By Bentley FordPLAY Columnist

I can’t bring myself to write about Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t care less about the kind of love sustained by tired traditions, chintzy commercialism and sorority fundraisers. But I do care about this kind of love: dirty, dirty astronaut love. Not the kind you snuck between virtual launch sessions at space camp. I mean the space-case love triangle that dominated a whole trash-news cycle last week. I originally wanted to pitch a movie about that cock-eyed cosmonaut’s escapades, because a rom-com like that would put Love Actually out of business.

But then Anna Nicole Smith died.

Deaths like these only happen once per generation. (Irwin and Pluto don’t count. Nothing on The Discovery Channel counts – ever.) I’d hate to say it, but Anna’s our MLK, our JFK, our Abe. Like these men, Anna died without warning and without warrant; she did not desire, nor did she deserve, this unjust end.

So now we must rally, not to ensure the realization of her dreams, but to demand a touching and epic biopic. It will star ladies who will all win Oscars, making it the first ceremony to present the Best Cast Ever award. And that cast will have names that shine almost as bright as Anna Nicole’s, which admittedly has two first names, putting the others at quite a disadvantage.

Naturally, Dakota Fanning will play a young Anna Nicole, presumably living in a trailer somewhere. I haven’t bothered with the research, but the producers won’t bother either. A trailer park just feels right, and movies are about feelings these days.

But Anna ages, so Dakota will need a replacement after a reel or two. I think Lindsay Lohan should play Anna during her beloved stripper phase, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because she wants to play mature parts now. Lindsay wants to grow up, and only grownups strip. She’ll have to sleep with Alan Alda – who will play billionaire Howard Marshall – but Alda’s a class act. He’s also an advocate of women’s rights, and this movie will advance that noble cause.

Now for the last act: As the definitive fat actress, Kirstie Alley will play Anna pre-TrimSpa. For her final years, what actress handles Oscar-baiting roles better than Charlize Theron? A little make-up, and that girl can become anything with legs and a blonde bob. Actually, on second thought, maybe only Andy Serkis could do post-TrimSpa Anna justice. If he can do Gollum and Kong, he can do her.

But enough about the cast. Let’s cut to the chase: Who will direct? A man like Stephen Frears would suffice, but he worships facts. We need a director who will feel his way through the mystery of Anna’s death, presumably closing with some kind of controversial conspiracy theory. Let’s consider who has the most to gain and who has the chops to direct that blame.

What if the networks and tabloids did it? Given his work on Network, I think director Sidney Lumet could feasibly blame Anna’s death on the media. They made a killing off this death, so what if they did the killing? (Cue tense Hitchcock violin swell!) We can get specific, too: What if Wolf Blitzer did it? He spent so much time talking about Anna that even his colleague Lou Dobbs scoffed at him.

What if the Iranians did it? Actually, what if the White House paid Michael Bay to make this film an action movie that implicates the Iranians? That right there is a conspiracy wrapped in a conspiracy theory. If the Iranians killed an American icon like Anna, even in a movie, I think that would qualify as a mandate to jump head first into Iran, and we need that now, seriously.

What if global warming did it? Al Gore could direct, and then use her death as an example of global warming’s most immediate and tragic effects. If global warming has no immediate effects, then I don’t care. Anna’s death, though, hurt me immediately.

Finally, what if Mel Gibson portrayed this death as an act of God? That wouldn’t be too far-fetched. A small handful of Evangelical Christians called Hurricane Katrina a punishment for our sins, and Anna’s impressively guilty of all seven deadly sins. (I like to think that God would quote Ron Burgundy: “I’m not even mad. I’m impressed!”)

Any one of these ideas would make more money in a weekend than Anna could make in a marriage, and that’s saying quite a bit. But if you could squeeze all of these into the film, you have a movie that wins over women who crave romance, liberals who worry about the world, conservatives who want more war, girls who worship Dakota and young men who just want a movie about a stripper. That’s the kind of success you spell with three dollar signs.

You can thank me later, Hollywood.

Communication sophomore Bentley Ford is the PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].