled to mention) newspapers.

And of course, my business, the movies. At the beginning of my career, I dealt with this simply by being condescending — you know, figuring you're all a bunch of monkeys anyway, so why not just give you a banana? Here, monkeys, here's your banana — your pointless boat crashes, your bulimic starlet who's had a rib removed, your gratuitous cameo appearance by somebody or another who used to host "Talk Soup."

But then, it gets really hard to know when you're producing something stupid (which makes money) or something really stupid (which doesn't). "Scary Movie" was stupid. "Dude, Where's My Car," which we thought was a shoo-in for being stupid, was actually really stupid.

I mean, what do you little punks want out of me, anyway? Man, I miss Harvard. I made a lot of friends there and, of course, discovered the poetry of John Donne and T.S. Eliot.

I think you see the problem.

So I need you to tell me what you want in a movie. For example, whom would you rather see in an action film? Snoop Doggy Dogg (all right, pretty good applause there) or Charles Krauthammer. (Wow). OK, you see? That wasn't what I expected. I myself would have anticipated more applause for the rap legend than for a conservative columnist at The Washington Post.

I've got a few more group questions like that (including question six, which is quite simply, "I make your skin crawl, don't I?") and then we'll be talking one-on-one. I want to go out and meet each one of you personally. Let me rephrase that. I don't want to. I'm just going to. I only pray I can get back to the office afterward and make this movie quickly enough before your tastes change again.

But beyond that, I just want to say I'm sorry.

I'm sorry we'll be hooking you up to lie detector machines now. (The Charles Krauthammer question was just a trick to see if we'd have to do this.) I'm sorry I have to talk to you when neither of us really wants that. And I'm sorry your biology class will be replaced with a 45-minute infomercial starring Danny Bonaduce.

It's just that some of us in Hollywood have kids to support and, God help us, we don't want them to go to a school like this and turn out like any of you.