E-Mail This Article to a Friend Ultimate fan boys This IFC game show’s pursuits are truly trivial BY GERALD PEARY

It’s only on a cable quiz show that former underage porn princess Traci Lords can be resuscitated as a weekly panelist. On the IFC’s Ultimate Film Fanatic, a summer series Fridays at 10:30 p.m. through August 27, anything goes. "In which movie," asks Chris Gore, the un-Bob-Barker-like host, "does Kevin Costner drink his own piss?" A contestant gives the answer at once: "Waterworld." What else? Movie-obsessed contestants field questions concerning "Fellatio in Films," memorable scenes of celluloid orality, and, in "Horny High," teen promiscuity in the cinema.

The bulk of the categories is less scatological than it is adolescent and narrow, representing the range of cinema interests of a 19-year-old loose in a video store: superheroes, Harrison Ford movies, Joel and Ethan Coen, etc. There’s been one simpleton question about 1941’s Citizen Kane. Otherwise, the starting date of cinema for this program is 1977, the year of Star Wars, followed by 1978, the year of Dawn of the Dead (the original). Ultimate Film Fanatic adheres to the amnesiac myth that the Georges, Lucas and Romero, spawned American cinema. During the seven episodes I watched, nobody was asked about a foreign-language film other than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. No one was asked about any experimental film, or about any talent more independent than Quentin Tarantino. Only once was a documentary category brought up. The trivia answers demanded of contestants are truly trivial: "What’s the name of the pet rat in The Abyss?" Questions like that are amusing, but a whole program devoted to them? "Name the stolen sword in Crouching Tiger." A whole series?

IFC is reaching for a demographic that it must view as philistine, America-centered (except for Asian anime), and genre-hooked: collegians and post-collegians who are dedicated DVD movie freaks, as long as the movie has razzle-dazzle digital special effects and action sequences but no perplexing subtitles.

What happens in an Ultimate Film Fanatic half-hour? Six contestants leap out from behind a screen and yell why they think they should get the $5000 prize: "Because I need to pay off my film-school debt." "Because I’ve watched Braveheart 40 times." They’re pumped with silly movie questions. Bungle one answer and you’re history. Gore, with cruel glee, hands you an airplane ticket home and you exit the show in slo-mo and with taunting music, a two-second ripoff of the elaborate eliminations of Survivor.

Reduced to three, the contestants engage in sweaty, stuttery 10-second debates on such exalted topics as "Does Sylvester Stallone suck?" Lincoln-Douglas this isn’t, and here’s where a three-celeb panel enters the fray to judge. Traci Lords (whose porno days are never mentioned) seems proud to be here. Actor Richard Roundtree, the retired Shaft of the 1970s’ blaxploitation classics, looks embarrassed and put off by the geekiness of most of the contestants. That leaves ghost-faced, hopelessly inarticulate Jason Mewes, the same dead meat he’s been in Kevin Smith’s movies.

The three are narrowed to two who vie in an "Obsession War," show-and-telling their weirdest, most fetishist film-related objects — movie-ticket stubs, lists of films seen since 1998, action figures of Oscar-nominated stars, a tattoo with the proud word "Cinema." Episode one set the tone, as a guy named Mark won the $5000 because he possessed every movie and TV episode featuring cult actress Cynthia Stevenson. His victory speech: "I’m not married, which is just as well." What spouse could put up with his endless crush?

Most of the contestants are dreadfully dressed, with at-home haircuts, fuzzy beards, retro whiskers, and little evidence of physical exercise. Stereotyped, marginalized, flee-from-life nerds who look at a thousand movies without ever glancing in the mirror. Far, far more guys than gals, and with one exception, the women contestants, alas, never got past the first round. Quite a few African-American movie experts, including two of the more genuinely cerebral, both Bertolucci fans.

How would this snobby movie critic do on this show? I’d never get past the first-round trivia. But if I somehow did and I shone in the 10-second debates, then I could bring in my unused, autographed John Waters Odorama card, or the file cards from my 2000 paperback novels made into film, or . . . When I sneered at some of the contestants, my wife, watching also, reminded me, "You’re a movie nerd too."