Faulkner’s Sound and Fury--in Burbank : Theater: What if William Faulkner were writing TV screenplays in a Burbank film studio of today? Peter Lefcourt’s play explores just that premise.

“There are two types of people in the world,” announced Peter Lefcourt. “You either like Hemingway or Faulkner, never both. You either like dogs or cats, never both. You either like Bordeaux or Burgundy. You either like France or England.”

Lefcourt falls into the Faulkner-dogs-Burgundy-France camp--and he’s written an affectionate homage to Faulkner, “Only the Dead Know Burbank” (at Sherman Oaks’ Actors Alley) as proof.

In the contemporary story, thirtyish TV writer Ira Krensky moves into his new office on a Burbank lot and meets his office mate: a gray-haired, pipe-smoking Southerner, who proclaims himself Bill Faulkner and proceeds to entertain Ira with hometown reminiscences of Oxford, Miss., his trip to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize, and the damned $300-a-week writing contract that Jack Warner won’t let him out of.

“Faulkner actually spent a lot more time in Hollywood than most people realize--cumulatively almost five years, mostly in the ‘40s,” Lefcourt said. “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., RKO. But he was miserable out here for a lot of reasons.

“In the first place, he never really understood screenwriting. The very abilities that make Faulkner a brilliant novelist made him a lousy screenwriter. A screenwriter needs condensation; Faulkner is all about expansion. But because he was a man of great conscience and honor, he tried very hard to satisfy the studio heads.”

Faulkner’s efforts resulted in only two screen credits: “To Have and Have Not” and “The Big Sleep.”

“In both cases, almost nothing he wrote reached the screen,” said Lefcourt, 47. “What Faulkner was out here was a drinking buddy for Howard Hawks, someone for him to bounce ideas off of. But he was also a very shy man, so he spent most of his time sitting alone and drinking.”

Still, Lefcourt said, the pedigree was an attraction. “There was an assumption among the studio moguls that they could buy anything. Here was this great writer: ‘Let’s have one of those.’ When they brought him out here, his first contract was for $1,500 a week. That was very important money in those days.”

Lefcourt sighed. “I started thinking about the idea of this great writer coming out to Hollywood and getting trapped. To me, that’s a symbol of what happens to a lot of artists in a system that is not entirely artistic. So the play is really about the conflicts between art and commerce, which is what everyone who works in Hollywood has to deal with at some point.

“Faulkner never fell into the life style; he was not a man who spent a lot of money, bought a big house. He was just someone who tried to make sense of it all--and couldn’t.”

Lefcourt (whose television writing-producing credits include “Cagney & Lacey” and “Scarecrow and Mrs. King”) admits that the concept of Faulkner puttering around in Burbank in 1989 is a big leap.

“It’s a writer’s conceit,” he said with a nod. “But it’s also a dramatic contrivance that launches you into an interesting situation. The play is really seen through the point of view of Ira Krensky--a perfectly nice, normal, though somewhat cynical and jaded person--who comes in and finds a writer who says he’s William Faulkner. At the beginning, the audience and Ira test the credibility of that notion.”

The writer smiled. “At a certain point, if the play works, the audience begins to realize that it doesn’t make a difference whether or not it really is William Faulkner. Look, we all know that Faulkner is dead; it’s in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But the spirit of William Faulkner, what he stands for, is still very much alive. And someone like Ira Krensky--who’s battling with his ghosts, trying to make sense of ‘Am I an artist? Am I a hack?’--can take Faulkner as a message, a symbol for courage.”

And, Lefcourt admitted slyly, the tribute to Faulkner enables him to have some fun with Hemingway.

“The play does attack him somewhat affectionately,” he said. “Hemingway was so full of himself, so pompous. In the play, there’s a line that everything came out of his mouth in capital letters. Yes, he was brilliant. He had a wonderful, natural style. But he was just so much The Writer, drinking in bars to prove he was a man.

“Faulkner drank by himself. He didn’t have to run bulls in Pamplona or hang out with literary circles to prove anything. He was more comfortable sitting around the courthouse square with the old cronies.”

“Burbank” is Lefcourt’s second play. He describes the first, “The Carpet” (1970), as “a pretty dreadful Jewish melodrama.” His last project was a satirical book, “The Disraeli Deal,” about a producer marketing a movie about Benjamin Disraeli starring Eddie Murphy. A magazine short-story writer before he migrated from his native New York in 1972, Lefcourt wrote for various episodic TV shows before hitting it big as a story editor on “Eight Is Enough.”

Both TV and stage work, said Lefcourt, have pluses and minuses.

“TV gobbles up material,” he said. “As a writer, you have the positive of seeing your work translated to film very quickly. The negative is that it usually plays once, then disappears. You watch it alone on TV, in your own alienated world, and you don’t see how it touches people. Another downside is that it’s going to be transformed by directors and actors and other writers. That’s painful for a lot of writers who believe they should have some pride of ownership.”

He shook his head. “Television is a mass medium--and you have to accept that. You have to accept the fact that there are certain types of things you cannot do. I’m not just talking in terms of censorship or dirty words. I know it sounds awfully patronizing, but there is a lowest common denominator out there. That doesn’t mean you should give up to it entirely. Within the system, you should always try to do excellent work--fight it a little bit, stretch it a little bit.”

The play runs Monday through Wednesday till Nov. 16; admission is free.