I CAN'T wait to see "The Day After Tomorrow," the disaster movie about ice- bound New York after the polar ice caps melt. This stars Dennis Quaid ,Jake Gyllenhaal ,Emma Rossum and Sela Ward . There's a big premiere May 24 at the American Museum of Natural History.

This maybe-not-so-sci-fi thriller comes just as the screenplay for a movie titled "Freeze" landed back on my desk with a thud this week. About 20 years ago, my pal Patti Goldstein and I wrote this treatment about an instant ice age. (You know, heroine comes downstairs in August to find her swimming pool skimmed over with ice. A polar bear wanders into a yard up in Pittsburgh.) Patti found it buried in her files last week.

Years ago, we took our idea to our friend, producer David Brown ,who opined that "movies about snow and ice are never popular." When we pointed out that Howard Hughes' favorite movie was "Ice Station Zebra," David just harrumphed and said, "Well, that was Hughes!" Then we met with the famous producer Jennings Lang, who was charming and acted as if he adored us, but sent us away with our idea for "Freeze" dangling as he advised us to "Write something you know - write about life for the girls who work at Cosmopolitan." So we never got our movie made. We'll see if "The Day After Tomorrow" overcomes the Brown-Jennings dogmas.