SAN FRANCISCO – When President Bush took a swipe at Hollywood in his speech to the Republican Convention last week, many entertainment insiders greeted the criticism with a grin.

“I saw nothing wrong with it,” said a film director and producer who is one of Mr. Bush’s leading supporters in Hollywood, Lionel Chetwynd.

In his speech last Thursday, Mr. Bush said, “My opponent recently announced that he is the candidate of ‘conservative values,’ which must have come as a surprise to a lot of his supporters. Now, there are some problems with this claim. If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood, I’m afraid you are not the candidate of conservative values.”

Mr. Chetwynd said that many of his liberal friends were delighted to have caught Mr. Bush’s attention.

“Most of them chuckled about it and said, ‘Yeah. Right on.’ Most of them were very pleased. It was almost an endorsement of who and what they are,” Mr. Chetwynd said.

An actress who is vice president of the Hollywood Congress of Republicans, Ellen Treanor, said that the remark caught her off guard.

“I was pretty surprised he was going after John Kerry like that. I was surprised to hear it coming from him,” Ms. Treanor said. “Nobody’s really talking about values and things like that this year. It’s all coming down to really the war.”

Ms. Treanor said she agreed with the gist of Mr. Bush’s statement, but she lamented the fact that her business is frequently singled out by politicians. “Hollywood’s easy to kick at. It’s easy to take shots at. It’s a big target,” she said.

Mr. Bush’s remark was an allusion to comments made by Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, following a fund-raising performance held in his honor at Radio City Music Hall in July.

At that event, comedian Whoopi Goldberg clutched a wine bottle as she repeated a crude anatomical pun involving Mr. Bush’s surname. Musician John Mellencamp referred to the president as a “cheap thug.”

In his comments from the stage, Mr. Kerry hailed the entertainers. “Every performer tonight in their own way – either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics – have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country,” he said.

After press accounts detailed the performers’ off-color remarks about Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry said some of the comments went too far. “I think there were people at that, at that concert we had in New York, who stepped over the line,” he told ABC.

Ms. Treanor said she saw Mr. Bush’s criticism not as a broad attack on Hollywood, but as an effort to call attention to the rhetorical excesses.

“I think he wanted to bring up the disgusting behavior of that evening,” she said.

Mr. Chetwynd, who produced a film dramatizing Mr. Bush’s response to the September, 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, referred to the Radio City gathering as “an orgy of poor taste, inappropriate remarks and behavior.”

Most of Hollywood’s elite remained publicly silent in the face of Mr. Bush’s salvo. The doyenne of the entertainment industry’s liberal activists, singer Barbra Streisand, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

A screenwriter who maintains a popular political blog on the Internet, Roger L. Simon, said he was not thrilled by Mr. Bush’s shot at Hollywood but understands why he took it.

“He’s playing to his right flank, everybody knows that,” Mr. Simon said. He noted that the reference came in a rather brief section of the convention speech where Mr. Bush made fleeting mention of his views on moral issues, such as abortion and gay marriage.

“It was the part of the speech that I hated,” said Mr. Simon, whose blog contains a prominent ad for the HBO series “Sex and the City.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Simon said he will be voting for Mr. Bush because of his handling of the war on terror.

“Last week was horrifying,” Mr. Simon said, referring to the killing of hundreds of Russian schoolchildren by Islamist fanatics. “That’s a lot more important than whether gays get married now or 10 years from now. The war on terror is so much the most important issue.”

One documentary filmmaker said Mr. Bush’s suggestion that the entertainment industry is at odds with conservative values failed to take account of the increasing influence of Republicans in the movie business.

“There are a growing number of Bush supporters and conservatives in Hollywood. I think they’d take issue with that,” said the filmmaker, Jesse Moss.

Mr. Moss, a former Democratic campaign worker whose latest documentary is “Rated R: Republicans in Hollywood,” said attacking the movie business is a sure winner for Mr. Bush.

“Hollywood has always been and will always be useful for the Republican Party that way, if you want to hold up a symbol of immorality,” Mr. Moss said. “It’s rhetoric and it’s effective.”

Mr. Moss said it was strange for Mr. Bush to criticize Hollywood in the same arena where, three days earlier, Governor Schwarzenegger of California wowed the delegates with repeated catch phrases from his movies.

“There is a kind of discontinuity to it,” Mr. Moss said.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a former action film star, was warmly received by the Republican faithful although his positions on social issues are at odds with the party platform and many of his movies are grossly violent.

“No one ever talked about what his films were about. Was there any discussion of the moral content of his work, ‘Twins’ and ‘Kindergarten Cop’ aside?” Mr. Moss asked.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Mr. Chetwynd said he did not see the delegates’ excitement about Mr. Schwarzenegger’s speech as a tacit endorsement of his films. “Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t there because he’d been in the ‘Terminator,'” the producer said. “They were celebrating his achievement as a Republican governor.”

Mr. Bush’s rhetoric notwithstanding, Mr. Chetwynd said he believes the political winds are slowly shifting in Hollywood, particularly among the younger set.

“The majority of young people in Hollywood appear to be conservative in mood. They’re coming out of the politically-correct universities with a totally different attitude,” Mr. Chetwynd said. “It’s definitely turning.”