HERE’S THE BUZZ ON THE BUZZ - Six Rules for a Would-Be Student of Hot Movie Gossip to Follow

D ear Sandy,

Your last letter threw me. Just because I live out here, why do you suspect I know more about movies? About which ones are going to be “hot”? The two of us in the dorm in Boston knew more then than I know now. Trust me. The other day a movie marketing wizard told me he was convinced that the new James Bond would self-destruct. This was two days before the movie opened. He then spent 15 minutes talking about his daughter’s Arabian horses. Then, after coffee, he decided the James Bond would break box-office records. Ambivalence reigns!

I know you think there’s this gossipy inside clique that knows everything--and you’re right in a way. I mean William Goldman’s line about Hollywood--”Nobody knows anything”--is untrue. By Friday night of a movie’s opening weekend, everybody (the clique included) knows everything about how the movie will do--but this instant Buzz is purely a phenomenon of the ‘80s.

Once upon a time, not very long ago, there was no state of the art when it came to word-of-mouth. The Friday that “Catch-22” opened I remember the Paramount publicity crew walking the streets in Westwood, counting the heads--to create Buzz. I’m not lying. Those were days of less information but more suspense. It was a time when Jack Lemmon made two movies a year, and if The Word on one of them was great--the other could suffer. The law of action and reaction. (The powerful word on Lemmon’s “Save the Tiger,” for example, meant there was almost no word at all on “The War Between Men and Women.”)

But I can’t send you little reports like that on current movies. And you know why. First of all I never dreamed you’d be interested in local glitter. And anyway you work with all those M.I.T.-types. You deal all week long with “information”--but so do we out here. Statistics and research and marketing studies are as emotionless there as here. And all that data has nothing to do with instinct or taste or smell--or with what makes a movie work.

I’m sorry, Sandy, but I’m not psychic enough to arm you with ammunition about which movies to see. All right, I hear you moaning. You want snippets from your Hollywood correspondent for your friends. Remember, you are asking the person who thought “Something Wild” would go through the roof. But because I know how miserable you are out there on Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by novels and lobsters and Carly Simon and her kids, I’ll try to tip you off. Here, for your eyes only, are my six rules about Buzz.

1--Forget quote ads. Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” has some extraordinary quotes, from some utterly ordinary sources. A critic from the Toronto Globe and Mail saying, “The best war movie ever made” is not like Pauline Kael saying it. (And don’t ask me why Kael is never quoted. I dunno. Maybe it has something to do with the sophistication of the New Yorker.)

2--Forget the morning TV shows. Also the late-night shows. Tune out every word you hear about a new release. On consecutive nights Dudley Moore and Mary Tyler Moore went on “The Tonight Show” extolling a weeper called “Six Weeks.” Two stars hyping on two consecutive nights (even with Carson hosting) didn’t mean one thing. As George S. Kaufman once said, “You can’t wash garbage.”

3--Don’t look so far down the road. “My Life as a Dog” slipped joyfully into our lives without warning. So did “Mad Max.” And the sequels we have expectations for, like “Rocky II” and “Beyond Thunderdome,” can be disappointing. (To quote Stephen Sondheim’s lyric: “When a movie’s that bad, what on earth can anyone say?”)

4--If you absolutely must “Buzz” about a movie just to hold your end of the conversation--do one thing: Concentrate on actors not movies. If you said Debra Winger was unforgettable in “Mike’s Murder,” you don’t get slandered and ridiculed, as if you said you liked the movie itself. Be on the watch for those kinds of performances--Cher in “Silkwood” and Rick Rossovich in “Roxanne.” (Gwen Verdon in “Nadine” is a good East Coast name to drop.) Anyway, drop these performances into conversations. Later, people will remember that you were prescient. It’s easier to stand by a performance than a movie.

5--Read the paper, pal. Life and art are imitating each other like crazy. There’s a movie that probably hasn’t hit the island yet called “No Way Out.” Start telling people your friend got an early look. Then tell them how much Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in the movie remind him of modern Washington politicians. It’s good for dinner conversation, and it moves the topic from Hollywood to that other company town.

6--Go out on a limb. Create your own Buzz. Take Norman Mailer’s “Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” coming out later this year, with Ryan O’Neal. Whisper that your pen pal in L.A. saw it in a nearly empty screening room and had an emotional experience akin to ecstasy. (Doesn’t Norman Mailer summer on the island? Track him down and create a Buzz campaign.)

And one other thing, Sandy: Make me a promise. Don’t come out for Labor Day, as planned.

Let me come there.

I’m Buzzed out.

Regards, Paolo.