American Grandstand: The Reel Paper

JOAN MICKLIN Silver's new movie, Between the Lines, purports to tell the story of the Boston Mainline, an alternative weekly not unlike Boston's relatively real-life Phoenix and Real Paper. Fortunately, it is not a roman a clef, which spares embarrassment to such Rolling Stone staffers as Joe Klein, Peter Herbst and myself, as well as a host of other literary luminaries such as Newsweek's Janet Maslin, the wandering Tim Crouse, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Harper Barnes and RS retiree Jon Landau.