WHAT IS IT about dwarfism? Why are people so fascinated? I find it impossible to explain. Yet look around, and little people seem to be everywhere, from documentaries on HBO and the Discover Channel, to lowbrow daytime TV shows hosted by Maury Povich and Montel Williams (actually, Montel’s not so bad), to Howard Stern’s loathsome radio-and-cable program, which regularly hosts the likes of Beetlejuice, a dwarf who appears to be microcephalic, and Bridget Powerz, a short-stature porn star.

Perhaps the explanation lies partly in the mythological aspects of dwarfism — a mythology that extends well beyond the little-people-living-in-the-forest images of Western culture. At the LPA conference banquet, there’s a performance by a Native American dance troupe, the same group that performed at last winter’s Olympic ceremonies. Following the performance comes a certified — and entirely unexpected — Awkward Moment, when one of the leaders starts talking about the role of little people in Indian folklore as guides to the afterlife.

"We very much believe the little people are there to protect us," he says. Another member speaks of learning as a child that little people "lived in the forest, they lived in the timber," adding, "We were always taught these stories ... that if you ever saw these people, you would share very special blessings." He then makes "an offering to the little people," presenting a Native American blanket to Bankowski, who drapes it around his shoulders and smiles gamely.

And that’s the good side of this odd fascination. The bad side is expressed by LPA’s new president, Matt Roloff, a diastrophic dwarf who’s a successful software developer and sales executive. "I literally had someone who was very well-educated — he had thousands of people who worked for him, the vice-president of a huge corporation that you’ve heard of — admit to me after a three-hour plane ride, ‘When you first came in, I was petrified. I was going to keep my Wall Street Journal open between you and me for as long as possible so I didn’t have to engage with you, because I was scared,’ " Roloff tells me. A relentlessly positive sort, Roloff comes off as more surprised than offended by the encounter; and he ended up turning the executive’s admission into a "teachable moment." Still, you’d think strangers wouldn’t be that put off by the fact that Roloff is four-foot-one and uses crutches and a scooter to get around.

Of course, part of the fascination is that we average-size folks don’t often see dwarfs. About one in every 20,000 children is born with achondroplasia, which accounts for half or more of all cases of dwarfism. Many dwarf adults speak of never having met another dwarf until they attended their first LPA function. And though dwarfism results from a seemingly insignificant genetic mix-up, the condition itself is visually dramatic. Spend some time with dwarfs, and you start to see the same variations that you do with the average-size population — the attractive, the not-so-attractive, the thin, the pudgy, the young, the old. The uninitiated, though, are more likely to focus on how they differ not from each other, but from "normal," average-size folks — in the case of achons, such differences include their exceedingly short arms and legs, swayback posture, slightly enlarged heads, prominent foreheads, and pug noses.

ODDLY ENOUGH, the entertainment industry, which has been the source of much dubious employment for little people, seems to be ahead of the rest of society these days in placing dwarfs squarely in the mainstream.

Take, for instance, Meredith Eaton, a 27-year-old psych-student-turned-actress with pseudoachondroplasia, a type of dwarfism that, unlike achondroplasia, does not affect facial features. Eaton met her husband, stockbroker/actor Michael Gilden, who’s achon, at the LPA conference in Atlanta in 1997. She’d won a highly coveted slot in the PhD program at Adelphi University — but then heard about a movie that called for a dwarf actress to play a non-stereotypical role. She got the part, and has been working in entertainment ever since. (The movie, which also stars Kathy Bates and Rupert Everett, will be released later this year under one of two titles — either Unconditional Love or Who Shot Victor Fox?

Eaton played a prostitute in an episode of NYPD Blue — a part she accepted, she says, only after the show’s creator, Steven Bochco, agreed to tone down the use of the word "midget," which is considered derogatory by most people in the dwarf community. "In the script, the cop says to me — he’s referring to one of my prostitute friends — and he says, ‘Is Brenda a midget too?’ And my famous line that I created is, ‘It’s little person, asshole,’" Eaton tells me, laughing in delight.

Eaton may be best known for playing the lawyer Emily Resnick on the recently canceled Family Law — another non-stereotypical role that featured, among other things, a romance between her and a dwarf man played by her husband. And her fan mail, she says, has convinced her that she’s been able to make a difference in people’s lives. "I’ve gotten, ‘Thank God, finally, you’ve played a lawyer, my daughter’s being taken more seriously,’" Eaton says. "A woman came up to me and said, ‘You know what? I’m respected more in my workplace now. Thank you, thank you for giving me confidence.’ So I know I’ve made an impact in a positive way."

A more non-mainstream type of mainstreaming, if you will, can be seen in the new movie Cherish, whose stars include Ricardo Gil, a photographer and artist who lives in San Francisco. Gil, 45, plays the gay, Jewish, wheelchair-using downstairs neighbor of a woman who has been falsely accused in the death of a cop, and who is confined to her apartment by an electronic ankle bracelet. (In real life, Gil, who has a type of dwarfism called cartilage-hair hypoplasia, is ambulatory and married to an achondroplastic woman named Meg. They are the parents of an average-size daughter, Lily.) What’s unusual about the part is that there was really no need for it to be filled by a dwarf. The director and writer, Finn Taylor, had included it so the role could be filled by a friend of his, the new-media innovator Gary Brickman, who was indeed a gay, Jewish, wheelchair-using dwarf. But Brickman died before filming could begin.

Gil had retired from the film business after breaking his neck in a stunt in the mid 1980s, an accident that nearly left him paralyzed and that required two operations to repair. He says he was making his daily visit to the coffee shop at the French Hotel, in Berkeley, when Taylor walked in and invited him to read for the part, telling him a dwarf actor who’d tried out in LA had done fine, but wasn’t quite right. It turned out that Gil was competing with his brother, Arturo Gil, a full-time actor best known for his work on Ally McBeal. Ricardo Gil says he felt some trepidation after beating his brother out, but adds that Arturo has remained supportive.

"I guess we see so many roles that aren’t real — fantasy-type characters — and not enough of the character roles that Meredith Eaton did, or that Art did on Ally McBeal," Gil tells me. "Those are the kinds of roles that I want to see more of. But it’s hard for me to say anything against people who are earning a living at being a clown or taking demeaning roles. I’ve actually taken on some demeaning roles. And the only thing I can do now is possibly take on a role like Cherish and show people what a wonderful role this is, and what an interesting role, and promote it, talk about it. I can’t be judgmental."

I learn that Cherish is opening in Salt Lake the same day that I interview Gil. So I take a $10 cab ride to the Tower Theatre, the centerpiece of what passes for the city’s microscopic avant-garde scene, and caught the 5 p.m. showing. The movie is pretty good — and Gil is terrific, a vibrant, foul-mouthed revelation. Gil tells me that he’s written to several reviewers who’d sneered that Taylor had included such an off-the-wall character in order to get Cherish onto the art-house circuit, not realizing that the part had been intended for Taylor’s friend Brickman.

"I didn’t blast them," Gil says, "but I told them that the part had been written for his best friend, and his best friend happened to be this, which is fine. And I think I did a damn good job, and you should’ve mentioned my name in your goddamn review."