SWITCH HITTER

Sean Connery as the naive small-time hood instead of Bob Hoskins? According to director Neil Jordan's commentary on a new laserdisc release of MONA LISA (1986, Voyager, R, $49.95), Connery was the filmmaker's first choice, but when ''Sean was not a possibility, I met Bob Hoskins. And the minute I...spoke to him, I saw a whole new different conception of this character, so I rewrote the entire script. So in a way, the story as a whole is very much tailor-made for Bob,'' who was so good he won an Oscar nomination. Jordan also reveals that the newly wed Cathy Tyson, who plays the prostitute, had qualms about wearing a skimpy S&M outfit (she did) and that exec producer and ex-Beatle George Harrison feared there'd be full-frontal male nudity. Jordan didn't get around to that until it really mattered -- in The Crying Game.