A Beastie short from ‘Hornblower’

AS far as self-referential, meta-narrative movie comedies go, “Being John Malkovich” has nothing on director Nathanial Hornblower’s short, “A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hornblower.” For starters, the eccentric Swiss auteur is actually an alias of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch.

Over the years, the rapper has made a po-faced running joke out of appearing as Hornblower in the group’s videos (he’s directed 18 of them), on TV (he stormed the stage at 1994’s MTV Video Music Awards after the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” lost for best video) and in print -- Hornblower lambasted the New York Times in January after a reviewer dissed his video for “Ch-Check It Out.”

“The first time [the pseudonym] appeared was on the ‘Paul’s Boutique’ record cover,” the soft-spoken Yauch said between sips of seltzer at the Sunset Marquis Hotel this week. “At the time, I had never seen a video directed by people in the band. It seemed incestuous, just wrong. So I threw Hornblower in there.”

For “A Day in the Life,” however, “Arrested Development’s” David Cross plays the excitable fauxteur as a bearded weirdo partial to lederhosen, yodeling and cross-country skiing through Manhattan (nevermind that there’s no snow on the ground). He loses a chess match to a dog, harangues passersby in a quasi-Germanic accent that would make Col. Klink wince and wanders the streets of Soho guzzling from a wineskin.

“He’s such an amazing character, especially the way that David plays him,” says Yauch, better known by his nom de rap, MCA. “I was thinking it would be really funny to do a whole movie based on that.”

The 30-minute immutably Beastie short premieres in theaters across the country on Thursday in a one-night-only event coordinated by THINKFilm and National CineMedia (details are at www.awesomeishotthat.com/march23/). But most viewers won’t see “A Day in the Life” until it arrives with the DVD for “Awesome; I ... Shot That,” the group’s DIY rockumentary that hits theaters March 31.

In “Awesome,” 50 amateur cinematographers wielding Hi-8 video cameras recorded the action on-stage and behind the scenes at the group’s 2004 Madison Square Garden appearance, making for a kaleidoscopic fan’s-eye view of their boisterous stage act.

Hornblower, of course, is listed as director and producer.

But Yauch’s fictional alter ego won’t factor into his planned feature debut, a coming-of-age drama he is working on about the style wars and territorial disputes of a group of New York graffiti writers in the early 1980s.

“I adopted Nathanial Hornblower to do Beastie Boys stuff,” says Yauch. “I feel like if I’m doing something outside the scope of that, it makes sense to put my name on it. It’s a role that I enjoy.”

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Restaurateur, model on rocker’s repertoire

THROUGHOUT the ‘90s, Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell was grunge music’s brooding poster boy. And of late his soaring vocals have been part of Audioslave’s muscular brand of monster rock. But now the multiplatinum-selling singer can add a new line to his resume: Parisian restaurateur.

Earlier this month, during Paris’ Fashion Week, Cornell launched the restaurant-bar Black Calavados (BC). And the notoriously reluctant heartthrob demonstrated some un-rocksmanlike conduct, hobnobbing with designer

bigwigs such as John Galliano and

Balenciaga’s Nicholas Ghesquiere -- but also, a veritable face-book of supermodels.

Opening a fashionista hangout doesn’t exactly square with Cornell’s professional M.O. of raging against the proverbial machine. But then, his metal-head fans might be surprised to learn he also signed on last month as the face of the John Varvatos menswear line.

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Welcome back, ‘Kotter’ -- and Sweathogs too

ICE CUBE is set to produce and star as the titular inner-city schoolteacher in Dimension Films’ big screen blow-up of the ‘70s sitcom, “Welcome Back, Kotter.” Fast Tracks’ unsolicited casting advice: “Napoleon Dynamite’s” Jon Heder as Arnold Horshack and Pharrell Williams as Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington.