In the old days, kids of big Hollywood stars tried to do their parents proud. Henry Fonda’s kids, Jane and Peter, were rebellious but never got involved with actual crime.

Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen, Jeff and Beau Bridges, Jennifer Nicholson, Lucie Arnaz, Kyle and Alison Eastwood have all made their parents proud.

But lately, things aren’t going so well for Hollywood’s next generation. Redmond O’Neal, son of Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett, is famously in jail. He had to visit his dying mother in an orange prison suit and chains.

Now Cameron Douglas, son of Michael and Diandra Douglas, is on his way to a probably long prison term for allegedly being a major distributor of drugs. It’s not his first brush with the law, but it may be his last.

The Douglas family has always been plagued by the drug problem. Michael’s brother Eric died of a drug overdose in 2004 after a history of failed rehabs and public embarrassments.

Cameron Douglas certainly hasn’t had it easy. Much as we love Michael Douglas an actor, his personal life was always a roller coaster. In 1990 he went into rehab for sex addiction and alcohol abuse. His marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, however, has been a success’maybe a sign of being able to start a family once the bright light of a red hot career is cooled enough to think straight.

Diandra Douglas is another story. The local papers report that it was in her apartment yesterday that Cameron’s guards found him getting crystal meth delivered inside an electric toothbrush. They didn’t say if he’s also flossing, but his dentist will be proud.

Since her divorce from Michael, Diandra Douglas has lived a soap opera. With a wealthy boyfriend she commissioned twin boys from a surrogate. When the relationship broke up, she sued the boyfriend for custody and lost, in a very public battle. (She wouldn’t marry him, sources said, because that would have ended her alimony from Douglas.) Diandra did eventually marry another man, and adopted a little girl from Khazakstan. That guy went back to his first wife, and he and Diandra divorced.

If “Guiding Light” had used this plot, they’d still be on the air!

Did you miss this excellent Op-Ed piece by Nancy Sinatra in the New York Times? I know I did. Here’s the link.

This is yet another reason to support the Performance Rights Act going through Congress right now. Nancy’s father, Frank Sinatra, the greatest singer/performer of the 20th century, was a vehement advocate of this bill. All those wonderful songs we associate with Sinatra’he didn’t write them. Whenever they’re played on the radio, his estate gets nothing. When he was alive, nada also.

The National Association of Broadcasters is being investigated now regarding those horrible lobbying commercials they’re playing on certain radio stations. I’ll have more on that tomorrow. In the meantime, read Nancy. These boots are made for walkin’ over conglomerate radio.

“Antichrist” ‘ reviled, awful, coughed up like a hairball at Cannes ‘ is coming to The New York Film Festival. Lars von Trier’s sexfest with Willem Dafoe will be a feature presentation this fall at Lincoln Center.

It’s the one film of real interest on a list of mostly foreign films and releases of things that people really won’t be too excited about.

With the exception of Lee Daniel’s “Precious” and a new print of “The Wizard of Oz,” this should be some film festival.

The funny thing is, new and unpopular executive director Mara Manus went to Cannes, had an unsuccessful lunch for Hollywood types. Everyone was scared that the NYFF would be overrun with Hollywood releases. Surprise! There aren’t any, not even the Coen Brothers’ new film.

What happened? Well, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly is gone, and so is any connection to commercial or even indie commercial reality. The other title of this article could be: “Mariah Carey only celebrity expected this year.”

The opening-night film is veteran French director Alain Resnais‘ not so great “Wild Grass,” which most people at Cannes hated.

The closing-night film is Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” starring Penelope Cruz, which is interesting but not “Volver.”

All one can think is that Manus was taken captive by French cineastes at Cannes and tortured, or that someone in her family writes subtitles.

Luckily, Yom Kippur falls right in the middle of the festival schedule, so we can all repent.

You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I’m going to anyway: Michael Viner is finally dead. He was maybe the worst person who ever toiled in book publishing or Hollywood, and that’s hard to say.

But Viner was special. He filed for bankruptcy several times, refused to pay royalties, cheated authors, cheated on his wife with a hooker, published books by hookers (not that they were bad people), and sued just about everyone. And lost.

Viner started out with audio books, making Dove Books famous. He was married for a while to actress Deborah Raffiin, and was best friends with trashy writer Sidney Sheldon, the man who also, gloriously, invented “Gilligan’s Island.”

But in 1994 Viner seized on the idea of publishing a memoir ‘ so to speak, with apologies to Edmund Wilson” by Nicole Brown Simpson’s rat fink friend, Faye Resnick. The “Author” claimed that the women were lovers, did drugs together, the whole shebang. The book was so trashy and it was a turning point for Viner, who at that point descended into a quagmire of pond scum.

What followed was “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again,” a collection of reminscinces by party girls. Viner wound up suing one of them, and losing that suit, too.

Some of the people who called with the news of Viner’s death quipped yesterday that the funeral would be popular because so many would be checking to make sure he was dead.

My favorite Viner anecdote, just so you get the flavor of the man: he had his rep call a hotel and lie about being from the accounting department of New York Magazine to get a journalist’s itemized phone bill. They wanted a list of the writer’s calls so they could figure out who his sources were. They got the list and called the sources!

Some other great moments: he sued Heidi Fleiss for libel, and lost. During the trial he admitted on the stand to having an affair with a hooker. Nice.

More recently, he published a book by Jayson Blair, the kid who worked for the New York Times and made up all his stories.’ He was also sued by Dennis Kucinich, whose autobiography he published. Part of the case was dismissed because it turned out that Viner recently filed for bankruptcy again.

Well, I will miss Michael Viner. He was great to write about, a colorful figure, a shady guy, someone who obviously didn’t care what people thought about him or what his final reward would be. My guess is, wherever he is, it’s very, very hot.

Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman’s son, Connor, is following in her footsteps.

Connor Kidman Cruise, 14, has landed a small role in the remake of “Red Dawn.”

The movie is produced by MGM/UA, the studio where Connor’s father, Tom Cruise, still has an undefined financial interest. He and former partner Paula Wagner re-started United Artists two summers ago, only to have the project fall apart.

Connor, you might say, has acting in his genes. He’s the first of two kids adopted by Kidman and Cruise during their ten-year marriage. Kidman won the Academy Award for “The Hours,” and has been nominated for it several times. She also starred on Broadway in “The Blue Room.”

Cruise, an action movie star, has been nominated for the Oscar twice but has never won.