Dropping the polite, debutante demeanor the grunge queen has adapted since she courted respectability as an actress last year, Love grabs her guitar, opens her sewer mouth of old and lets the Academy geezers have it.

Great moment. Too bad it never happened. The Love explosion was merely part of a recent skit on Saturday Night Live in which comic Molly Shannon gave us the Love we've been missing. The real Love claims not to be ticked off at Oscar, despite a hard-fought, image-altering drive to win the Academy's good graces: "I don't have a real body of work yet."

This is the new, cleaned-up, untrashy, some say brain-snatched Love who emerged soon after she hired Pat Kingsley of the high-powered PMK public-relations firm to smooth her way into films. Love took Kurt Cobain's mother to the Flynt premiere, dressed impeccably at award shows, subdued her sharp tongue and accepted the Best Supporting Actress award from the New York Film Critics Circle with a sweetly slyboots speech: "I've never won anything but Worst Dressed from Mr. Blackwell, so this is really nice."

Humility was Love's new costume - forget those slutty baby dolls. To be fair, Love had to do something to alter perceptions. Some critics thought she was merely playing herself as Flynt's junkie ex-stripper of a wife.

Flynt director Milos Forman thinks Love's wild-girl-of-the-mosh-pits routine may be the real act: "Courtney explained to me that she's always very much under the pressure of the music people to play, to act, this character who is on the edge, because that's what sells records and that's what brings the kids into her concerts."

Indeed, the Love I met last year on a visit to the Flynt set was profoundly in control. Yes, she exhibited a certain flamboyance, sweeping about singing "I Could Have Danced All Night," discussing the locus of a woman's G spot with co-star Woody Harrelson and playfully taunting Forman ("Yes, m'lord"). But after every take as the skinny, drug- and AIDS-ravaged Althea, she would lose the tottering walk and slurred speech and nip brightly over to the director's side.

"What appealed to me about this part," Love said while shucking her costume behind a half-shut door in her trailer, "was, yes, Althea gets fucked up, but she's not out of control. She isn't dippy or a sex bomb, either. She's incredibly powerful, cunning and intelligent."

Flynt co-star Edward Norton - he and Love deny persistent romance rumors - insists that "Courtney came into this movie with exactly the right attitude, saying, 'I'm going to need everybody's help.' She's a very, very smart girl." Adds Forman: "I think her bravery is in giving to the character a necessary amount of her own personality. That is always a sign of greatness in actors."

"I'm certainly not going to tell you I know what the fuck I'm doing," Love summed up as she stood in her trailer, ready to depart for the day. "I trod on glass to get the part." She's not kidding. Love also was forced to submit to drug testing to earn an insurance bond. "Treading on glass has always been something I seem to enjoy in my masochistic way," she said. "If people go, 'I saw your dailies - you were great,' I think, 'I've seen dailies and I hate myself.' It's not up to me to decide."

The critics did it for her. Love collected raves, unlike the mixed reviews accorded Evita's Madonna, who announced early on that she expected Oscar attention (she didn't get it). "I'm not going to name names," said Love, "but I think there's a certain pop icon of the '80s who provides a very good object lesson on everything not to do if you're going into films. I think tooting your own horn is a major mistake and that the only high road you can take is total purity - as much as you can muster."

So how did Love blow it with Oscar? Some insiders mutter that Love would have fared better in a supporting category instead of shooting for Best Actress status. Forman argues against it: "She is the leading lady of the film and carries its emotional spine."

The director feels that a feminist backlash against Flynt, led by Gloria Steinem, hurt more than the film's box office. It hurt Love. Steinem condemned the film for not owning up to Flynt's depictions of violence against women. Feminists crusaded against the film and, by extension, Love. Only Forman and Harrelson won Oscar nominations. Says Forman, "Courtney paid the dues."

If so, Love is not showing any bitterness. In presenting Love with her New York Film Critics award, in January, Flynt producer Oliver Stone sounded a melodramatic note: "Cherish this, Courtney, when the days and nights come and there are no awards." At the podium, Love was blithe: "It's not a tragedy, Oliver." Yet there is something in our pop culture that wants the newly demure diva of rehab to yield to the trash-talking Widow Cobain, who is prepping a new album called Celebrity Skin.

Love, now 32, isn't biting. As the mother of 4-year-old Frances Bean, Love views acting as a viable alternative to the mosh pit. Of course, respectability has its limits. Promoting Flynt at the Berlin Film Festival recently, Love showed a trace of familiar mischief. "[The Oscars] isn't about who wins," she quipped. "It's about who wears the best dress."

- Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone