Remember Gordon Gekko, Hollywood’s incarnation of greed the last time Wall Street was roundly despised? Twenty-three years ago, Fortune cut a deal with 20th Century Fox to have a mock magazine, with Gekko on the cover, appear in the Oliver Stone firm, Wall Street.

To this day, I gaze at this cover daily because it’s tacked to my office wall–as I told Gekko himself when he sat behind me during lunch today at Michael’s restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Well, the guy dining behind me was actually Michael Douglas, who won a Best Actor Oscar for playing that dastardly investor. As he and his stunning wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and another couple rose from their table to leave, I leaned in and introduced myself. “I have to tell you,” I told Douglas, “I stare at you everyday because I have the Gordon Gekko Fortune cover on my wall right beside my computer.”

He laughed and said, “It’s on my wall too”–explaining that in the sequel to Wall Street, currently in production at 20th Century Fox (NWS), he’s reprising his role and the vintage Fortune cover hangs in Gekko’s apartment.

We can hardly wait. Andy Serwer, Fortune’s managing editor, makes a star turn–well, actually a cameo–too.

“The N.F.L. is more of a guarantee of success than if you got Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie to do an hour drama series for the network. You can’t guarantee that it will be a ratings success.”

– Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal (GE) Sports, today in a New York Times story about Sunday Night Football’s stellar ratings–one of the few bright spots for the woe-begotten broadcast network.

While Jay Leno was supposed to be NBC’s ratings savior, that role apparently is going to Ebersol, whom I profiled three years ago–in an exclusive story called “Playing With Pain,” about his recovery from a devastating plane crash (he lost his 14-year-old son, Teddy) and his bold $3.6 billion bid for NFL broadcast rights. Most people were skeptical of Ebersol’s big bet back then, and not even outlandish optimists predicted that Sunday Night Football, his grand concoction, would transform TV’s most popular night into a sports bonanza. “We should be in the top ten or 12 shows every week,” he told me cautiously back then, noting that Monday Night Football, then on ABC (DIS) and now on ESPN, had ranked tenth in total households the previous season.

Turns out, even Ebersol low-balled the opportunity. Last season, Sunday Night Football was No. 4 in households and, more importantly, No. 3 among adults ages 18-49. That’s the audience that advertisers–and NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker–care most about. Only American Idol on Fox (NWS) performed better. This season, Sunday Night Football’s viewership is way up, averaging over 20 million viewers. Nice for a guy who has been running NBC Sports for 20 years and never, ever gives up. –Patricia Sellers

Who’s more powerful–Oprah Winfrey or Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz? Disney (DIS) media boss Anne Sweeney or MTV Networks chief (VIAB) Judy McGrath? Who from Google (GOOG) made the 2009 Fortune Most Powerful Women list?

The new rankings are out. PepsiCo (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi is No. 1 for the fourth year in a row.

And yes, there is a science to deciding these rankings. Here I talk with CNNMoney anchor Poppy Harlow about how we do it:

“You can run, but you can’t hide.”

- Media Link President Wenda Millard, calling this afternoon from the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, to share a few thoughts about her new gig revamping sales and marketing at MySpace.

While News Corp. (NWSA), MySpace’s owner, and strategy firm Media Link, had been discussing some sort of partnership since the start of the year, Millard tells me that her new assignment came unexpectedly during her 10-day vacation. “We want to call you in right now,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta told her when he reached her on her cell on Tuesday afternoon, as Millard was eating air-dried proscuitto and drinking local wine on an organic farm in Croatia.

Prompting the MySpace boss’s urgent call to Millard–who was once Yahoo’s (YHOO) ad chief and later co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO)–was the exit of MySpace sales and marketing boss Jeff Berman. Van Natta, a former Facebook COO who joined MySpace this past spring, is expected by his News Corp. bosses to do whatever it takes to improve the flagging social network’s relationships with the ad community.

This new set-up with Media Link is unusual–a one-year deal that will have Millard staying at Media Link and working on Los Angeles-based MySpace from her own space in New York. (Media Link CEO Michael Kassan, who recruited Millard to Media Link in April, is based in LA.) Millard says she’ll likely assemble a team of six Media Link execs to work on MySpace. On Monday, she’ll hit the ground running, she says, but right now, one more stop on her trip—Venice.

“Never put tomatoes in the refrigerator.”

- No. 1 on Nora Ephron’s 10-point list from Fortune’s recent “Best Advice I Ever Got” cover package.

Julie and Julia, Ephron’s cinematic homage to Julia Child and food lovers inspired by her, opens today. (I’m seeing the movie tomorrow.)

Nora knows food, and if you want more of her tart but savory wit, check out her “Pancake Breakfast”interview with IHOP (DIN) CEO Julia Stewart at the 2007 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Sorry, we didn’t videotape the early-morning chat. But the audio and photos are charmingly retro and very amusing. Worth checking out if you’re a fan of Ephron or IHOP.

by Patricia Sellers and Jessica Shambora

We took a break from posting our daily Power Point–Postcards‘ quote of the day–last week, but we collected more than a few good ones at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Pasadena. Here are our 10 favorites,  from the mouths of media moguls, tech titans, Tweeters and more.

“It’s not really my thing. I don’t go to the dentist. I don’t do things that cause me to emote.” — IAC (IAC) chairman and CEO Barry Diller, talking about why he’s not on Twitter.

“We want to be like Ron Howard.” – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, noting that he doesn’t want his two-year-old company to turn out like childhood actors “who grew up all freaky.”

“I shut down a website everyday because I send too much traffic from my Twitter feed.” – actor Ashton Kutcher, who has 2.9 million followers on Twitter.

“You can get so focused on expanding your current business model that innovation slows down.” – eBay (EBAY) CEO John Donahoe, on how the e-commerce giant stumbled.

“You can’t play catch up. The gig in the on-line world is how to capture new behaviors.” — News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller, on how he aims to revitalize MySpace, which has lost ground to Facebook.

“I’ve learned more about my daughters on their Facebook pages than I did while I was raising them.” — Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger.

“I don’t think I could get my wife to say that about me, so I don’t think I could say that about a business partner.” — AT&T (T) CEO Randall Stephenson, on whether he’s completely satisfied with his company’s relationship with Apple (AAPL).

“[We’re taking] what used to be a goofy gimmick [and turning] it into great platform for storytelling.” — Dreamworks (DWA) CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, on 3D technology.

“Real value in a world of infinite choice is someone making choices for you.” — NBC Entertainment (GE) co-chair Ben Silverman, four days before disclosing that he’s leaving to partner with IAC’s Barry Diller on a new venture.

“The Internet puts people like politicians out of business.” Former Governor of Vermont and chairman of the Democratic National Party Howard Dean, explaining how new tools on the web like Twitter have disrupted the political game.

Did you notice something missing from this Power Point list? Women. We had some top women in tech with us at Brainstorm–Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior–but guys dominated the stage and uttered the most provocative lines. Calling Carol Bartz! The Yahoo (YHOO) CEO, along with a tremendous lineup of leaders, will be with us at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this coming September.

“Barry stirs the pot and he sees the future.”

NBC programming boss Ben Silverman, on why he’s leaving to join Barry Diller’s IAC Interactive Corp. (IACI). The two media honchos, who participated in Fortune Brainstorm Tech in California last week, are plotting a multi-media production company, which will be their third venture together. It’s been a bumpy two years since NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker brought Silverman on board. Still, says Fortune’s Richard Siklos, NBC (GE) could be a backer or partner in the new venture. Sony (SNE) could be involved as well.

by Patricia Sellers

Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix (NFLX), came by our offices on Monday. He’s one of the more down-to-earth CEOs you’ll ever meet.

He’s a Bowdoin grad like my boss, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer. Post-college, Hastings joined the Peace Corps and taught school in Swaziland. Then he played Silicon Valley start-up guy for a stretch and eventually struck gold with his movies-by-mail idea, aimed at easing the hassle of in-store drop-offs and pesky late fees.

He didn’t name his start-up “Movies by Mail” or anything like that to limit the company’s evolution — which helps explain why Netflix continues to grow briskly, even in this brutal environment. The guy had vision when he launched Netflix in 1999. The company went public in 2002 at $7.50 a share, and today the stock, at $45, isn’t far below its all-time high.

Netflix is due to announce quarterly earnings tomorrow after the closing bell, so we’ll see how well it’s riding the the digital revolution, as well as the bad economy. But the ride seems to be pretty smooth. Referring to subscribers, which today total more than 10 million, Hastings, 48, told us, “We were growing 25% when the economy was growing. We’re growing 25% now.”

Among the things that he and his team are doing right, the smartest may be choosing what they don’t want to be. As Hastings told me on Monday, he learned from Jim Collins, the renowned management guru, that it’s just as important to decide what not to do in business as it is to determine what to do.

Especially today, when change is happening so fast and unpredictably,  it’s critical to prioritize. For Hastings, this has meant not competing with Blockbuster at retail. That was smart, given that video-rental stores industry-wide are down to some 10,000, from 20,000 at the peak. “In five or 10 years, video stores will be gone,” Hastings predicts.

A more recent choice he made — “really hard,” he admitted — was deciding not to enter the ad-supported web-video fray against Hulu, YouTube (GOOG), and CBS.com (CBS). “Commercial-free subscription is where we can compete. It’s our best shot,” Hastings says. Netflix offers unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited instant streaming to computers and TVs for a flat $8.95 a month.

Hastings decided not to compete with pay-per-view purveyors like HBO (TWX)  and cable companies. And recently, he opted not to go head to head against Redbox. That’s the fast-growing start-up that places kiosks–more than 15,000 to date — in McDonald’s (MCD), supermarkets and other heavy-traffic locales. Videos cost $1 a day.

Despite inordinate disruption and confusion around distribution — or maybe because of it — Hastings is clear about his game. An engineer by training and a Microsoft (MSFT) board member, he’s determined  to make video-watching more personal and satisfying — via advancing technology, of course.

Hastings looks forward to the day, a decade or less from now, when an Internet browser will be built into every television, he says. We’ll be calling up movies and channels and websites with a click of a button or just a spoken word: “Wizard of Oz.” Or “ESPN.” Or “Netflix.”

Take a look at my conversation with Hastings for more about how he sees the future…

“Lots of conversations going on behind the scenes but I fully expect you will see the whole team next year.”

American Idol host Ryan Seacrest on his Twitter page today, amidst reports that he sealed a deal with CKX (CKXE), the parent company of Idol producer 19 Entertainment, worth $45 million over three years. No salary caps in this biz. The deal reportedly triples Seacrest’s annual pay for hosting the top-rated show on TV.

“I don’t think you’re going to have those anymore. Bigness isn’t that great an asset anymore.”

– Tom Freston, former Viacom (VIAB) CEO, in a Reuters story about the waning influence of media moguls. These titans are being upstaged by the darlings of digital, like Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Evan Williams. Old and new media alike are gathered this week at the Allen & Co. media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Freston’s opinion comes from experience. After being fired in 2006 by one major media tycoon — Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone — he has gone on to help Oprah build her OWN cable network (which is likely to have a strong digital play) and to join U2 frontman Bono on his mission to reduce global poverty and AIDS. Read more about Freston in Pattie’s profile of “The Most Wanted Man on the Planet.” –Jessica Shambora